After a lovely trip home and (partial) reprieve from the cold, I settled back into Fairbanks…for two days.  Monday morning found me on a plane to Anchorage where I was to help BLM and Alaska Natural Heritage Program folks with projects down there.  While ‘down south’ I worked in the University of Alaska-Anchorage Herbarium identifying, mounting, labeling and accessioning specimens collected under BLM projects.  As I’ve probably mentioned before, I find mounting plants to be a terrific creative outlet.  These little Botrychium alaskense were my favorite.

Although most of the plants I was working with were from my subject region (interior), I also processed some plants from the Aleutian Islands, which was a fascinating experience as these islands are such a unique ecosystem and certainly have different flora from what I have encountered in my mostly land locked forays up in Fairbanks.

In the office I am getting geared up for the summer field season, even though it is many frigid months away.  The exciting happenings here are a bat project that was funded for this year.  We are going to be doing acoustic monitoring of Little Brown Bats in the interior and I am working away ordering and gathering equipment, developing methodology and study design and learning as much about these little guys as I can.

I’ll leave you with some nature eye candy from a personal hiking and ice climbing trip.