{"id":53460,"date":"2013-12-02T10:03:12","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T17:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=53460"},"modified":"2013-12-02T10:48:09","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T17:48:09","slug":"disengaged-youth-hybrid-swarms-and-other-pressing-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=53460","title":{"rendered":"Disengaged Youth, Hybrid Swarms and Other Pressing Questions."},"content":{"rendered":"

In the last few weeks I\u2019ve come to realize that my time at the BLM is almost up.\u00a0 I find myself looking at the calendar and ticking off the remaining work weeks on one hand. How did that happen? Wasn\u2019t it November 1st<\/sup>, like, yesterday?<\/p>\n

No doubt the time has sped by due to some of the interesting projects I\u2019ve worked on in the last month.\u00a0 One experience in particular led me to ponder some basic questions about botany, as well as its future as a field in the United States.\u00a0 Eli and I were lucky enough to attend the New Mexico Rare Plants Technical Council Meeting at the Rio Grande Botanic Garden in Albuquerque earlier this month.\u00a0\u00a0 We were representing our mentor, the New Mexico State Botanist, who (literally) holds the key to the BLM\u2019s Sensitive Species list for New Mexico.\u00a0 The attendees were a small, passionate group of professionals from various backgrounds: academia (UNM and NMSU), government (Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife), and private business.<\/p>\n

Like the couple other botany events I\u2019ve been to in New Mexico, almost everyone was over fifty.\u00a0 I don\u2019t say this to disparage, I mention this only to draw light to an alarming theme.\u00a0 Younger generations are largely absent from the plant sciences and botany.\u00a0 Within the last few years, numerous articles have chronicled the demise of botany at universities or the merging of plant science within the larger disciplines of ecology or biology.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure if youth just aren\u2019t interested in botany because of our culture\u2019s preoccupation with technology, convenience, and the artificial or if this lack of interest stems from a rift in early education where these passions should be cultivated.\u00a0 I\u2019m inclined to think (and hope) that it\u2019s the latter because then it\u2019s an easier issue to solve.\u00a0 Even at this meeting, the issue was acknowledged \u2013 people are needed to collect the retiring generation’s institutional and local knowledge before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n

Ok- that was a brief tangent- onto the pressing meeting issues!\u00a0 Two subjects held the majority of the meeting floor- instituting a new ranking system for rare plants and deciding upon a hybrid policy for the Council.<\/p>\n

In regards to the ranking system, it is very difficult to give native plants a rarity ranking because, well, they are rare.\u00a0 Often little is known about a species and no documentation exists.\u00a0 Categories that must be considered for ranking are range extent, population size, population trends, threat impacts, and more.\u00a0 Natural Heritage New Mexico is a division of the University of New Mexico that maintains a rare species database that uses a species ranking calculator.\u00a0 The Technical Council decided to do a pilot project and utilize the calculator on 30 well-documented rare species to see how accurate or useful such technology would be.\u00a0 The \u201cpros\u201d of a calculator are that the process is data-driven (less human opinion) and that input factors are documented.\u00a0 The \u201ccons\u201d of the tool are that populating all the categories is a lengthy process and unknown factors could skew the calculated outcome.\u00a0 In my personal opinion, I\u2019m confident that the calculator will be useful and will help standardize the ranking process among larger areas because different states and agencies also use a similar system.<\/p>\n

Hybrid policy- now this was a point of contention in the group.\u00a0 What constitutes a hybrid? At what point does a hybrid constitute its own species?\u00a0 However simple this questions appears at first glance- it\u2019s not, think about it more.\u00a0 Say two species cross and create a hybrid.\u00a0 Ok, this is just one weird plant, no biggie.\u00a0 But what if this happens ten more times throughout the population? Ok, still not a problem- you might say- those hybrids are spread throughout the population and probably won\u2019t pass along their unique genetic makeup.\u00a0\u00a0 But THEN, what if all of these hybrids crop up in the same area and being reproducing primarily with each other? It\u2019s now a hybrid swarm, and if you decide to call the population a new species haven\u2019t you got a new rare plant on your hands?\u00a0 Can every hybrid swarm be considered rare?\u00a0 Ok, ok, that\u2019s a lot of questions but hopefully you see what I\u2019m getting at.\u00a0 It\u2019s difficult to define when a hybrid becomes a distinct species, and then it\u2019s difficult to decide if it should be protected or not.\u00a0 At the meeting, someone raised a great point- looking at a plant is simply looking at an evolutionary snapshot whose endpoint we cannot see.\u00a0 Therefore, we must reference whatever data has been published and work on a case by case basis as hybrids are brought for review.\u00a0 The council generally agreed that a hybrid is a species if it is reproductively independent from its parents, but they would only acknowledge a new species if someone had published the data to support it.<\/p>\n

Since my post has already passed the maximum length that can hold my reader\u2019s attention span- I\u2019ll only address one more exciting event.\u00a0 (Although many of you might not think this qualifies as exciting\u2026 I mean KEEP READING THIS IS SOME THRILLING STUFF).\u00a0 A soil scientist from NRCS came to the office a couple of weeks ago and gave a tutorial on \u201cCreating Soil-Based Thematic Maps and Reports Using Soil Data Viewer\u201d. I was at first, skeptical, of how much I might get out of this training but I was mistaken.\u00a0 The speaker introduced us to an alternative to Web Soil Survey (an online soil data database that is notoriously slow- cue painful memories of late night studying for Soil Science in college).\u00a0 Soil Data Viewer is faster, easier to navigate, more informative, and did I mention faster?\u00a0 There are so many different attributes you can explore and the program can rank these attributes of the various soils in an area and spit out a fantastic report.\u00a0 So you want to know what areas in Do\u00f1a Ana County have the best soils for sinking fence posts? Done. Want to know which areas have vegetation cover best suited for cattle ranching? Done.\u00a0 This resource could be useful to a vast majority of government and private agencies concerned with land management and other fields.\u00a0 Hopefully, it will be used for improving our knowledge and appropriate use of different landscapes- in addition to the entertainment value of the pretty, vividly colored maps that I use it for.<\/p>\n

Oh, and one last thing \u2013 IT SNOWED! I\u2019m from Sacramento, CA and have never woken up and seen snow outside.\u00a0 Needless to say I was pretty excited.\u00a0 Pictures galore!<\/p>\n

Cheers,<\/p>\n

Kate<\/p>\n

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In the last few weeks I\u2019ve come to realize that my time at the BLM is almost up.\u00a0 I find myself looking at the calendar and ticking off the remaining work weeks on one hand. How did that happen? Wasn\u2019t … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2557,"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\/53460"}],"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\/2557"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53460"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53573,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53460\/revisions\/53573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}