{"id":68590,"date":"2016-05-12T09:08:55","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T16:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev-clm-blog.pantheonsite.io\/?p=68590"},"modified":"2016-05-12T09:08:55","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T16:08:55","slug":"we-walk-in-sines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/?p=68590","title":{"rendered":"we walk in sines"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winter in Chicago, O’hare was shut down, so was Midway; I had a couple friends with tickets to New Years runs in their home of Denver and no way to get back there. I’d just bought a car, and realized I couldn’t take my preferred (treacherous!) route through beautiful Bozeman and Missoula, so the southern route it was. We spent the next few nights dancing around seeing bluegrass, before notions of the great west pulled me back into the Rockies. I woke up, after a short day of driving, on the border of Wyoming and Utah and traded in the 80 for the 84 to\u00a0head\u00a0Northwest towards home. After winding through the Uintah, to breakfast in Ogden, I reached Idaho, mountains in each direction with a sea of steppe bridging\u00a0them and me. After a few hours into the drive I realized I absolutely had<\/em> to move to Idaho; about two months later my CLM offer was for a job in Twin Falls-a town that’s flat, but with about 8 mountain ranges within a two hours drive-I accepted instantly. So anyways, why was I brought here?<\/p>\n

It’s my incredible fortune that this is my second CLM internship, that I’m participating in a rare plant monitoring project,\u00a0and I’m firmly rooted in the intermountain west. Our species of interest is Lepidium papilliferum,\u00a0<\/em>a somewhat succulent salt’n’pepper plant. It is restricted to these areas called “Slickspots”, supposedly these were formed during the Pleistocene by clay being washed down slight gradients and accumulating and forming a somewhat hard pan. The clay does several things, most notably: it retains considerable amounts of moisture, retains some cations such as Sodium, and provides a physical barrier to establishment for many species, which for many years have precluded these sites from extensive colonization by other species. Now, it’s habitat is being encroached upon by graminoid winter annuals (such as that, what’s it called again…oh yeah Bromus tectorum<\/em>, and\u00a0Taeniatherum caput-medusae)\u00a0<\/i>and there\u00a0is concern that its population is on the decline. Its conservation status has wavered from Endangered to Threatened \u00a0(and back) many times, but due to interesting (e.g. unpredictable) seed bank dynamics its status is still up for debate because demographic trends have been hard to deduce with relevant power. So, along with three other interns we are going to walk prospective transects and search for habitat, as well as new populations so that they may be monitored in the future too, so that the species range, may be comprehensively ascertained. Yes I know what your thinking, “oh so they are using aerial photos to determine prospective habitat and then investigating on foot to determine whether the plants are actually there”- yeah that’s it (except the photo aspect has been done for us, and sometimes what may seem like a slick spot from above is just where a badger has kicked back dirt, or water washes through scrub leaving channels). To assess potential habitat, we walk through it on a meandering transect, which may be viewed as a wave (remember, a sphere has maximum surface area; \u00a0in terms of 2 dimensions by walking “half circles” you see a lot more space than walking straight- I’ll illustrate this mathematically next post, I need an illustration program I like to do this).<\/p>\n

Anyways, I have so much to say I can’t even start or I won’t stop!<\/p>\n

\"obligatory

obligatory Balsamorhiza sagittata<\/em> picture! \u00a0alt. 2134m, S* asp., N42*05.490″ W 113*43.458″, 4\/29\/16<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

I \u00a0will admit I have been hiking up into the melting (amidst quite a few\u00a0snow and hail storms!) alpine climate, and walking throughout the desert, and making many observations and generating questions and refining hypothesis pertaining to dormancy release. I’ve become very interested in synchronization amongst populations and communities and which environmental cues are triggering physiological responses and how these may be affected by climate change. Of course, as always, I’ve been drifting around the wild thinking about the role of chemicals in plants, anyways there’s\u00a0too much here to mention anything. Current reading: Physiological Plant Ecology-Larcher, Genes, Genetics, and Genomes, and Alpine Plant Life-Korner. \u00a0I recently finished Plant Physiology and Development 6th ed (the second ed. I’ve read lol!)-get this book!<\/p>\n

Here are some pictures and here are some words to revel in, and to help see us on our journeys. Idaho is a land of impressions…<\/p>\n

\"...things

…things you may find crawling around the Owhyee desert… Chylismia scapoidea<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

“i wore my boots out walkin\u2019
\npoured my heart out talkin\u2019
\ni felt the pain & i broke the chain
\nbut i still got a long way to go<\/p>\n

been on the road \u2018til tomorrow
\nbeen through the joys & the sorrows
\ncame through the flood
\n& i pulled through the mud
\nbut i still got a long way to go<\/p>\n

been in the back-room dealin\u2019
\nbeen on a long hook reelin\u2019
\ncrashed in the shed
\n& i woke in a sunny bed
\n& i still got a long way to go<\/p>\n

been on the rails & big muddy
\ni\u2019ve crossed the trails rocky & rutted<\/p>\n

been down the road a million miles
\nbut i still got a long way to go<\/p>\n

i\u2019ve traveled near & traveled far
\ni beat a hole in my guitar
\ncrawled with the zeroes
\n& i stood with my heroes
\n& i still got a long way to go<\/p>\n

been in the rain & on the run
\ni worked a long day in the sun
\ni slopped the pails
\n& i beat the nails
\nbut i still got a long way to go<\/p>\n

i tried the a verse as the b verse
\ni took the c verse to the chorus
\nrewrote & changed it
\nthen rearranged it
\n& i still got a long way to go<\/p>\n

i lost my way in darkest night
\ni woke again & saw the light
\nopened the book & i . . took a look
\nbut i still got a long way to go<\/p>\n

tell me what . . . what is the soul of a man?
\nhe\u2019s got to reach up his hand
\ntell me what . . . what is the soul of a man?
\nhe\u2019s got to reach out his hand
\n& i still got a long way to go
\nstill got a long way to go
\nstill got a long way to go”<\/p>\n

-railroad earth<\/p>\n

\"unknown,

unknown species, will update. Notice the differentiation of cell types underground and subsequent elongation of stem. cerca 2050m, growing alongside flowing vernal melt, under canopy.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winter in Chicago, O’hare was shut down, so was Midway; I had a couple friends with tickets to New Years runs in their home of Denver and no way to get back there. I’d just bought a car, and realized … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6951,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68590"}],"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=68590"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68949,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68590\/revisions\/68949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.clminternship.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}