This weekend I learned about the Galiuros Mountains in AZ. Sky Island Alliance is working with the BLM to do spring assessments before and after prescribed burns. We have a series of springs that have been located and we are cataloging the flora and fauna, mapping the spring and assessing the geologic make up. These will be conducted again after the burn to see how fire impact these vital parts of the grassland ecosystem. It was some gorgeous hiking and great company! Shown below are some of the plants we saw while hiking, along with a hand tooled point which we photographed and left behind.
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This was a spot along the road heading up to the trail heads at the top on Madera Canyon road. Last year the single lane bridge was widened and improved, in the process the sides of the road that slope down to the stream were scraped clear. Instead of just leaving that to regenerate on its own incurring possible erosion issues or invasive plants, the Forest Service paired up with Sky Island Alliance and Boarderlands Restoration to restore the area with native plants including grasses and milkweeds. The forest service used the rocks and boulders that were originally scraped to the side to build small water retention reservoirs to slow down the water running off the land during floods, and built other borders to help with water flow and retention. We came in on this sunny Tuesday in April and watered plants that had already been installed, planted more milkweed, and weeded vinca from some of the creekside habitat.
It has been really amazing exploring the Southwest! This was my first trip to the Grand Canyon and I am so glad that we backpacked in. We left early in the morning down South Kolb Trail. It was cold and snowy, which was a surprise for me. We stayed down in Bright Angel Campground for two nights so that we could have one whole day to explore. On the free day everyone else went hiking to see waterfalls, I stayed back bay the river to slowly walk and check out birds. We hiked out the next day up Bright Angel Trail. It was an amazing weekend with fun people. We saw squirrels and deer and some of the bird highlights were American dipper that were really easy to see along the creek, many bluebirds at Indian Gardens, and black phoebe along the river bend.
Wetland restoration in Amado, AZ with Sky Island Alliance.
A pond in Sonoran grassland which served as important habitat for Gila topminnow (Poeciliopsis occidentalis) as well as many birds, butterflies and dragonflies, sprung a serious leak and was requiring regular massive amount of water additions to maintain even a very low water level. Thanks to funding available from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the partnerships between Sky Island Alliance (http://www.skyislandalliance.org) and Borderlands Restoration in Patagonia (http://borderlandsrestoration.org/) the wetland was able to be restored and even improved upon. The pond was restored (dug out, shaped for fish habitat, and lined with commercial liners and dirt) and we were able to plant native pollinator plants on the hillside. Sky Island Alliance staff and volunteers along with the ranch owners and neighbors worked preparing the hole after the excavator dug it out, planting pollinator friendly plants and ultimately pulling the liner across the wetlands and filling dirt back over it. I was busy with the planting but had time to watch the harrier hawk Circus cyaneus, overhead as well as the checkered garter snake, Thamnophis marcianus, and numerous bullfrogs, Lithobates catesbeianus. We planted locally sourced, greenhouse raised native milkweed and Thurber’s desert honeysuckle: Asclepias asperula, A. angustifolia, Funastrum cynanchoides, and Anisacanthus thurberi (from Borderlands restoration). It was satisfying to be part of a project with such instant gratification. That said, I am excited to go back in the spring to see the pond settled and the plants growing on the hillside, and hopefully birds, butterflies and dragonflies using their new resources. In an effort to acclimate to my new home here in Tucson, AZ, I joined the Sky Island Alliance (http://www.skyislandalliance.org/) for a work day in the beautiful Sabino Canyon to pull out Bufflegrass and Fountain grass. This was part of a wider reaching project organized by the Southern Arizona Bufflegrass Coordination Center, (http://www.buffelgrass.org/SABCC). The SABCC sponsors an annual day to get as many groups and individuals erradicating this invasive grass as possible. It not only pushes back the grass but also raises awareness of the porblem.
Bufflegrass and fountain grass are invasive grasses that convert the fire resistant desert to a flammable grassland. The grass fills the natural gaps between cactus and desert shrubs and trees and allows fire to spread rapidly. What makes this worse is that the grass, being adapted to fire, responds rapidly and fills in even more space making it harder and harder for the native species to recolonize or recover. This also changes the water ecology of the areas as well as endangering wildlife and human property. This was a fun group of people to work with and I had a great time learning more about the local plants and wildlife. Thanks Sky Island Alliance! I am pretty excited about my first marathon. It was amazing, almost 30,000 people ran it this year! We started at 5 am with fireworks in the dark in Waikiki. The first 20 miles were pretty easy, super amped up from everyone's energy. I felt high from that race for days. Looking forward to the next one :) World Seabird Conference - Cape Town, South Africa http://www.worldseabirdconference.com/ This past October I attended the 2nd annual World Seabird Conference. Thanks to a travel grant from the conference organizers, I was able to present my work with almost 600 other delegates from 52 countries. There were so many talks, workshops, symposia, and poster presentations. It was amazing to catch up with people that I had worked with from the East Coast of North America, people that I worked with over the summer in New Zealand, to catch up with colleagues from Hawaii, to meet some folks that I have worked with since I have been in Hawaii but have only had Skype or email contact and to meet so many new and interesting people from all over the world. I was part of a symposium about ecosystem services of arctic seabirds. Well, I don’t work on arctic seabirds and the work that I presented actually looks more at the ecosystem services of the actions that manager take for seabird restoration, but it turned out to be a pretty good fit with the other talks. It was an interesting symposium and I was glad to meet other folks conducting similar work. Symposium abstract: The symposium focuses on the ecosystem services provided by Arctic seabirds, i.e. the ecological, socio-economic and cultural benefits humans obtain from ecosystems involving seabirds. To facilitate management and conservation efforts of ecosystem services and decision-making concerning marine resource use there is an urgent need to further the understanding of ecosystem services in relation to seabirds. This includes identifying the ecosystem services provided by seabirds, establishing methodologies for quantifying the values of these services, and assessing the ecological and socio-economic drivers affecting their management and conservation as well as possible trade-offs between different ecosystem services. In the Arctic, the ecosystem services provided by seabirds may be of high value while potentially strongly affected by climate change and other human impacts. As culture changes, also new ecosystem services arise, including for instance services supporting nature tourism. The symposium consists of six presentations, starting with an introduction to ecosystem services provided by seabirds, then deepening insights into provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services. The symposium also highlights the interaction between ecological and ecosystem service research and the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in ecosystem service management, conservation and restoration. In addition to regular oral presentations, the symposium includes a short poster presentation. Presentations are followed by a comprehensive discussion, where the audience is invited to take part. In the discussion, we summarize current knowledge on ecosystem services provided by seabirds and its applicability to the Arctic, and discuss the generality of the conclusions of the symposium presentations for systems other than the Arctic. We also identify research needs: poorly known ecosystem services, methods for the quantification of ecosystem services, areas or species of particular importance, and current and upcoming issues relevant to the management and conservation of ecosystem services and seabirds. My abstract: Seabird numbers and ranges have decreased dramatically in Hawaii over the last 1,400 years since the arrival of man. In the past Hawaii was host to over 20 seabird species, currently only six of these species breed in the main Hawaiian Islands and two are federally listed. To understand the ecology and the economics of conservation and restoration of seabirds in Hawaii, here we addressed two important questions: 1) what are the costs and benefits of seabird conservation and restoration actions across Hawaii today and 2) with nutrient transport as a major ecosystem service of seabirds, do seabirds in the low population densities in montane Hawaii, still add a significant amount of nutrients to these ecosystems? To analyze conservation and restoration actions in Hawaii, costs and primary and secondary benefits of restoration actions were determined using a rubric specifically designed for this project. Many costs and benefits naturally occur in bundles, these groupings were assessed and presented in a matrix. To address the current impact of seabirds on montane systems in Hawaii we quantified available inorganic soil nutrients (including nitrogen and phosphorous) in seabird and non-seabird plots, and used d15N in soil and the leaves of two common, native plant species to determine the contribution of marine sourced nutrients from seabirds to these systems. Plant community composition was also quantified to determine if seabird nutrient subsidies result in differences in vegetation composition. Nitrogen in the form of NH4 was significantly higher in the soil and d15N was higher in leaves of Metrosideros polymorpha in the seabird plots. While there were significant amounts of nitrogen being deposited, this was not reflected in the plant community composition. A better understanding of the biology, ecology, economics and history of seabirds and seabird restoration will facilitate the most effective conservation of these important species. |
Julia A. RoweI am an ecologist interested in an interdisciplinary approach to conservation and natural resource problem solving. Archives
February 2020
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