Tag Archives: South Dakota

Dakota Prairie Grasslands: The End of an Era

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Symphyotrichum oblongifolium, got its cube shape from being dried while packed into a cardboard box
Echinacea angustifolia seeds <3

I came into this internship with not a lot of expectations. I thought I’d learn more about plants and get to experience what botanic fieldwork was like, which sure I did, but I never would have thought I’d also learn this much about rangeland and natural resource management. Even more so, I was not expecting to become this interested in rangeland management, but here I am, currently pursuing job opportunities and graduate school programs (whichever comes first at this point) where I get to work with rangelands and grassland plants. Never would I have imagined that my job experiences would have led me here, these last 5 months have been incredibly educating.

They were reworking one of the grassland roads, I got to help bury the water drainage pipe
Sprinkling some seed along side the road~

I’d like to thank my mentor Greg, everyone at the Grand River ranger district office (Kyle, Vivian, Patrick, Larissa, Lacy, Dave, Zac), everyone I’ve met across the other DPG districts (JJ, Jack, Cale, Alex, Russ), everyone I’ve met with NDSU (Kaylee, Ben, Daniel), and all the lovely people I’ve met around Lemmon (Ann, Chad, Joey); you all have enriched my life and I will forever be grateful to you. While I’m excited to return to Oklahoma, I am going to miss my time working up on the DPG. Feel like I should have more to say with this being my final blog post… but I think all my previous blog post have done a good job summarizing my experience here haha.

My first time ever seeing the aurora borealis!
And visited some co-interns at the Helena-Lewis and Clark NF

I hope all of my fellow interns at other forest had a great season!

Farewell!

–

Jenna

Dakota Prairie Grassland, SD

Dakota Prairie Grassland: Hellooooooo Fall!

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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
Bighorn sheep at Badlands National Park

Jenna

Dakota Prairie Grasslands, South Dakota

Dakota Prairie Grassland: Journeys with a Botanist, Sand Dunes on the Grassland

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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 city
And who would I be if I didn’t end this with a picture of a weevil

Dakota Prairie Grassland: Bee City

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This July has been full of bees! In between seed collecting, we’ve been keeping busy doing more bumble bee atlasing. I mentioned it briefly in my last blog post, but to go into a little more detail the Great Plains Bumble bee Atlas is a citizen science project organized by the Xerces society to gather data on the species distribution of bumble bees (genus Bombus) to identify conservation needs. The Xerces society has bumble bee atlases active all across the country (minus the south central and southeastern US (for now!)), however the Great Plains atlas specifically includes North Dakota, South Dakota, and Kansas. To conduct the survey, you catch bees making note of the flower they were on, chill them in a cooler to slow them down, then photograph and re-release them when you found them. It’s pretty fun, sometimes finding bumble bees is the hardest part, especially in areas where they have to compete with honeybees over nectar resources.

Example of a photo taken for the Great Plains Bumble bee Atlas. Pattern and coloration of the thorax and abdomen are very helpful for identifying bees. This bee here is a Yellow bumblebee (Bombus fervidas).
Orange-legged furrow bee (Halictus rubicundus) licking sweat off my hand while seed collecting. Got stung by these bees twice in the same day, but good news I’m not allergic!

Mid July we traveled northeast to the Sheyenne district of DPG to get a look at the Western prairie fringed orchid (Platanthera praeclara). These orchids are found in tallgrass prairies in wet, disturbed areas such as ditches, and are pollinated by hawk months. However, this species is threatened mainly due to habitat loss from agriculture or from competition with the noxious weed Leafy spurge (Euphorbia virgata). While spurge is a problem down on the Grand River district, it’s quite abundant in the Sheyenne district and down-right HORRIBLE.

Pictures of Platanthera praeclara found in a ditch; by the time we got out there most of the flowers had stopped blooming, but we managed to find a ditch that had a couple of small clusers.
While on the Sheyenne we also conducted more bumble bee atlas surveys, and were even featured in an article on the DPG facebook! You can read it here: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/EJhjV1oTiFpxCDVN/

Plants and bees aren’t the only things we’re working with, we are also getting to help with a swift fox survey. Swift fox (Vulpes velox) are considered threatened in the state of South Dakota, so we are setting up trail cams until deer hunting season starts to see if these fox occur on the grassland. They prefer short grasses i.e. grazed pastures, and while none have shown up yet, we’ve caught photos of raccoons, badgers, and even some songbirds.

Chestnut-collared longspur (Calcarius ornatus) spotted on the trail cams.
Weevil!!!

–

Jenna

Dakota Prairie Grassland, SD

Dakota Prairie Grassland: Wow I Love Grass

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Moving from Oklahoma to South Dakota, it’s funny how similar yet completely different the two are. Up here it feels like there’s a lot more moisture in the soil (however I’ve been told its been a big year for rain… so that might explain why) and the hills seem steeper and more abundant compared to the southern Great Plains. Most of the plant species are the same thought, however all the grasses/ anything that’s not an aster? Not very familiar with those.

Page from my field notebook. So far have been focusing on ID-ing grasses and other common plants, seen a lot of crested wheatgrass (Agropyron cristatum) and smooth brome (Bromus inermis) that’s for sure, very familiar with those now
Grand River National Grassland + the Grand river

The Dakota Prairie Grassland (DPG) is a national grassland spread through North Dakota and South Dakota divided into three districts- Little Missouri, Grand River/ Cedar River (where I’m at!), and Sheyenne. This is also the first year the DPG is having CLM interns (woot woot!). So far my co-intern Claire and I have spent our first 3 weeks on the job exploring the Grand River district, where we’ve practiced plant ID and done some bumble bee surveying, along with on-boarding protocols and trainings. July 1st was our first day going out and collecting seed up on the southern edge of the Little Missouri district in the Badlands, was super pretty and the weather was great up until we got rained out. So far we have collected seed from needleandthread grass (Hesperostipa comata) and green needlegrass (Stipa viridula); H. comata seeds are very pointy at the base, so collecting them can be quite painful in you aren’t careful.

Morning in the North Dakota Badlands, from one of our seed collection sites where our target species was needleandthread grass (Hesperostipa comata)

The grassland has been absolutely stunning, I feel like whatever pictures I post here won’t do it justice. The sky is huge, there being very few trees means you can see so far ahead of yourself, the dashes of little badland hills, plus the variety in plant species makes the land kinda look like a watercolor painting with all its different shades of green, yellow, and blue (and also brown thanks to kentucky bluegrass going to seed), and don’t get me started on how good the sage smells.

Little Missouri National Grassland near Medora, ND. Took a tour and learned about creeping juniper (Juniperus horizontalis) encroachment in the Badlands
Participating in the Great Plains Bumble bee Atlas on the grassland, the bumble bees really like yellow sweetclover (Melilotus officinalis)

Working with plants has been really great, because not only do I get to geek out about plants, but also about insects! As I’m learning my plants better, I hope to also grow accustomed to all the insects affiliated with them. Listening and being able to recognize most of the bird calls I heard while out in the field is another exciting perk, it makes for some good background music.

Couple of beetles hanging out in this plains pricklypear (Opuntia polyacantha) flower
Weevil!!!
Red cross-bills!!! (Loxia curvirostra) Haven’t had much of an opportunity to do bird watching yet, but hopefully by my next post I’ll have more pictures to show

By the end of this internship, I’m hoping I can accomplish these goals/ have these experiences:

  • See sharp-tailed grouse and greater prairie chickens
  • Learn the scientific names for all our target species (we have 16, that’s probably doable in 22 weeks)
  • Learn some stuff about range land management
  • Visit all the national parks/monuments/forest within at least 5 hours of me
  • Explore every inch of this grassland I’m allowed access to!
Here’s to a great field season!

—

Jenna

Dakota Prairie Grassland, SD

My friend Collin: An Account of Events That Actually 100%, No Exaggeration, Happend

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It was a hot summer day when I first met Collin. The sun was high, searing my back with radiation, meadowlarks sang on fenceposts, cows mooed cordial greetings. I’m working hard collecting biomass clippings at our Cedar Pass field cite, making sure to properly sort my species. Cool season grass in one bag, warm season in another, work which would otherwise be tedious if not for the sweet sweet strummings of Masayoshi Takanaka massaging my brain through pale earbuds.

I clip the final blade in my rectangular quadrat and grasp at my canteen. Out on the prairie it’s essential to remain hydrated, especially on certified steamers such as this. “Alass! ‘Tis empty! Whatever shall I do?” I announce to the world. A nearby cow responds with a sympathetic, “Moo”. I reel back, shaking a clenched fist at the sun, cursing the infernal radiator which sears my skin. I quickly come to my senses and remember the large cooler filled with ice cold water residing within our vehicle. With a newfound purpose I stagger towards the truck, trudging slowly through the brush. After what feels like 30 seconds I’m no more than 50 meters from the truck, and that’s when I see him.

A small creature dressed in an olive green burlap sack, hunched over like a gargoyle on the tailgate of our truck. “Must be the accursed sun playing tricks on mine eyes, a mirage of sorts, says I,” but as I continue my approach, the creature remains. I reach the truck and the creature stands to greet me. Assessing its features: pointed ears, knobby knees, and a long hooked nose, I conclude the nature of this odd organism; I have come face to face… with a goblin.

“Greetings friend,” the goblin croons, “I have been waiting for you.”

I respond calmly (for I am used to such things), “Salutations, what brings you round these here parts?”

“You, brave mage, I am here for you. My people have lived here for generations, supping from the earth its bountiful gifts. We have flourished by living in balance with the ecosystem which supports us. However, I am afraid our times of peace and prosper are nearing their end. For you see these lands are suffering; plagued by the industry of man, unable to sustain natural equilibrium. Our village seer foretells a great warming of the globe, which spells the eventual destruction of not just our people and our home, but of yours as well. I am but one herald of thousands, sent to seek people such as yourself and forewarn them of this forthcoming doom”.

“Tell me, wise one, what role do I have to play in this epic? What shall I do?”

“What you can, young one, what you can. My goblin intuition tells me the work you are doing here could potentially aid in maintaining the balance of these lands. Apocalyptic weather conditions await us, and the data you are collecting now will serve as a roadmap, or foundation for future generations to survive the storm. You must continue collecting and surveying, for knowledge and science are a powerful magic, human.”

“I will try my best,” I state, looking out at the beautiful landscape surrounding me.

I fill my flagon, and begin to return to my work. Just as I cross the barbed wire fence, I realize, I never asked the name of this brave messenger. “Wait! What is your name wise goblin?” I shout before even turning around, but as I do, a powerful gust of wind rips at my clothes, blowing off my hat. A cloud of dust bellows, swallowing the goblin. When the dust settles, he is gone.

Forlorn, I stare at a lone cloud in the sky. “Collin…” a voice calls out to me as the cloud slowly starts to form the shape of the creature, “my name is Collin, and child…”

“Yes?” I ask the sky.

“Tell my story.”

As I hear these final words, the Collin cloud slowly forms a thumbs up and smiles, revealing the sun hidden behind. I wince, raising my arm to shade my eyes. Once my vision refocuses, the cloud is gone, and Collin with it. For a second I doubt he was ever there to begin with; just the heat playing tricks on my mind. My heart, however, knows the truth.

“I will Collin… I will.”

Kneeling over to pick up my hat, I soak in the beauty of the earth for a brief moment before returning to my work, to save the world.