Mojave Week 3

This week had it's ups and downs. I started Monday morning by being 40 minutes late to work. I still don't remember being told to be at work at 7. The hours were long and the weather variable.

Mojave Desert Week 3 Gallery

The first site we visited on Monday was in Meadow Valley. We were greeted to the site, and throughout the next two days, with slightly terrifying sonic booms made by planes that could vanish in front of your eyes. They stop flying at night, thankfully, and the only sounds are the wind and distant howls of coyotes.


This glutenous and slothful bumble bee was rolling around on his back in an opuntia flower and loving it.


On the way to our second site we saw a new development under construction at Coyote Springs. Although there are no houses built yet the golf course looked to be finished and the deep green of the grass stood out against the beige and tan everything else. They left one natural rock with some yucca on it for the entrance to the development. It was completely surreal and a perversity of nature.

Nevershine is at the end of the road in Parachant NM and is the most remote site we are working at for this project. It gets it's name from the layer of black basaltic rock on the cliff in this picture. I am thankful that I get to see places like this for work since I am not likely to go there on my own.







Here is an example of a quadrat. They are assigned randomly within the plot. Once my GPS shows that I have reached the correct coordinates I set the lower left corner at my toe and direct it towards the north. You might be able to see that all of the plants in the smaller rectangle have been plucked. The plants are identified, separated, and placed into bags labelled native, native seeded, and non-native. My impression is that most of the plants go into the non-native bag. The work is monotonous most of the time but there is excitement when a new plant is found and identified.



The two plants in this picture are both Bromus madritensis. Most of the plants look like the one on the right and are only a couple of hairs. This makes them difficult to see against the ground as well as hard to identify and to pick up. I often use a flat rock as a tool in excavating.


I also find joy in discovering insect constructions and little jewels of eggs; pearl, amber and gold spheres stuck to the undersides of leaves.












I learned last weekend that in addition to our regular pay, which is decent but I have enough debt to feel guilty spending any money at all, we get a per diem of $20 for the "inconvenience" of staying in the field. This news has made me happy all week. As I had been eating for about $35 per week I decided to spend a little more and venture a bit away from canned food. And why not spend that money on good food? On Thursday I made a wonderful meal of prepackaged gnocci and pesto with ciabatta and Vina Salamanca. It was delicious.




Friday had the worst weather with intermittent rain and temperatures around 50 degrees. I was wet and cold and my figures were like blocks. On the weekends I had been staying at Lake Mead and taking showers with my solar shower. This works ok, but the water only gets warm if you leave it in the sun for about 3 hours. This weekend I decided to join the YMCA. The hot shower and sauna are totally worth the $10 per week, and having spent only about half of my per diem on food I am not feeling guilty for this pleasure.

No Fixed Address

Greetings from the Mojave,



I've been working for DOI-USGS-BRD-WERC-LVFS (That's a lot of letters) for two weeks now and I think I should probably give you an update before I head out again tomorrow for another week.






The first day I, and two others, had orientation and paper work, mostly paperwork, a trip to the police station for fingerprints, and a lot of racking my brain after my external memory (computer) crashed on me. The hardest part was that we needed a continuous history of employment, education and habitation, all with references for the past 5 years. No small feet for a bunch of vagabonds with no fixed address. They asked for a lot of names so don't be too surprised if an officer comes to your door and asks if you know who I am.



My first trip into the field involved me and my boss, Sara, driving around Grand Canyon-Parachant National Monument checking rain gauges. I'm told this is some of the most sparsely populated country in the lower 48. Although it is a National Monument the springs are still privately owned by families that have lived there for maybe centuries. At one point we passed the Whitney's homestead (of Mount Whitney fame) and Sara mentioned an episode when one of the sons offered to trade a much needed tire for one of female USGS employees. People who live in the desert are there for a reason, basically that they don't mesh well with society. After two days we had driven about 180 miles at about 30 miles per hour and hiked over 50 km.




The entire last week was spent at Coyote Springs located between the Las Vegas and Arrow Valley ranges on Hwy 93. The four of us have been picking annuals for most of the daylight hours. This involves splitting the plots up into an equal number of quadrats then heading off into different directions with our radios and GPS and sometimes not seeing each other again for the rest of the day. A quadrat is 1 square meter which we determine by laying a set of one meter dowels connected at the ends on the ground. Within this square we must identify every annual present and in the lower left corner we must pluck every annual in a .1 square meter area. I'll take a picture of it this week for illustration and describe it more fully next weekend.


The weather has been pleasantly cool, actually cold at times. The lowest temperature I recorded was 46 degrees in the middle of the night. From Tuesday to Friday it was cold and windy often with partial cloud cover. I forgot to put sunscreen on one day now have a strange tan line similar to black paws on a white kitten. Although at the time it was hard to tell how much was dirt and how much was sun. This desert is hard on equipment too. I popped my therm-a-rest Wednesday night but used it again on Thursday night anyway. I'm also expecting to need new pants and possibly shoes by the end of the summer.


We don't stay up too long in the evenings. If there is still daylight we play hackysack or Kongki Noli. Then we eat, write in our field books, and read. This week I intend compose text that I will transcribe here.


In short, work is pretty great. I am happy to be doing biology work and I am getting paid to be outside. You can look forward to weekly updates from me from now on.


Have a good week all.

Bryant