{"id":1459,"date":"2010-05-16T10:49:22","date_gmt":"2010-05-16T17:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=1459"},"modified":"2010-05-16T10:49:22","modified_gmt":"2010-05-16T17:49:22","slug":"tiny-plants-and-enormous-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=1459","title":{"rendered":"Tiny Plants and Enormous Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I graduated from college last May, I didn\u2019t know what I wanted to do for a job, but I knew that I wasn\u2019t going to figure it out by just sitting around.\u00a0 As much as I\u2019d tried to figure things out through job books and career surveys, I was pretty much at a loss.\u00a0 No, what I needed was a chance to try new things, and a lot of them.\u00a0 I wanted to strike out and explore my career possibilities hands-on, and that\u2019s exactly what I\u2019ve been able to do through the CLM internship.<\/p>\n

In four days I will be halfway through my time out here in Arcata, CA working for the local BLM field office, and I\u2019ve already lost count of the interesting and varied opportunities I\u2019ve had.\u00a0 To begin with, there was plenty of dune monitoring\u2014going out with quadrat and transect tape in hand and recording what plants were found out on the dunes and in what density (done using presence\/absence within 200 quadrats located throughout a given transect).\u00a0 At first it\u2019s pretty hard to tell the plants on the dunes apart, given that they\u2019re all very small and grow low to the ground.\u00a0 I remember dropping down on my knees for every quadrat on my first transect, but after a month of monitoring, I have the rare and hard-won ability to identify tiny dune plants from 15 feet away.\u00a0 Envious?\u00a0 I understand.<\/p>\n

\"Dunes--

Dunes-- I have an unhealthy knowledge of all the itty-bitties you see here<\/p><\/div>\n

Then there was mapping invasive weeds at Headwaters Forest Reserve, a nearby redwood forest that\u2019s managed by the Arcata BLM.\u00a0 It was only acquired 10 years ago; before then it was logging land and a good portion of the reserve has former logging roads that wind their way through the colossal redwoods and douglas fir.\u00a0 Many of the logging roads have since been decommissioned; that is, they\u2019ve been replanted with redwood saplings and had their river crossings removed in order to facilitate a faster return to the natural state of the land.\u00a0 These former roads are still vulnerable to weed infestations though, so I enter the scene\u2014topographic map and lined paper at the ready\u2014to record the locations and species of the unwanted immigrants so that they can be removed at a later date.\u00a0 In fact, I\u2019ve already gotten to see the whole lifecycle of this project!\u00a0 Soon after I finished mapping the trails on the North side of the reserve there was a crew going out to remove English Ivy from that area, so I got to print out a nice GIS map, give it to them, and watch them head off to vanquish the intruders.\u00a0 There\u2019s something pretty cool about seeing the results of your effort be put into use.\u00a0 Then again, there\u2019s also something pretty cool about hiking in a redwood forest for weeks on end.<\/p>\n

\"The

The view while mapping weeds (I'm generally looking at the ground, though)<\/p><\/div>\n

Being near the halfway point of my CLM internship, I can say that I\u2019ve already experienced a ton of things and in the process feel like I\u2019m making a lot of progress in figuring out what I want to do for a career.\u00a0 There\u2019ve been no \u201cAh-Ha! Moments,\u201d nor any moments of supreme nirvana, but what there has been is a lot of friendly co-workers, pieces of food for thought, and interesting experiences (ask me about when I ended up lost and had to ford a river).\u00a0 I didn\u2019t come into this internship looking for a moment of truth, but rather looking to work towards a greater understanding of myself and my goals.\u00a0 That\u2019s exactly what I\u2019ve gotten, and I couldn\u2019t be happier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I graduated from college last May, I didn\u2019t know what I wanted to do for a job, but I knew that I wasn\u2019t going to figure it out by just sitting around.\u00a0 As much as I\u2019d tried to figure … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1564,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions\/1564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}