August is here and the pollinators are in a frenzy for forage as fall inches closer!
This month, I took the time to become closely acquainted with the many different flying critters that could bee seen on the prairie. For the most part, the pollinators were not very hard to find as they could typically be found foraging on the pollen/nectar of the prairie wildflowers; however, there were a few exceptions with some of the bees as they would find interest in eating my lunch!
The Eastern Thistle Longhorn Bee (Mellisodes desponsus) on Cirsium discolorThe Modest Masked Bee (Hylaeus modestus) on Agalinis auriculataLong-horned Bees (Melissodes sp.) on Coreopsis tripterisA Sweat Bee (Tribe: Augochlorini) on my sandwich!
Aside from foraging on prairie plants or my lunch, the general behavior and nesting habitat of a few of the pollinators were interesting to watch. During Robel Pole protocols with Harsha, Michelle, and the other CLM interns, we were greeted by a group of Pearl Crescents (Phyciodes tharos) and Eastern Tailed-Blues (Cupido comyntas)at a puddle. Until recently, I did not know that this behavior was called Puddle Clubbing. Essentially, puddle clubs are congregations of the same or different species of butterflies (mostly males) that gather around a source of water (sometimes large or measly), which typically contains essential minerals that the butterflies can obtain with their proboscis. The puddles can also serve as an area for males to display and compete for a female if one happens to fly by!
Robel Pole with Harsha, Michelle, and Vlad(who is in the distance).Naomi and Jonah taking in the beauty of the puddle clubJonah, the Butterfly WhispererA group of male Pearl Crescents!A puddle club with Pearl Crescents and Eastern Tailed-Blues
Regarding nesting habitat, the two species of pollinators I observed (a Megachilid sp. and the Honeybee, Apis mellifera) were relatively intriguing, to say the least. The Megachilid (a leafcutter bee) is a resident of the bedrock pavements of the dolomite prairie that we observed while monitoring the Hispid False Mallow (Malvastrum hispidum). In this habitat, there can be little to no soil and the pavements can get relatively hot during the day, so it was impressive to see this species utilizing this area for a home! As interested in bees as I am, I took a closer look at the leaf cutter’s home by moving the rocks at the entrance of the nest to see see how deep it was. Shortly after displacing the rock, Ingrid from POC, Naomi, and I were greeted by a disoriented bee…sorry!
The Hispid False Mallow (Malvastrum hispidum)A Megachilid (Family: Megachilidae) carrying a leaf!The Leafcutting Bee inspecting its reconstructed home in the Dolomite Pavement
As for the honeybees, we found them within an older building on the prairie while we were seed collecting/scouting. In this case, I was not surprised to stumble upon them here as I have found honeybees in similar structures before, but I was surprised to see exposed comb! It is not ideal for them to utilize the comb for storage or rearing their young, although this comb could serve a hidden purpose not seen by the observer!
The workers of the Western Honeybee (Apis mellifera)A colony of Honeybees in an unusual spot!
With that, August on the prairie was filled with a plethora of pollinators that added to the fun of seed collecting! As fall slowly sets in, I hope to see many more flying/buzzing critters!
What would you do if the ecologist in your forest comes and offers your crew the opportunity to go on a hitch in another forest? Well for me, I agreed to go immediately. We were helping the Northwest Oregon Ecologists collect data on tree plots within the Torrey-Charlton Natural Research Area. This area has been part of a long term study on post-fire growth and yield of Mountain Hemlock. These plots first burned in 1996 in the Torrey-Charlton fire, and were chosen based on severity of the burn. These same plots were burned again in 2022 in the Cedar Creek fire. This gave the unique opportunity for researchers to look at the effects of stands being burned twice and also the amount of carbon released during the 2022 fire.
One of our twice burned plots with views of smoke plumes from the Red Fire in The Diamond Peak Wilderness area.
The team hit the ground running. We had 4 days to collect data from 8 plots. It was an intense couple of days but I quickly learned protocols for fuel load transects, vegetation plots, and course wood measurements. A metric tape quickly became my best friend.
Bridget collecting course wood Data. We often partnered up with one doing the measuring and the other recording on the data sheet.
The plots themselves felt like hell on earth. All but one of our plots were burned in both fires. There was no shade and the ground was completely covered with ash. We quickly become covered in dirt each day and I think I drank more water in that week than I have in my entire life. But with my sun shirt and sunglasses I survived the beating sun, but my lips did not. Definitely buying some SPF chapstick to use for the rest of this field season. Luckily camp was based at Waldo lake, making for some chilly but needed swimming at the end of each day. During any hitch a good dip makes you feel clean and refreshed, or at least as clean as you can get in lake water.
After work swims at Waldo Lake.
This hitch was unique in that I got to work with people from across Oregon. We had four ecologists from both the Northwest Oregon Ecology program and Oregon State University. It was so intriguing to be able to talk to them about their current projects, future goals, and how they got to where they are today. They each had such different paths, some went to grad school while others were research techs abroad. As someone so early in their career, it was so comforting to hear that everyone’s path is unique. It honestly makes me excited to see where life takes me.
My coworker Bridget and I after working on the plots all day.
As the weather starts to get colder, plants around Plumas National Forest have matured seed and are mostly now beyond the window of collection. This is not a problem for us as we’ve successfully collected from all of our target populations! Besides a couple of final population checks, September has been characterized by time in the office, preparing all of our seeds for their hopefully big and bright futures.
As we had some of the materials and certainly the time, our mentor thought it would be best for us to clean the seeds ourselves rather than send them to an extractory like Bend. There was a lot to go through, but I agreed it would be a good experience and satisfying to participate in another section of these seeds’ journey. Due to the dry environment here, we left all the cleaning to be done at the end of the season. Collected seeds were stored with their chaff in paper bags around the office and did not seem to be impacted by mold or too much additional pest pressure. This meant that at the start of September, we had a mountain of work to do.
For most species, the bulk of the cleaning was done using four different-sized, specialized seed-cleaning sieves. Taking the seeds and the sieve to a picnic table outside, we would run everything through the sieves until most of the chaff that weren’t the same size as the seeds, were filtered out. From there, relying on the predictable early afternoon breeze, we would pour the remaining seeds and chaff from one container to another to blow away the excess. Typically, the chaff is lighter than the seeds so it would be caught in the wind and blow outside the confines of the container while the seeds would fall straight down. However, we had to be careful as an occasional strong gust of wind could blow everything away. Once the seeds were filtered to a satisfactory level (nobody’s perfect), we transferred them to a sealable plastic bag for longer term storage. Next the bags were weighed and PLS estimates were generated using our cut test data, single seed mass, and bag weights adjusted for the amount of chaff still remaining. These bags will soon go into storage and hopefully be used in restoration projects in the near future!
Sieve set-up with a nice half filtered mound of Monardella ordoratissimaA huge mountain of all of our cleaned Veratrum californicum seedsTwo trays of Wyethia mollis seeds that gave me countless splinters while cleaningThe so so so so tiny little small seed of Spiraea douglasii. The scope was necessary for cut tests.
Besides seed cleaning, there were other various office tasks to be done. Bit by bit, we had been mounting our voucher specimens, organizing our data, and slowing assembling our final report. Office days feel much longer than field days, and I certainly miss going out into the woods to explore on such a regular basis. But the organizational side of me enjoys checking off to-do lists and slowly filling out the all-important data sheet entitled: “Plumas NF Seed Collection Data 2024 UNOFFICIAL VERSION”. Official version soon to come. As I am writing this, the checklist is almost complete and the spreadsheet is almost filled. This chapter is coming to a close. It may be sad to leave but I am excited for the next adventure.
I JUST WANT TO TALK ABOUT PINES, so here’s a super speedy recap of the month:
It’s officially fall! Fire season is mostly over and the leaves are changing colors.
Went to the Tetons and Yellowstone with Cicely and Li
Cross-trained with Soils and saw some cool mycorrhizae
Collected a monster haul of fuzzy rabbitbrush seeds
Got stopped on the road by a herd of bighorn sheep
Sunrise from the Tetons
Now onto the tree that has taken up the majority of space in my mind for the past several weeks. Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is an endangered species that is threatened by mountain pine beetle outbreaks and… dun dun dun… white pine blister rust (WPBR), which is a type of fungus that kills white pines.
In college I read about whitebark pine and other “high-five” species – five-needled trees that love cold, high elevation habitats, which means they’re also really vulnerable to climate heating. So being able to actually go out in the field and make sure that these populations were protected was beyond awesome.
From left to right: Cicely, Laura, and Elijah standing around a whitebark pine sapling
Surveying these trees meant trekking up steep slopes to take different measurements of any whitebark we found and checking for signs of blister rust. By the end of the day, we had our own language for shouting out our data to Elijah, who was recording. You could hear us yelling, “BABY! BABY! BABY NO DEEBAGE!” all throughout the forest. (‘Baby’ was a pine less than three feet tall, and ‘deebage’ was short for ‘DBH’, which is short for ‘diameter at breast height’.) By the end of the day, we even found two mature trees!
Bucket of whitebark pine seeds from Coeur D’Alene
All this surveying came full circle when we visited the Coeur D’Alene Forest Nursery. Nathan, the manager of the Seed Transfer Zone project, gave us a tour and explained to us how their scientists are breeding whitebark pines that have a natural genetic resistance to WPBR.
The nursery has a feline friend!
The nursery itself felt almost magical to me. There were massive, sprawling ‘grow-out’ fields and plant beds filled to the brim with native plugs. I loved it, and it reminded me of my old happy place – my college’s greenhouse.
Our main goal was to drop off the seed collections we’ve been gathering this entire season, but we also got to stay a few days to help out with the projects there. We were assigned to measure Penstemon procerus in the fields, taking basal growth height and width, inflorescence height, and leaf height and width. There was a lot to measure for each individual plant, but we were up for the challenge!
Inside the seed extractory
The data we were gathering will be used to decide which Seed Transfer Zone (STZ) each of seeds will go. USGS sums up STZs the best: “Seed transfer zones are areas where plant materials can be transferred with little risk of being poorly adapted to their new location.” So, our morphology measurements are being used to determine what geographic area each plant would thrive in so that they can be grown out in bulk for seed and be as effective as possible in the restoration mixes.
The work got a little monotonous after a few hours, and Li and I got a good case of the giggles, laughing at each other’s attempts at trying to sing early 2000’s dad rock. Even if we were getting a little loopy, it’s neat to have worked on almost every step of the seed mix process.
Li and I hard at work
Li about to chomp on a mantis we found
Between the pines and the penstemon, going to Coeur D’Alene reminded me how the importance of what we’re doing can sometimes get lost in the every day. I’m grateful that the nursery made sure we aren’t missing the forest for the trees. Pun intended.
September has really flown by. We finished our bumble bee surveys early in the month and have spent the remainder of our time conducting buckwheat surveys and seed collections. I can’t believe I only have one more month of this internship left! It feels like I just got here! This month we’ve been collecting lead plant (Amorpha canescens), dotted blazing star (Liatris punctata), purple coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia), stiff sunflower (Helianthus pauciflorus), and blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis).
Blazing star has been my favorite to collect so far; the seed comes out pretty easily, and unlike many other plants we’ve collected from, it doesn’t poke you! It is pretty small and hard to see from a distance though, but if you’re collecting early enough and can catch the rising sun behind them they’re much more noticeable.
Liatris punctata. See, they really stand out in the right lighting!
Lead plant has (so far) only been found up on the Cedar River District, which is located east of the Grand River District and in North Dakota. It’s nice getting to go up there; however, there is major construction on the main (and only) road, so the trip towards that area takes longer than it normally would.
Amorpha canescens
Grasshopper cameo
Back home in garden we have a different species of purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea. You can tell them apart since E. purpurea has more pigmented rays and the leaf margins are serrated, as opposed to E. angustifolia which has slightly duller rays, hairy leaves, and smooth margins. Collecting coneflower brought back some of my own childhood memories, and I recalled the times when I used to cut off the seed heads and pretended that they were little echidnas or hedgehogs when I played in the yard.
Echinacea angustifolia. Please tell me you see my vision.
This month, we also assisted our mentor Greg Schonert with biological evaluations on the Grand River District for rangeland improvements. Biological evaluations are done whenever a new project is planned for range, with the objective to determine whether changes made to the land would be detrimental to Regional Forester Sensitive Species (RFSS). In this instance, the project involves making improvements to a waterline (for the cattle grazing on that allotment) and new fencing, so we traveled along the proposed route for these and identified the common plants, making note of sensitive species we found in the area. If there were any RFSS, their presence can affect the project depending on the severity and level of disturbance it would cause. These changes can vary, from altering the timing of the project (not doing it during nesting season if there are any RFSS birds nearby) to completely rerouting the project (if the route goes through critical habitat).
Just outside of the project area was a golden eagle nest in a cottonwood. I was informed that this nest has been active for 20 years!
Outside of work, I’ve taken a lot of trips this past month! I started September by driving up to Canada for labor day weekend where I did some sightseeing and visited the Winnipeg Zoo and Botanic Garden. Now I can say my car has traveled to another country!
Pollinator garden at the Winnipeg Zoo
Trail near Lake Winnipeg
Mid September my parents flew up from Oklahoma and stayed in the black hills area where we did a lot of hiking and birdwatching. We saw a Lewis’s woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis) for the first time, which was super cool!
The gang’s all here
Melanerpes lewis
Mountain goats chilling on the side of the road in Spearfish, SD
A howling, cold wind forced the small crew of scientists to huddle closer. The group’s navigator glanced from her rudimentary compass to the horizon, concentrating her tired eyes on a small dark shape that stood opposed to the pale, starlit snowfields. The group was traveling in the Artic Circle, a land no more desolate now than most of the post-apocalyptic planet. At last, a man-made building resolved itself against the pale dawn. The tall concrete walls cut the wind and a quiet fell upon them. The navigator faced the stainless-steel entrance of the imposing tomb. She knew, though, that life lie frozen, preserved in that breathless place in the form of seeds. Millions of seeds, preserved by people of the past for the unknown future, contained the hope for replenished agriculture and revegetation. She had reached the ‘Doomsday Vault’ — the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
Not the Svalbard Global Seed Vault but looks like a sci-fi building! Saw this radio equipment (?) on Blacktail Mountain, Flathead National Forest, Montana.
In the popular imagination, seed vaults conjure up post-apocalyptic visions of bunker-like warehouses filled with crop seeds for kickstarting a new human civilization. Helen Anne Curry, in her paper “The history of seed banking and the hazards of backup,” discusses the origin of this doomsday fear: a survival strategy for mid-20th century Cold War anxieties. The Cold War inspired a frenzy of record backups, computer and communication system redundancies, and other safeguards against global environmental catastrophes. Saving seeds represented an insurance policy for our food, forests, and the green of our planet. The Fort Collins Seed Bank in Fort Collins, Colorado fulfilled this need for redundancy, with the first “Fort Knox of the seed world’ opening in 1958 (Curry, 2022). The Svalbard Global Seed Bank, built almost 50 years later, continues to assuage similar fears but it also represents a more active, dynamic approach to modern day seed-saving needs. The Svalbard Seed Vault, located in the remote Artic Svalbard archipelago, functions quite literally as a seed “bank” in which a nation or organization deposits seeds in a safe box that is then available for withdrawal at the depositor’s request. Svalbard is a backup for the thousands of other seed banks throughout the world, a safeguard against the worst, but it is not a sealed off seed tomb. The seed vault regularly accepts deposits and honors withdrawals. To date, the only withdrawals have been from Syria in 2015 and 2017 due to the civil war disrupting a gene bank located in Tel Hadya, Syria (Dan, 2015).
Many organizations concerned with plant conservation and genetic diversity like botanical gardens, university laboratories, and nurseries, partake in some form of seed saving. The ability to preserve living plants, in the form of a seed, offers a highly adaptable opportunity for humanity to realize the needs and goals for both our local and global plant communities.
Conifer seeds stored in drums in the cold storage freezers at the Coeur d’Alene Seed Nursery; not as cold as Svalbard!
How It’s Made: Trees (and Plants) for Future Forests
My co-intern and I visited the USDA Coeur d’Alene Seed Nursery in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho this month. The 220-acre nursery includes 25 greenhouses, 130 acres of bareroot seedbeds, multiple buildings for seed extraction, and numerous freezers for seed banking. The nursery provides native conifer, forb, and grass seedlings and seed mixes mainly for Region 1 National Forests in Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota (USDA Forest Service). The nursery participates in many projects including the Northern Region’s Tree Improvement program for growing and testing Whitebark pine seedlings for blister rust resistance. The forest I am working with, the Flathead NF, is sending seed to the nursery for extraction and use in grow outs to increase seed number of our target species. Eventually, the bulk-grown seed will form pollinator seed mixes for use back on the Flathead NF in disturbed areas.
Greenhouse and fields at the Coeur d’Alene Seed Nursery.
We first toured the huge, industrially-sized “Seed Extractory”. Large boxes, each holding hundreds of pinecones, are stacked from floor to ceiling (see picture for scale). Hot air is pumped through the stacked boxes, turning the whole pinecone-filled column into a kiln. The heat opens the cones and releases the seeds. Inside the main building, ductwork lines then walls and ceiling, moving air from one machine to another, providing a means to separate the dense seed material from the chaff. Screens of different sizes could be fitted into the various sifting and sorting machines to accommodate a wide range of seed sizes. A sample from each batch of purified seed is then tested vias X-ray for seed viability. X-rays reveal dried-up embryos or hollow seeds that would otherwise escape notice. The nursery manager described the importance of creativity in purifying seeds and the lack of standardization in the seed cleaning processes since each species requires unique troubleshooting. Some seed extraction, despite all the helpful machinery, must be done by hand. This is the case for Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis). Whitebark pine is considered a “stone pine” due to the cone scales never opening, even when the seeds are ripe. Heating the cones up in the kilns only makes the scales close more tightly. The cones must be cracked open by hand, imitating the natural forces they encounter in the wild—being crunched by grizzly bear jaws or cracked by awl-like beaks of the Clark’s nutcracker (National Park Service).
Giant kilns for drying pineconesMachinery in the seed extractor buildingA “dewinger” machine for removing the wings off pinecone seedsThe X-ray room for seed viability tests
We next moved to the storage room, which contained huge walk-in freezers that housed enough conifer seeds to meet revegetation goals for Region 1 Forests for the next 10 to 20 years! Conifer seed, like other “orthodox seed,” can withstand freezing and drying for long periods of time. Some samples of Lodgepole pine seeds stored at the nursery since the 1960s still have a 70% germination rate (Robertson, 2024). The freezers at the nursery are not as cold as the -18C of the permafrost-entombed Svalbard Global Seed Vault (Hopkin, 2008). Seeds stored at higher temperatures, a warmer -2C, are not destined for potentially century-long storage. Rather, these seeds are used for ongoing projects and near-future seed planting. Pollen and seed from white pine blister rust resistant conifers is stored in the freezers for the Northern Rocky Tree Improvement Project. Four defense mechanisms against the blister rust have been genetically isolated and some conifer species, represented in the freezer, contain all four mechanisms of resistance (Robertson, 2024). Seed banks, nurseries, vaults, and libraries provide the necessary storage space for reassurance that genetic diversity can be maintained for both short-term and long-term conservation goals.
White pine blister rust infection (Cronartium ribicola); evident as the orange scab-like protrusions on the bark
My co-intern Erynn (on the left) and I with some pollen from a white pine blister rust resistant conifer
Reimagined Visions: Keep Cool and Save Seeds
While the fear of global environmental catastrophe still informs certain aspects of seed banking, seed saving today serves many other interests and needs. The Millenium Seed Bank Partnership stores seeds from 13% of the world’s wild flowering plants, representing a concern for the ex-situ conservation of wild plants as opposed to seed banking of only economically or agriculturally useful plants (Lewis-Jones, 2019). USDA Seed Extractories and Nurseries like the one we visited in Coeur d’Alene increase the availability of native seeds adapted to local, native growing conditions (Kantor et al., 2023). Smaller seed banks, housed in non-profits or botanical gardens, provide localized seed collections of endemic or culturally and historically significant plants. Seed libraries provide an even more dynamic and accessible service in which people from the community can lend and share seed among themselves. Seed saving of any kind represents a “partnership” of the “the mobile species helping the immobile species” and, of course, vice versa (Lewis-Jones, 2019).
Boxes of trees, ready for shipment, with an apt slogan: “Trees for Future Forests.”
“Whitebark pine.” National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/crla/learn/nature/whitebark-pine.htm. Accessed 1 September 2024.
Curry, H. A. (2022). The history of seed banking and the hazards of backup. Social Studies of Science, 52(5), 664-688. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127221106728
Dan, Charles. “Reclaiming Syria’s Seeds From An Icy Arctic Vault”. NPR, 24 September 2015, https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/24/443053665/scientists-tap-seed-vault-to-rebuild-a-vital-collection-stranded-by-war. Accessed 30 August 2024.
Hopkin, M. Biodiversity: Frozen futures. Nature452, 404–405 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/452404a
Kantor, S., Runyon, J., Glenny, W., Burkle, L., Salix, J., & DeLong, D. (2023). Of bees and blooms: A new scorecard for selecting pollinator-friendly plants in restoration. Science You Can Use Bulletin, Issue 58. Fort Collins, CO: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 11 p.
Lewis-Jones, K.E. (2019), “The First Step Is to Bring It Into Our Hands:” Wild Seed Conservation, the Stewardship of Species Survival, and Gardening the Anthropocene at the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership. Cult Agric Food Environ, 41: 107-116. https://doi.org/10.1111/cuag.12238
Robertson, Nathan. “Tour of the Coeur d’Alene Nursery”. Coeur d’Alene Nursery, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. 20 August 2024.
Silphium terebinthinaceum (Prairie Dock) and Antennaria plantaginifolia (Pussytoes) on LAP 1 scrap. Sands pretty cool when you live in ill noizUs CLM Interns at Brown circle woods, required to wear hard hats in woodlands lol
Field full of Reed Canary
Should have been a hilltop prairie
The fire waits patiently for the wind to carry
Weary of species, is it glabrous or is it hairy
Tearing through phragmites she sees a sight thats scary
Sights of prairie view landfill for the insane
Might be merry if we see a few SandHill cranes
Lobelia siphilitica ( Great Blue Lobelia)Vlad taking a picture of Agalinis auriculata (Earleaf false foxglove), a plant being monitored by Plants of ConcernLogan with seed collecting bags and a stupid phragJonah spotted through the Silphium laciniatum (Compass Plant)Monarch on Liatris asperaWhite banded Crab Spider on Physostegia virginiana (Obedient Plant)Banded Garden SpiderYellow Garden SpiderCycles of life ya knowGenus Russula (Brittlegills)Artomyces pyxidatus ( Crown-tipped coral fungus)Pluteus longistriatus fungus surrounded by fallen blossoms of Agalinis tenuifolia ( Slender False Foxglove) all growing on a old willow stump in the middle of a wetlandNorthern Leopard Frog ( Lithobates pipiens)Spiranthes sppDalea purpurea (Purple Prairie Clover) seedsDalea candida (White Prairie Clover) seedsNotice that the D. purpurea seed is a lot softer, fluffy, and grayish in comparison to the D. candida seeds that are more brown, smaller, and not that soft
I’ve been helping the Midewin hydrologist (technically the fish biologist) Len Kring compile the Watershed Restoration Action Plan (WRAP), and in the process, learning many things that my basic (eco)hydrology course at NU had not taught me. Let me begin with an analogy — water is a hungry creature. It eats sediment when it is pure, and only once it becomes satisfied on a good meal of sand, clay, and silt, does it contently meander its way downstream, lazily picking up some sediment in one place and depositing a little in another. When something rudely interrupts the water’s course and forces the water to drop its sediment, it once again becomes hungry and begins eating away at the banks and bed downstream.
Unfortunately, there are many things that bother the water of Prairie Creek as it flows through Midewin, which encompasses about 80% of the Prairie Creek HUC 12 watershed. There are old bridges with supports in the middle of the creek. I thought at first, what could possibly go wrong with supports in the creek? But one only needs to take one look at the old railroad trestle with at least 3 supports in the river that has accumulated an impressive log jam behind it to see the problem. As debris floats down the stream during high flow, it gets caught in those supports, accumulating and forming a dam. This not only prevents fish and other aquatic organisms from traveling across the barrier, but it also causes the areas downstream of the dam to erode heavily. This is because obstacles cause sediment previously carried by the steam to be deposited, meaning that the water immediately downstream of such obstacles is relatively free of particulate matter and “hungry”, wanting to pick up sediment from the banks and channel bed. Water also tries to go around the dam, widening the channel at both ends, until those alternate paths also get blocked by incoming logs. In the end, the downstream portion becomes both wider and deeper, and the banks keep receding. The solution is to demolish all unneeded legacy bridges, and replace those that are still necessary with bridges having no in-stream supports.
Left: horrible log jam upstream of legacy railroad trestle. Right: the downstream side of the dam has widened to 3x the original channel width, eroding the banks and causing trees to fall.
A similar issue occurs on a smaller scale with poorly designed culverts. These are typically under roads, and often take the form of two or three buried pipes. Typically, they are too narrow, causing water to flow through them at higher velocities than it normally would, causing erosion on the downstream end. While the culvert begins with having the same level relative to the ground on both the upstream and downstream sides, it often ends up being above grade on the DS side, resulting in a waterfall. Additionally, these small culverts also often become blocked with debris, causing water to erode the soil around the culverts as it seeks a new path through. This has resulted in numerous culverts developing large potholes, making the roads above them almost impassable. The solution is creating wider culverts consisting of bottomless arches sitting on bedrock or a concrete slab.
Downstream side of poorly designed culvert which has turned into a waterfall.
Worst of all, there is a large dam just north of Doyle Rd., which is significantly altering channel shape and function both upstream and downstream, and acts as an impenetrable barrier to fish and other aquatic organisms. Removing the dam might be as simple as dynamiting it and then carting away the debris. However, there is a large amount of sediment trapped behind the dam (reaching almost the top of the dam on the upstream side), which may be contaminated due to army activities. This means that before the dam is removed, the sediment must be tested for contamination. If there is a hazardous level of contaminants, the sediment would need to be dredged out from behind the dam before the dam can be removed (as removing the dam would mobilize all of that sediment). This would significantly complicate the process and drive up costs.
Doyle Rd. dam.
The Watershed Restoration Action Plan (WRAP) for Prairie Creek includes all of these things and much more. The plan lists all steps (essential projects) that are necessary in order to improve the watershed to the next condition class, the three classes being (3) impaired function, (2) functioning at risk, and (1) functioning properly. In the case of Prairie Creek, the current state is functioning at risk and the desired state is functioning properly. Most importantly, approval of this plan will allow Midewin to acquire funding to address the essential projects, which include both structural improvements like ones listed above as well as invasive species removal and native habitat restoration throughout the watershed.
The San Bernardino National Forest (SBNF) is a patchwork of unique microhabitats due to the geologic history of the region. Up until approximately 5 million years ago portions of San Bernardino county remained submerged beneath an ancient ocean (Kottkamp, 2023). The deposition of ancient sea shells, coral, and algae in Big Bear Valley formed limestone deposits which helped form soils rich in calcium carbonate (Faber, 2017). These deposits are valuable from both an economic perspective (limestone/dolomite mining for cement production) and an ecological perspective (supporting edaphic species; those that exist on only one soil type). The management of these areas have been outlined by the San Bernardino Forest Association’s Carbonate Habitat Management Strategy (CHMS, 2003). This plan attempts to facilitate economic activity (i.e. mining) while conserving the carbonate plants unique to the region. Part of this strategy includes the surveying of populations identified as threatened and endangered (T&E). This month I got to assist on a surveying project led by the mountaintop district botanist, Joseph Esparza, meant to identify populations of T&E carbonate plants located within a proposed prescribed burn area.
Members of our field crew making the ascent up the rocky carbonate slopes of Bertha Peak. August 21, 2024.
Our first surveying day began the morning of August 5th. We took off from the Big Bear Discovery Center and drove about 20 minutes northeast to a minor summit on the north shore of Big Bear Lake, Bertha Peak. After arriving at the trailhead we began to hike to the treatment area which required about a 1 mile trek with approximately 800 ft of elevation gain. As a relatively fit southern California hiker I did not feel too intimidated at first. However, hiking an incline at elevation was a unique challenge as our bodies’ slowly acclimated to the conditions. We were SWEATING. But the challenge felt worth it to take in not only the view of Big Bear Valley but the unique assemblage of plant species colonizing the steep carbonate hillsides and mixed conifer woodlands on our way up to the peak. On our way up Joseph pointed out key carbonate species we would need to keep an eye out for including: Eriogonum ovalifolim var. vineum, Dudleya abramsii ssp. affinis, Abronia nana var. covillei, and Astragalus leucolobus. All of these carbonate plant species have been identified as threatened by the state of California.
Big bear valley wooleypod (A. leucolobus) (left), Cushenbury buckwheat (E. ovalifolium var. vineum) (center), and Coville’s dwarf sand verbena (A. nana var. covillei) (right) photographed tucked into the carbonate rocks of Bertha Peak.
Surveying for T&E species requires more than just marking a location on a map. When we came across an unmapped population of one of these carbonate plant species we, of course, created a polygon around the population perimeter. We also recorded associated species, phenology information, habitat description, and any signs of disturbance in the area. All of this data was recorded digitally using arcGIS field maps. Conducting these surveys helped sharpen my skills in native species identification and habitat classification. These are beneficial skills I will bring to any future surveying projects I assist on (or one day lead myself!).
Holding the main tool of the surveying trade (my tablet with Field Maps) while standing at the base of a rocky slope and mapping a population of Coville’s dwarf sand verbena (A. nana var, covillei).
On that initial surveying day, forest botany tech Taylor Edwards and I surveyed multiple populations of E. ovalifolium tucked into the rocky southern facing slopes of Bertha Peak. On the second day I got to work with a field tech from the Inland Empire Resource Conservation District (IERCD), Lili Ortega. Lili and I surveyed a single population of A. nana containing 155 individuals and stretching 7,723 ft2 across another south-facing carbonate slope. This population was a particular challenge due to the irregular population margins and the scattered distribution of individuals within it. One of the major observations I made while surveying this area was that we were identifying the correct habitat type before we really began to hunt for individuals. There was no use heavily sweeping every inch of the duff soils in the denser areas of Pine and Juniper woodland that also inhabit the ridge as these areas were too crowded and did not possess the correct soil type to support these unique carbonate species. Instead we would quickly sweep through these denser areas until we came across the next rocky slope and those areas are where the true investigation began. An ecological eye requires an eye that is attuned to both the biotic members of our ecosystem (the plants) as well as the abiotic (soil type, slope, and aspect).
Lili Ortega (left) and myself (right) carefully scanning one of Bertha Peak’s slopes for T&E carbonate plant species.
I got to tag-a-long to a third day hiking the path up and along Bertha Peak. This final day involved Taylor, Lili, and I joining forces surveying toward one of the southeastern edges of the proposed treatment area. I was able to identify a small population of A. leucolobus on my own which increased my confidence in identifying this species as it was one I had not surveyed previously. We also surveyed a new population of A. nana, this time inhabiting a northwestern facing slope instead of the southwest facing slopes we had grown accustomed to. We capped the day with a final sweep of the outer perimeter of the treatment area but no suitable habitat was observed here, and thus no further populations were identified. This month helped teach me that the forest leaves clues for those with eyes trained to pick up on them. A particular geology type, a fallen tree, or track in the mud all possess within them a story. I am excited by the prospect that the more and more I work in this field the more my eyes become attuned to the narrative the land is trying to tell.
Taking in the breathtaking view of Big Bear Valley and Big Bear Lake from Bertha Peak. August 21, 2024.
Second full month on the grassland is officially over! I’m sooooo ready for fall, it’s been a dry August and everything is starting to turn brown. Earlier this month we had the opportunity of going out into the field with the Medora district’s botanist Jack Dahl to learn about ecological sites and to do a vegetation survey within a population of Ponderosa pines (Pinus ponderosa). Commonly used in rangeland management, ecological regions are mainly defined and categorized by an area’s soil type and plant species composition, which then indicates the “ecological potential” (i.e. what the best management or restoration practices would be) of that site. Years ago they had done a vegetation survey at this site, so one our visit we went through the previous plant species list to confirm old observations and notate any new species.
We also go to see where a wildfire went through another population of Ponderosa pines over 20 years ago. Jack told us they’ve tried replanting ponderosa in the past here, but something about the soil just can’t support their growth anymore
Wavyleaf thistle (circium undulatum) has been our main target species for seed collections this month, but that’s winding down now. In terms of native seed work, most of our time is spent cleaning thistle seed while we wait for our next target species (Ratibida columnifera and Echinacea angustifolia) to begin seeding.
Weird bug
Cleaning Wavyleaf thistle
Later in the month we went out with Jack again to get going with sensitive plant species surveys on the Grand, starting with Visher’s / Dakota buckwheat (Eriogonum visheri). Dakota buckwheat is a small annual in the Polygonaceae family, and most easily identified by relatively large, rounded red leaves at the base and small yellow-white flowers. They grow in bare, eroded soils of badland-type habitat, and are most threatened by grazing (mostly cattle stepping on them) and competition from other pioneer species.
Dakota buckwheat, very very small and difficult to see, but once seen can be easily identified by its thin, red stems and rounded leaves at the base
Portion of a population we surveyed, very difficult to see but they’re there
Another sensitive plant species we are to survey is Smooth goosefoot (Chenopodium subglabrum), another small annual but in the Amaranthaceae family and grows in sandy soil. We went to check on a site where they had been found about 20 years ago, and to my surprise the site was in an actual sand dune! Would have never guessed that this was here, and I have yet to learn the specifics on how this has formed, but there sure are sand dunes on the grassland. Unfortunately we could not find the plant in this spot, but hopefully it’ll be present in our future survey sites.
Sand cityAnd who would I be if I didn’t end this with a picture of a weevil
