Greetings from the Ridgecrest Field Office! Over the last few weeks the temperatures here in the Mojave have become more “reasonable” by my standards, and today it is even chilly and raining! Seems like we’ll get two days of “fall” weather before it’s back in the 80s and 90s. So that’s been nice. What else has happened around here? Many things! We’ve made several seed collections over the last few weeks, but that activity (as you can guess) certainly is waning. Our field office now has a wildlife biologist, and I’m quite excited for the opportunity to work with and learn from her.
Recently I was able to visit a wind farm with the biologist, along with BLM employees from another field office and some folks from the Fish and Wildlife Service. The purpose of the visit was to examine the wind farm’s proposed system for California Condor detection and emergency turbine shutdowns. It was very interesting to see the collaboration between the company and agencies.
It turns out, if you look close enough, plants really do have hearts. These are some leaves from an Atriplex species from which we recently collected seed at Olancha Dunes.
The week before last, I attended my alternate training opportunity, which was Fire Ecology of the Sierra Nevada put on by the Jepson Herbarium. It was a 3-day workshop at Yosemite National Park, and it was fantastic. I went up a couple days early to camp, hike, and explore the park as well–which was fortunate timing because one week later, the high elevations are now covered in snow and Tioga Pass closed.
Our workshop was led by several grad students from UC Berkeley, each with research pertaining to different aspects of fire ecology. The first day was about historical fire in the area, changes in policies over the decades, and the effects of fire suppression. The second day consisted of talking about fire regimes and field visits to places where the fire regime has been restored, to look at the forest structure/vegetation communities found there. We also heard about pollinator responses to fire, which was interesting. An aha moment from that day: thinking of “rare” plants/wildflowers, how many of those are really just early successional species that we rarely see because of fire suppression? And when an area finally burns, in some areas the fuel load is so high that the severity of the fire kills the seed bank.
Our final day was spent with one specific case study: the Rim Fire from 2013. We heard from Kelly (with BLM Fire) and June (a fire archaeologist). They were incredibly interesting to talk to. Kelly led us through Tuolomne Grove (where I got to see my first giant sequoia!!!) and talked us through their strategy for preventing the Rim Fire from ripping through the area–which was a combination of having treated the area previously with prescribed burns so that recurring burns were mostly of low severity, protecting the giant sequoias through duff removal and wetting, and backburning starting at the grove and letting it continue onwards to meet the head fire. June told us what it was like being a resource advisor on fires, the processes and considerations that go into planning strategies when fighting fires or deciding to allow them to burn. Ultimately the Rim Fire burned ~250,000 acres of land in Yosemite NP and Stanislaus NF, and the areas of high severity burn were very substantial. Here, we are at a site in Stanislaus talking about how landscape, weather, and fuel load affect fire severity, the difference between low/moderate/high severity burns and what that means for stand replacement, as well as post-fire salvage logging.
I had the opportunity to volunteer for the BLM in the Great American Outdoors exhibit at the LA County fair. Most of the day, we worked at the game table where people had to answer trivia questions to win prizes. I got to hold a rosy boa as we were sitting on the float waiting for the parade to start; and we got to ride with Mohave Maxine, Woodsy Owl, Smokey the Bear, and Seymour Antelope. It was a really fun day.
During a field visit last week, I saw my first Mojave rattlesnake. Unfortunately, he was quite crispy.
After just over two months, I am still seeing new things almost every time we go out into the field. Last week we went to collect information for an EA that is being written. We went out to Robber’s Roost (pictured here) to see if cattle access to a state threatened plant would be reduced by the proposed fenceline.
And something I was personally excited for: I finished creating the digital record of the RIFO Herbarium. I think this was the prettiest sheet I saw.