My workplace

For the past three months I have been living and working in Washington State at North Cascades National Park where the mountains are grand and the lakes are cold. I work for the park’s plant ecologist on a variety of long term monitoring projects. This internship has introduced me to Western Washington, from the prairies of San Juan Island, to the old growth and subalpine forests of the North Cascades. My brain has been overflowing with new plant information; common names, scientific names and six letter abbreviations. I moved to Washington from Colorado where I learned the plants and forest patterns of a drier climate. The west side of the North Cascades is wet. The trees are huge and the understory is dense. The ferns and mosses continually remind me of the incredible amount of water that hydrates these forests. Due to the rain shadow effect, the east side of the Cascades is drier and more reminiscent of the Colorado Rockies.

Early in the summer, while we were waiting for the snow to melt in the mountains, we conducted grassland transects at San Juan Island National Historic Park at the American Camp. The prairie that we ran transects across was once forested but more recently served as pasture land. The tract of land is now protected as National Historic Park and is grazed not by sheep and cows but by deer and rabbits. As we walked the transects we noted changes in cover type (grass, shrub, or tree) and whether the majority of the cover was native or exotic. This monitoring project aims to learn how the land is changing without the agricultural grazing pressures. Are native grasses or invasive grasses becoming more or less dominant? Are shrubs replacing the grasses? Are trees replacing the shrubs? As the park aims to preserve the National Historic Park and the ecology of the landscape this study will give natural resource specialists an idea of how the land is currently changing.

Data collection

For the second half of the summer I have been working in the forests of the North Cascades. Here we are in the early years of a forest monitoring project to track changes in the forests. We visit established forest plots and relocate marked trees that are part of a study tracking growth, death, and recruitment patterns and shifts. This data will be used to track forest changes as the climate of the Northwest changes. The last month of field work has been monitoring whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis), a subalpine five-needled pine. Throughout western North America whitebark pine is suffering from an introduced white pine blister rust (fungus). Whitebark pine plays an important role in the subalpine ecosystem. The trees are extremely hardy and can establish on unstable, exposed slopes with extreme weather conditions. As they establish they increase slope stabilization creating more hospitable habitat for other plant species. This makes whitebark pine trees ‘nurse’ plants. In addition, the seeds are an important food source for Clark’s nutcrackers, squirrels and bears. I have loved the whitebark pine work. I have been inspired by the whitebark, from the steep slopes where they grow their roots, to their purply cones with tasty pine nuts, to their funky gnarled growth forms, to their beautiful high elevation view of the world.

This internship has been an incredible experience. My work has taken me on week-long backpacking adventures to places that many folks dream of visiting for vacation. Field work has allowed me an up-close view of a spectacular landscape, working alongside the most knowledgeable people on the area.

Vaccinium deliciosum... blueberries!

Each time I am out in the field the park reveals new secrets; enormous glaciers, hidden alpine lakes, subtle vegetation patterns, showy alpine flowers and many blueberries. Spending my summer in the North Cascades has confirmed for me the important role that the National Park System, and all of the land management agencies, play in protecting some of the most beautiful places on Earth.

Annie Bossange, North Cascades National Park, Marblemount, WA