The past month has been spent analyzing our annual vegetation data from juvenile Desert Tortoise sites, and we’ve come a long way! We have also been searching across most of Utah and some of Colorado (Colorado Plateau) for potential post-oil well vegetation monitoring sites! This new project is a departure from our previous work, and will be a nice getaway from the heat in the Mojave! This has involved a tremendous amount of filtering through GIS data and looking at satellite imagery for promising sites. The criteria involve clusters of sites, each containing: sites where Artemisia tridentata and/or Coleogyne ramosissima grow (or would, if an oil well hadn’t been established), a site from each decade from 1950-2000 (when the oil well was plugged and abandoned), and that each cluster fall within certain climatic constraints. This is no small task when faced with over a thousand potential sites! But it has been a great way to learn more about GIS and get a look at post-restoration oil well from the air!

In other news, the weather has been incredibly unpredictable, with temperatures climbing well above 110 F and incredible thunderstorms at the same time! Incredible precipitation events have led to flash floods and sights like this dry lake bed near Primm, NV, which is not-so-dry anymore!

Meanwhile the perennials are sending off seed, and the summer annuals are waiting for their moment to sprout from this monsoon weather!