{"id":18364,"date":"2012-07-24T10:45:43","date_gmt":"2012-07-24T17:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=18364"},"modified":"2012-07-24T10:45:43","modified_gmt":"2012-07-24T17:45:43","slug":"first-impressions-of-susanville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=18364","title":{"rendered":"First Impressions of Susanville"},"content":{"rendered":"

My first month in Susanville, California\u00a0has truly been an eye-opening experience.\u00a0 Originally from northwest Indiana, the vast, open spaces and beautiful landscapes of the west are awe-inspiring.\u00a0 I never thought of the desert as an attractive place, but I\u2019ve developed an appreciation for it in the short time I\u2019ve been here and can\u2019t believe how much life there is in the harsh environment.\u00a0 Even though most of the plants that I am working with are extremely unfamiliar to me since this is my first time out west, I have learned many of the plants already and am slowly acquainting myself with the intimidating Jepson manual.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t be more pleased with the project that another Susanville CLM intern, Andrew, and I were given to work on throughout the duration of our internship.\u00a0 We are ground truthing special status plant species in the 1.3 million acre Eagle Lake field office.\u00a0 I was extremely overwhelmed with the incredible size of the task at first, convinced that we wouldn\u2019t even be able to make a dent in the data and get things organized.\u00a0 Since then, I\u2019ve finally managed to become familiar with our field office and wrap my head around the project, making it a fun challenge rather than a daunting chore.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The first few weeks of the internship were primarily spent indoors as Andrew and I attempted to compile all the data available to us from previous botanists in our field office.\u00a0 It was a rather frustrating experience because we kept finding new data each day which altered our organization scheme.\u00a0 We definitely learned a valuable lesson about metadata and good record keeping.\u00a0 Making sure that the data we collect this summer is clear and easy for future interns and botanists to find and comprehend is one of our main goals.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Although the office work was tedious and frustrating at times, it was very necessary and worth it in the end.\u00a0 Not only are we saving time finding and monitoring plants in the field, but I was also able to learn the basics of ArcMap and the handheld GPS unit.\u00a0 The number of things that the program can do is mind boggling and I\u2019m looking forward to becoming more proficient with ArcMap in order to manipulate the data and accomplish things more efficiently.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

After a many long hours in the office sifting through file cabinets and computer files, we were extremely antsy to get outside.\u00a0 We finally felt confident with the data collection and were ready to give this monitoring thing a shot, so we headed out in the field.\u00a0 The area in Nevada in which we were working was a few hours away from our field offices, so we decided to camp there in order to save time as well as gasoline.\u00a0 This was one of the most remote places I\u2019ve ever been in my life and probably the smallest I\u2019ve ever felt.\u00a0 I was surrounded by sage brush country and lava rock for as far as I could see in every direction.\u00a0 It was refreshing to get outside and explore the field office, and the week was extremely successful. \u00a0We were searching for a few rare plant species in particular, including Pentstemon sudans<\/em> (Susanville penstemon), Illamna bakeri<\/em> (Baker’s globe mallow), and Astragalus pulsiferae var. suksdorfii<\/em> (Suksdorf’s Milk-Vetch) and found several populations.\u00a0 I\u2019m looking forward to all the treasure hunts this summer holds!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Failed attempt at a jumping picture by Eagle Lake<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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Pilgrim Lake- near base camp in NV<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

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My first month in Susanville, California\u00a0has truly been an eye-opening experience.\u00a0 Originally from northwest Indiana, the vast, open spaces and beautiful landscapes of the west are awe-inspiring.\u00a0 I never thought of the desert as an attractive place, but I\u2019ve developed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1753,"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\/18364"}],"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\/1753"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18364"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18514,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18364\/revisions\/18514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}