I didn’t quite know what to expect when I found out that I was heading to Grand Junction, Colorado for my CLM internship, but I was excited because I had heard so many fantastic things about Colorado. My visions of Colorado mainly included mainly mountains, forests, and snow, but then I found out that Grand Junction is in the desert. The city itself lies in a valley between the Grand Mesa and the Bookcliffs and it is absolutely beautiful! It’s perfectly situated between so many recreational opportunities in the desert to the west and in the mountains to the east, and I have certainly taken advantage of the opportunities in my free time. But back to my work… which to be honest, often does not feel all that different from activities I enjoy on my own time.
I have spent the majority of my CLM internship working on a Land Health Assessment project to determine whether land health standards in soil/site stability, hydrologic function and biotic integrity are being achieved on BLM grazing allotments. Essentially, we had to determine whether the land is “meeting,” “not meeting,” or “meeting with problems” for each of the land health standards and then overall. We set up a transect at each site and did a line-point intercept analysis to determine species composition as well as a gap intercept analysis to determine sizes and overall percentages of canopy gaps. We then did a soil stability test and looked at indicators like rills, water-flow patterns, gullies, litter movement, soil compaction, invasive plants, plant mortality, and annual production of plants.
We spent the first half of the summer in the desert and the second half up in the Bookcliffs, working in and out of the canyons and higher country. We got to hike in some beautiful areas and because we had to assess all of the land within each grazing allotment, we had the opportunity to travel to areas that most people never get to see. We also saw some wildlife while we were out working: antelope, deer, coyote, and even several bears. We have completed the field work portion of the project. In total, we assessed approximately 223,000 acres. I am now working on GIS maps of the areas we assessed and entering the data we collected at each point. It has been very interesting to be involved in every stage of the project thus far. My final step will be to total up the percentages of acres for each assessment category and provide explanations for these assessments to my mentor who will write the final report.
Another cool part of my internship is that I have also had many opportunities to go out in the field with other people in the office. In fact, just today I visited a site with some of the office staff to look at some dinosaur and other vertebrate tracks that have been recently discovered. Earlier in the summer I spent a day on the Colorado River with the weeds specialist looking at the invasive Tamarisk and visiting some of the release sites for the beetle that is being used to control the Tamarisk. Other interesting projects that I have had the opportunity to assist with are a rare plant survey for the Sclerocactus glaucus –a federally listed threatened cactus, an archaeological survey along a proposed fence line, water flow monitoring with the hydrologist, ecological site inventory to determine forage available in grazing allotments, and oil and gas well compliance inspections, among others.
Overall, I have had a fantastic experience during my CLM internship. I have learned so much about the ecosystems and plant species in this area. It is all so different from where I grew up in Maine! I have also learned a lot about how the Bureau of Land Management operates and what goes into managing all of the public land out here in the west, which again, is so different from back east where there is not much public land at all.
–Nina Pinette, BLM Field Office, Grand Junction, Colorado
this is a brushy loam field site--it is meeting the standards
this is a loamy saltdesert site--it is not meeting the standards