{"id":56322,"date":"2014-06-26T10:07:33","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T17:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=56322"},"modified":"2014-06-26T10:07:33","modified_gmt":"2014-06-26T17:07:33","slug":"san-juan-islands-national-monument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=56322","title":{"rendered":"San Juan Islands National Monument"},"content":{"rendered":"

Its been a little over a week back from the CLM internship conference in Chicago.\u00a0 It\u2019s also been a little over two months into my internship in the San Juan Islands National Monument.\u00a0 I\u2019ve spent the bulk of my first two months planning my project and creating databases for my information.\u00a0 Now I\u2019m finally at a point where I get to the field nearly every day.\u00a0 Let me tell you, I don\u2019t miss the computer time.<\/p>\n

Last week, I completed several forestry surveys, line point intercept surveys, and recorded several listed rare species in the archipelago.\u00a0 I worked primarily on Lopez Island, the homebase of the monument, but got to spend a day on the beautiful Patos Island.\u00a0 Patos is a two hundred acre island and is the very northwest point of the continental United States.\u00a0 On it is a lighthouse, 8 campsites, and plants not seen anywhere else in the archipelago (namely Columbia Lily and While Fawn Lily).\u00a0 It\u2019s also a great spot to view marine life, with frequent seal, oystercatcher, peregrine falcon, eagle, and porpoise sitings, and less frequently ocra sitings.\u00a0 I came to Patos with Keepers of the Patos Lighthouse, a group that works to maintain the island with monthly work parties and stays on the island during the summer months to educate its thousands of visitors about the lighthouse and its history.\u00a0 Though I wasn\u2019t helping them with work party I saw them remove loads of blackberry and maintain the trail.\u00a0 It\u2019s always impressive to see how much work they can accomplish in a day.\u00a0 Also around on Patos that day was the American Hiking Association; they had been volunteering with various public lands that week and were on Patos to help maintain the trail.<\/p>\n

My time on Patos and on Lopez last week was largely spent in the forest.\u00a0 The salal, roses, Himalayan and trailing blackberries don\u2019t make it easy to reach a sample point, but I\u2019ve found the forest systems of these islands fascinating.\u00a0 The topography, soil type, bedrock, and water availability are hugely variable within any given parcel of land on the islands, and these abrupt changes can be seen looking at the forest canopy.\u00a0 The Douglas Fir is the dominant tree in the San Juan Islands as well as most of the western coast.\u00a0 However, I often come across pockets where grand fir, red cedar, rarely sitka spruce or bigleaf maple dominate where conditions are favorable.\u00a0 While west coast tree diversity often pales in comparison to the east, I was impressed to find a stand on Patos island dominated by Grand Fir and Douglas Fir, with Red Cedar, Douglas Maple, Western Yew making the understory tree community.<\/p>\n

\"trees\"

Typical Douglas Fir forest in San Juan Islands, WA<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

This week I spent surveying land on coastal bluffs.\u00a0 This means lots of grass identification and not a lot of plant diversity.\u00a0 Still, I can\u2019t complain about the view.<\/p>\n

\"survey_view\"<\/a>

View from line point intercept sample point at Point Colville, Lopez Island, WA<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here are a few pictures captured within the last few weeks of field work.\u00a0 I hope everyone is having a great field season with lots of collections and tons of new plants.<\/p>\n

Jen McNew<\/p>\n

\"corolroot\"<\/a>

Spotted Coralroot (Corallohiza malculata<\/em>) in early July on Lopez Island<\/p><\/div>\n

\"nodding<\/a>

Nodding onion (Allium cernuum<\/em>)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"onion\"<\/a>

Hooker’s Onion (Allium acuminatum<\/em>)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"brodia\"

Harvest brodiaea (Brodiaea elegans<\/em>)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"orange<\/a>

Orange trumpet Honeysuckle (Lonicera ciliosa<\/em>)<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Its been a little over a week back from the CLM internship conference in Chicago.\u00a0 It\u2019s also been a little over two months into my internship in the San Juan Islands National Monument.\u00a0 I\u2019ve spent the bulk of my first … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5936,"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\/56322"}],"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\/5936"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56322"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56334,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56322\/revisions\/56334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}