"Harvesting" barley and weeds

I spent the day collecting over 50 samples each consisting of digging up a plant, (barley, Alyssum, or crested wheatgrass), collecting the top 2 cm of soil for seed bank sampling, and a soil core for DNA extraction in the restoration exclosure (picture below) or in the remnant native site which since last spring has been taken over by invasive species. It's depressing from an ecological perspective to see the loss of native grass species. But that is what the NPS, W&L

students and I are working to correct.

In the picture above the light yellow/tan is planted barley in the exclosure. The area is 23 acres and you can see the edge of the fence on the left side and the trees in the front are the closest edge of the fenceline. The barley grew well only in the areas where Roundup was applied in the left half an herbicide directed at crested wheatgrass (Agropyron spicatum) was applied and Alyssum desertorum survived and the barley barely survived.

I also sampled in the area where two new exclosures are currently being constructed. The picture below demonstrates what creatures of habit Elk are. The fence is not yet finished but it was placed in their normal trail coming off of the Yellowstone river and they didn"t know what to do. So they ended up laying down and ruminating for an hour and were still doing so 2 hours later when I was done sampling. If they only knew that it was for their own good.

After sampling the now invaded "native plant species" remnant a cloud burst opened up and I got the picture below of a rainbow over Roosevelt Arch. Not a bad way to end the day.

Collecting samples and a little hiking

I started out at 6:30AM to go look for wildlife. No luck. I got to the Lamar Valley just after sunrise and it was completely fogged in. So I turned around and headed to Crystal Bench to collect soils. We can use these as a comparison to invaded soils in the Gardiner Basin (~30 miles as the Raven flies). Although they have different geological impacts over time it is a dry winter range site that can be used as a benchmark for the restoration project. I got the sunrise picture below from the Crystal Bench site (Just off of the Lamar river).

Then I went to look for Alyssum desertorum using GPS coordinates from Montana State. We tried to find them this past spring but ran in to a grizzly on the Lamar and that ended that pursuit. Well unfortunately I was successful today. The site is covered with A. desertorum and it's cousin A alyssoides which goes to seed in the fall. It is patchy from the road to the Lamar river but is covering an area of about 5 acres and I suspect it will continue to spread. The picture below shows A. desertorum in the foreground as all of the short light tan stick like objects. I collected soil cores and surface soil samples for seed bank/germination estimates.

Since I was out in the park and had some time I decided to head towards Yellowstone Lake via Dunraven Pass/Mt. Washburn to look for Elk and Bison. As I got close to Mt. Washburn I decided to go to the fire outlook on the top. It's always closed in the spring so now was my chance to get to the highest point in the park. It is a 2.8 mile hike up an access road that is used by the Rangers that staff the outlook. There is a more difficult route up the front side of the mountain but it was closed due to grizzly activity. I took my bear spray and headed up at 9:50 AM and figured I could do it in one hour. After the first 1000 yds I thought I was done. Going from 1100 ft in Lexington to 8800 feet can take it out of you. But I turned it around and made it to the top at 10,243 ft in just under 1 hour. The weather turned nasty with rain/freezing rain, so I didn't spend much time at the top but I did meet a nice couple from Canada and they took my picture.

Of course a quarter of the way down the sky opened up to blue but it made for a nice descent. You can see the blue sky in the photo of fire killed trees below.

I then headed further south towards the lake into the Hayden Valley hoping to see large herds of bison or elk. I did come across a huge herd of bison ~300 crossing the road. No pictures I have plenty of those. I turned around and headed for the Gardiner Basin to start sampling the exclosure. It will be seeded with winter wheat on Thursday and I want to get a thorough sampling of the planted and now dead barley biomass, plus sample the areas where the barley didn't grow but A. desertorum did despite herbicide treatment. One interesting outcome of the fence and the planting of barley is that a pair of sand hill cranes now spend a large portion of their day feeding on the large number of grasshoppers as well as the barley seed heads. In the picture below taken at 7 this evening the male is getting a little upset with me getting too close and is letting out a loud warning call.

Tomorrow more sampling and a talk for the Yellowstone Center for Resources and USDA-NRCS.

Fall trip to YNP

Big time thanks to James Dick for getting up at 3:30AM to get me to Roanoke for the 5:30 flight to Charlotte then Denver and finally arrive in Bozeman at 1PM.
I'm going out to get soil samples and give a talk on the latest data. Much of it from last spring and all of it analyzed by Maya and Camden with the technical expertise of Kelly Hemminger.
Getting ready to board.

Last day in YNP

The day started halling seven boxes to the YNP supply center for FedEx pick-up. Then a quick return to the lodge to get the crew (the Doray is small so I made the trip alone) to go back to Mammoth for the presentation to the YCR. There were about 20 park employees in attendance and the data generated a good discussion about the restoration efforts in the Gardiner Basin.
We had lunch at the Sawtooth deli in Gardiner. It was snowing and raining in Mammoth so we are going back later to hike the hot springs before dinner at the Town Cafe. After lunch we cleaned up the lodge and now we are waiting to head to the hot springs. The weather still looks bad, but as we have learned it could be sunny in Mammoth and the weather will change, probably in the next 10 minutes.

That's all for now. It's been a great trip all around.

Perhaps we will get some pictures of the wolves that have denned up near Mammoth (the former Canyon Pack) and will share them later. But if not. See you in Lexington. We are leaving for Bozeman at 4:45 AM for our 7:30 flight.

May 6 Wrapping up in the field and packing up the lab

Not much excitement today. We took the last soil cores today from the SBU experiment and removed our soil fungal tubes. The agar did dry out some but there was still agar in contact with the 37 micron mesh. We shall see after we return.

After field work we came back and packed up the lab and I finished the presentation for the Yellowstone Center for Resources for tomorrow.

Canyon, Yellowstone Lake and more weather

We started out the morning by adding solutions to our SBU and urease inhibitor experiment. Went well and the data was collected this evening and will be sampled again tomorrow AM. The results we are finding are consistently low soil urease activity in Alyssum desertorum soils and soil respiration in response to SBU is 2 -fold greater in the remnant site by the Yellowstone river in the Gardiner Basin. Further analysis of this interesting result will be performed back in Lexington. On our way out to Canyon this morning (it was too cloudy for respiration) we spotted a group of photographers just before Roaring Mountain and there was a young grizzly tearing apart a rotten log looking for grubs, without a place to stop we kept on going.

We stopped at Mud Volcano/Churning caldron (yes correct spelling). Pretty cool geology even though it smells like rotten eggs. The video below is of the Churning caldron.

Then we headed on down to Yellowstone Lake. The road just opened May 1 and none of the services are open yet, it was pretty quiet. We got a group picture with the frozen lake in the background.

Then we stopped at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

On the way back through, and now with blue skys, we got to see the same Grizzly grazing on some fresh green grass from 100 yards. Plenty of pictures were taken.

On the way back to Gardiner we got stuck in yet another Bison jam. I took some close ups this time.

When we got back to Gardiner clouds were still to thick to do soil respiration using the solar panel so we hit main street Gardiner and did some souvenir shopping. After an hour it looked clear so we set up to do species specific soil respiration. I took half of the group back to the lodge to sieve soils for future analysis and on my return back to Gardiner (25 min later) the weather had turned quickly and put a stop to respiration after one replicate.

Within 10 minutes of leaving the field site we got to see a rainbow over Gardiner and the sun quickly came back out.

Tomorow we hope to get soil respiration done and we will take our final soil cores from the SBU experiment and remove our fungal soil tubes that we installed 10 days ago. Then it will be time to pack up samples and the lab and get them back to Lexington. Time flies.....

Not a predator in sight but a good day in the field.

Today we hit Gardiner Basin to sample the restoration exclosure prior to seeding with barley and to quantify soil respiration in our field simulated bovine urine experiment. Using a solar powered pump and CO2 Infrared gas analyzer we can quantify the flux of CO2 from the soil. After a few technical difficulties and several clouds we were able to quantify soil respiration in the GB agricultural field and the native remnant (still has invasives but has not been impacted by tilling). We are starting to get data sets analyzed and things are shaping up quite well. In brief, Alyssum desertorum inhibits fungal growth and in soils in which ALDE dominates the response of soil microbes to SBU is reduced. We have layed out several experiments that we will conduct after we return to campus and several still in the works for the last few days that we are here. The video below shows the stark contrast in weather from a few days ago.

Tomorrow we will set up another lab urease incubation experiment and go back out to GB to quantify soil respiration for species specific soils.