{"id":61981,"date":"2015-05-13T10:08:40","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T17:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=61981"},"modified":"2015-05-13T10:08:40","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T17:08:40","slug":"to-the-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=61981","title":{"rendered":"To the east!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I left the Coast and headed inland over the Cascades. In doing so I left the rain shadow of the Olympics to live in the rainshadow of the Cascades. While the Olympic rain shadow receives about 50 inches of precipitation annually-enough for it to be a lush dense forest with trees tops plastered in lichens peaking out above the fog, the land in the shadow of the Cascades receives only about 10 inches annually- enough to support low growing xeric shrubs, forbs, and grasses, while the ravines and canyons might have ponderosa pine, and some common Pacific Northwest shrubs (<em>Physocarpus capitatus, Amerlanchier alnifolia<\/em>). The change in vegetation has been astonishing, and very exciting.<\/p>\n<p>I started working on April 20th, which this year was about 3 weeks behind the typical phenology. Because of this I\u2019ve had to play a bit of catch up learning the Sagesteppe plants. Keying species of <em>Eriogonum, Lomatium<\/em>, and <em>Erigeron<\/em>, has become my main after work activity-although I\u2019m starting to get a decent grasp of these taxa. Currently I\u2019ve just been scouting the steppe looking for populations large enough for to support collections. With this comes a lot of anaylsis of species distribution due to slope, aspect, soil type, and a variety of other factors. Two particularly fun experiences so far have been: monitoring <em>Astragalus sinuatis<\/em>, (well, actually bitter sweet emotionally), and checking out sand dune plants!<\/p>\n<p>Anyways, I must confess I\u2019m terrified of talking (or typing to people!) so this is about all I can bear to share. In my spare time (well that time which isn\u2019t eaten by Lomatiums!) I have been hiking the Wenatchee Mountains- and reflecting upon how geology drives speciation. My stimulus for this has been been reading Art Kruckebergs \u201cGeology and Plant life\u201d-and yes, I\u2019ve already seen the infamous endemic <em>Lewisiopsis tweedyi<\/em> (amongst a few others!). Another project I\u2019ve been having fun doing is qualitatively making notes on the differences in species composition along different troughs in hills (mountains?) along a canyon leading out from the Wenatchee Mountains into the sagesteppe.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/P42800511.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-62037\" alt=\"P4280051(1)\" src=\"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/P42800511-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/P42800511-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/P42800511-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/P42800511-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/P42800511-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I left the Coast and headed inland over the Cascades. In doing so I left the rain shadow of the Olympics to live in the rainshadow of the Cascades. While the Olympic rain shadow receives about 50 inches of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=61981\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6951,"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\/61981"}],"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\/6951"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61981"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62130,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61981\/revisions\/62130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}