It’s been a crazy two weeks for the Wenatchee CLM interns! Today is our first day in the office since April 15–we spent last week in Reno, NV and the week before that in Prineville, OR. After a total of 38 hours in a car together, I’m glad to say we still like each other!
At the AIM training in Prineville, we learned multiple quantitative methods for monitoring our rangeland sites. Line-point intercept, gap-intercept, vegetation height, species inventory, and soil stability testing were the main protocols that were covered, as well as the digging of the all-important soil pit. Personally, my favorite part of the week was learning how to texture soil, because who doesn’t like getting their hands dirty? At the end of the week, we ran through all of the protocols individually in order to make sure that we were all somewhat calibrated to each other. I had a hard time getting a hang of some things, especially gap-intercept, but shockingly, I calibrated successfully!
Katherine and Gabe practice reading LPI in Prineville
Makeshift rain shelter at the campground, courtesy of the Robel pole! 🙂
We went for a moonlight hike with some of the other crews!
After a quick but relaxing weekend at home in Wenatchee, we were back on the road again the following Monday, this time going twice as far! Luckily we’d had the foresight to take some audiobooks out of the library; the 13 hour drive was made much more exciting thanks to the addition of Jurassic Park. When we arrived at our hotel, a casino resort called The Nugget, I was completely overwhelmed–the place was like a labyrinth of flashing lights and mirrored walls, filled with bars, restaurants, and hundreds of slot machines. Finding our way to the check-in desk was an adventure in itself!
At training the next morning, we were excited to see many of the people we’d befriended the week before in Prineville. IIRH turned out to be a lot more complicated than AIM, and we spent a full day watching presentations before even heading out into the field. The qualitative nature of the protocol made it more difficult for beginners like me, since accurately assessing the 17 indicators of rangeland health requires actual experience seeing these indicators in the field! However, I was feeling much more confident by the end of the week after running through some practice sites and discussing our assessments at length with the whole group.
Leaving Reno felt a little bittersweet: although the constant training and travel was exhausting, and I’ve gotten a bit sick of living in hotels, it was great being able to spend time with the other crews, and I’ll really miss some of the people we met. I feel so lucky to have an internship with so many travel opportunities, and to be in a field with so many like-minded people. And now that I’m all trained up, I’m looking forward to actually applying what I’ve learned back here in Washington!
A beautiful yellow Castilleja I found in Reno!
Hit up California for the first time on the drive back from Reno, and it didn’t disappoint!
Katherine Schneider, BLM, Wenatchee WA Field Office