My actual job — working as an intern under a GFO forester — has not come into full swing yet. I spend most of my days collecting plants for an identification guide, keying out local flora for my own knowledge, occasionally collecting insects from bug traps and helping out with odd jobs around the field office and surrounding campgrounds. My supervisor has sent me on several errands that have taken me decent distances around the Copper River Valley, so I have been fortunate enough to see a good amount of the surrounding SE interior Alaska so far. The surrounding forests and snow-bedecked mountains with their cold tarns interspersed between them are a level of beauty beyond description. I have included some photographs below, which could not possibly do the environment here full justice.

The remaining summer days of June and July since my last post passed in much the same way — marked by hours spent driving along interior Alaska’s deserted highways hemmed in by lakes, bogs, and stunning mountains. When not completing odd jobs around the field office (building pick-nick tables, organizing sheds, trimming foliage, chopping wood, etc.), I was frequently sent off to search roadside gravel pits for non-native invasive weeds such as bird vetch and sweet white clover. Around the end of July, I had the opportunity to flex my academic muscles in a research project involving mountain goats for our field office’s wildlife biologist. I spent a week scouring any research article I could find on BLM’s research databases concerning the impact of helicopter noise on these elusive ungulates and related mammals. Though I would not consider myself a wildlife enthusiast, I was surprised to discover my own newfound fascination with this topic, along with the dearth of much-needed research on the impact of man-made sounds on animals. I learned quite a bit more than I expected to and produced several pages of notes for the wildlife biologist to use in an Environmental Impact Statement he was writing at the time. In the process of this project, I also learned quite a bit more about the intricacies of NEPA documents, which I am sure will be useful in my future work.

Shortly after I finished my research on my mountain goats, I was whisked off in early August for some forest inventory work north of the arctic circle. In was elated to finally begin working within the purview of my internship description and also to see some new boreal ecosystems. For a period of two weeks, I traveled with a team led by a northern Californian forester, Ken Stumpf, setting up surveys around Yukon Crossing, the arctic circle, and Coldfoot — a tiny outpost in the rain-drenched Brooks Range. We sampled approximately 65 field sites off of the Dalton Highway using Stumpf’s unique line-point transect sampling methodology. In contrast to the AIM sampling method typically employed in BLM surveys, Stumpf’s method provides more precise species-specific canopy cover estimates and other metrics that provide a more holistic description of a given ecosystem from the ground up. Individual sample sites were chosen based on the results of image stratification from 2017 Landsat 8 imagery that determined the largest homogeneous areas of different spectrally-determined strata — each of which described a different forest type. This process ensured that we surveyed a wide variety of land classifications, information that can then be applied and mapped to represent a wider scope of BLM land in Alaska. While working with this team, I had the opportunity to not only learn a new sampling method and pick the brain of a brilliant forester, but also to immerse myself in a menagerie of unfamiliar plant species. I collected several plants, which I intend to label and leave at the field office here for future educational purposes.

After returning from the arctic circle, I spent a few days meeting with a forestry review panel to discuss reforms in BLM Alaska’s forestry program. A decent amount of time was spent reviewing policies regarding non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Subsistence permits for NTFPs (e.g berries, mushrooms, burls, walking sticks, etc.) are a unique feature of rural Alaskan life that does not exist in the lower 48.

This past week, I assisted a team of botanists from Anchorage with collecting seeds for a plant restoration program called “Seeds of Success.” We collected from a wide variety of grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs in the Tangle Lakes region, and again, I was thrilled to buff up my plant identification skills. The climate of the Tangle Lakes could be best characterized as mesic, and rarely does it have a cloudless sky, but the weather held out for at least two days that we were there. This much-welcome window of sunlight lit up the surrounding mountains, the tallest of which were brushed with yearlong snow, and the smaller ones were set ablaze in the vibrant autumnal colours of turning fireweed and resin birch. In late August, fall has already arrived here.