The past month has been both fantastic and exhausting! Most of my July was spent in the backcountry: I first spent two weeks on the remote Sitkinak Island (SE of Kodiak Island) where I served as a biotech/botanist for an NRCS Soil/Eco Site Survey, then cashed in all of my accrued comp hours to go backpacking in the Bitterroots with one of my best friends.
As is the case for southern Kodiak Island, spruce and alder have yet to reach Sitkinak. This makes ecological site descriptions a bit more complicated than usual: because most of the preexisting descriptions involve alder and spruce or their eventual succession, the communities on Sitkinak don’t quite “fit” the typical community delineations. Though that’s ultimately a task for the senior NRCS ecologist to tackle, I thoroughly enjoyed discussing what it means to be a Reference Plant Community in this context, and the pros and cons of our current methodology for site description.
In the absence of alder and spruce, then, the island is dominated by forbs, graminoids, and occasional Salix sp. which is quite alright with the 500 or so cattle whose ancestors have inhabited the island since 1937. The Alaska Meat Company currently holds the grazing rights for both East and West Sitkinak, and for you omnivores out there interested in conscientious meat consumption, it’s difficult to beat the degree of “free range” achieved on Sitkinak.
It’s also hard to beat the views that Sitkinak affords. It would seem our NRCS crew somehow pleased the gods, because the skies remained blue for eleven of our fourteen days on usually-grey-and-misty Sitkinak.
Until next time, I’ll leave you folks with a few highlights of the island!
Looking out at Kodiak over an Eriophorum-Sphagnum dominated swale
Looking east toward the northern end of east Sitkinak
Looking east toward the southern end of east Sitkinak
Sitkinak’s primary river
The lagoon dividing the two islands
- Solidago-graminoid plains
Diggin’ holes and findin’ plants!