It is incredibly rainy here today in Big Bear Lake, CA. Unfortunately it is not even close to being cold enough to snow. Temperatures are supposed to drop tonight and tomorrow so hopefully there will be some snow in time to go snowboarding on Sunday! It feels really good to be getting some precipitation in CA. It has been so dry, this rain is really needed. Not to mention I love being able to sit at home and listen to the storm.
Since my last entry most of my time has been spent working on the invasive plant species identification guide. Our goal is to have it essentially finished early next week. A lot of my time has been spent finding more photos to fill the blank spaces and better show the traits necessary for ID. I’m ready to be done resizing photos and text to make the best possible use of space! I am really excited about how the guide is looking and am proud of all the work I have put in because writing is definitely not my best skill.
Our next project after the guide is completed will be working on determining sensitive species legacy data to be entered into the Natural Resources Information System (NRIS). The legacy data is made up of sensitive plant element occurrence data that was recorded before the time of GPS and digitization. Our job will be to determine whether or not the legacy (historical) data should be entered into NRIS. Some occurrences shouldn’t be entered because of developments that have probably wiped out the occurrence, or they have not been found when someone went out to do the ground truthing. Most of this detective work will be done in ArcGIS, so I will utilizing all the skills I have learned in the ArcGIS webinars I have completed lately. I am optimistic I will learn a lot and improve my computer skills greatly. This was one of my original goals for this internship.
The next post I do will have pictures from the awesome soil crust workshop I am attending next weekend in Joshua Tree National Park! Also, we are planning on putting the invasive plant guide on the San Bernadino NF website so I will include a link to that when it happens.