{"id":21880,"date":"2013-05-14T10:33:40","date_gmt":"2013-05-14T17:33:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=21880"},"modified":"2013-05-14T10:33:40","modified_gmt":"2013-05-14T17:33:40","slug":"first-impressions-of-pine-hill-preserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=21880","title":{"rendered":"First impressions of Pine Hill Preserve"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am settling in to my CLM internship with the BLM Mother Lode field office, located in the Sierra foothills East of Sacramento. This is my second CLM internship, and it is very different from my first CLM internship. Last year I worked with the BLM in Alturas, California.\u00a0Alturas is\u00a0situated in the remote\u00a0Northeastern corner of the state, with very\u00a0few people and vast landscapes. The Mother Lode field office is\u00a0based in El Dorado Hills, an affluent suburb of Sacramento.\u00a0Botanically, it is very familiar to me, the oak woodland and chaparral are reminiscent of the mountains of my hometown, Santa Barbara.\u00a0My internship is specifically concerned with the Pine Hill Preserve (PHP), a nature preserve managed by the BLM.\u00a0PHP consists of just over 4,700 acres and was created primarily\u00a0to protect eight species of rare plants. The unique Gabbro soil formation found on the preserve and surrounding areas hosts a unique assembly of plants. 740 plant species have been found here, which is\u00a0ten percent of Californias total flora,\u00a0meaning this small portion of the state is\u00a0incredibly diverse. Of the eight rare plant species found at PHP, five are federally endangered and three occur nowhere else in the world. One species, Pine Hill Flannelbush (Fremontodendron decumbens<\/em>), has only about\u00a0120 surviving individuals.\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Since my arrival last month, I have been learning about the management practices and conservation issues at\u00a0PHP.\u00a0The two main threats to the rare plants and their associated ecosystem are development and lack of fire, which go hand in hand.\u00a0Much of the habitat for the Gabbro soil plants has been converted into roads, houses, and other development, which makes conservation ecology seem all the more relevant. Whereas last year, I would drive down rough dirt roads for miles to access field sites, at PHP it involves practically parking in peoples’ driveways. The ecosystem is fire adapted, and the rare plants require fire to be successful, whether for seed germination or simply the disturbance of the chaparral which creates more light and space to grow. Fire suppression threatens to eliminate the niche these plants have been evolved for. Due to the proximity to houses, broadcast prescribed burns are difficult at PHP; although my mentor Graciela Hinshaw\u00a0is working on approving one. Instead of burns, fuel breaks are created with mechanical thinning, and the vegetation is burnt in small piles, as shown in the picture from 2011. One project I\u00a0have been working on is monitoring\u00a0some piles\u00a0that were burnt last\u00a0Fall to see which plants are coming back, and if any rare plants have germinated. The good news is that the rare plants respond well to mechanical thinning and burn piles. This gives the\u00a0nearby houses fuelbreaks, which protect them from fire, and the rare plants are\u00a0provided with a suitable habitat– a win-win, which can be\u00a0hard to find\u00a0in the conservation world.<\/p>\n

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Burn Piles (2011)<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u00a0was also able to\u00a0work at the\u00a0BLM\u00a0state office\u00a0last week. The BLM California\u00a0botanist, Christina\u00a0Lund,\u00a0is gone on a long term project, and Graciela has been taking on many projects for her. Graciela had me come to the state office to help with a literature search on several desert plants. Currently there are many renewable energy projects planned for BLM land in the California deserts. The main plant I researched was\u00a0creosote bush, a ubiquitous shrub in that region. Lots\u00a0of\u00a0creosote will likely\u00a0be bulldozed to build\u00a0solar plants. Although the shrub isn’t much to look at, it has a fascinating natural history. It forms clonal rings of genetically identical “satellite plants” that grow radially at an\u00a0extremely slow rate. The largest known\u00a0ring, the “King Clone”, is 22 meters wide at its longest axis, and is estimated to be 11,700 years old! This may mean that that plant was one of the first to colonize the new land that\u00a0opened up when glaciers receded and the Mojave desert formed, and has been growing there ever since. Anyway, Christina and others are working on establishing\u00a0a minimum ring size to designate as protected. I was able to\u00a0find some information and scientific articles, but it is a difficult question, since a creosote ring just one meter in diameter is already several times older than an old growth conifer.\u00a0In any case it was interesting to do research for a project in the desert and learn about the ancient ecosystems there.<\/p>\n

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Creosote bush<\/p><\/div>\n

I have also been able to participate in some outreach events. This included guiding a botany class that visited a stunning parcel called Kanaka Valley\u00a0, which is exploding with wildflowers. Graciela told me that before being aquired by the\u00a0BLM,\u00a0Kanaka Valley was slated to be developed into a golf course… something I am grateful did not happen!<\/p>\n

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Kanaka Valley lupines<\/p><\/div>\n

Its been a busy first few weeks, and I anticipate many interesting projects to come!<\/p>\n

Joe Broberg<\/p>\n

Pine Hill Preserve intern<\/p>\n

BLM MOLO Field Office<\/p>\n

El Dorado Hills, CA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am settling in to my CLM internship with the BLM Mother Lode field office, located in the Sierra foothills East of Sacramento. This is my second CLM internship, and it is very different from my first CLM internship. Last … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1687,"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\/21880"}],"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\/1687"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21880"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22665,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21880\/revisions\/22665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}