Our crew seems to have gotten the hang of seed collection. We have made several collections since my last post. The hardest aspect of the collection process continues to be the locating of population sizes that are large enough to yield 10,000 seed. It never fails that a seemingly vast population of a species with an unlimited amount of seed quickly decreases in size once we start collecting. Regardless of this sometimes discouraging fact however, we continue to search and eventually seek out enough individuals to reach our quotas.

Aside from seed collection, I had the opportunity to attend an Interpreting Indicators of Rangeland Health training course. The course was a week long and covered several topics. It started with a crash course in the AIM (Assessment Inventory and Monitoring) methods. I was given detailed instructions on how to perform each method such as line point intercept, soil stability analysis, canopy gap intercept, and soil profiling. After a day of instruction, we were able to head out into the field and perform the methods on our own. The rest of the week took all of the AIM methods we learned and connected them to components of rangeland health. To asses a site’s health, we used evaluation sheets with 17 indicators of rangeland health such as percent bare ground, litter amount, presence of water flow patterns, functional/structural groups, and reproductive capabilities. As we worked our way through each indicator, we cross referenced the site’s current conditions with the site’s historic reference conditions. For example, we compared data collected from line point intercepts to compare a site’s current percent bare ground to the site’s historical reference percent bare ground. We then gave the indicator a rating in regards to how closely the current site’s condition matched the site’s reference condition. If the percent bare ground greatly increased or decreased, we noted that the site had greatly diverged from reference conditions. If the numbers were fairly close or the same, we noted that the site did not depart from reference conditions. After assessing several sites on our own, we learned how the data collected and analyses made while performing these methods could aid a land manager in making sound future management decisions based off of carefully gathered quantitative data.

Outside of work, I have taken the opportunity to backpack in some of the many wilderness areas scattered throughout northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. I have now successfully summited three 14ers this season, and I hope to summit a few more before the season is over.

Early start on Kit Carson Peak