Random musings

The critters out on the range seem to be celebrating the cooler weather as much as the LTER technicians are…

Last week when I was out at the Scrape Site, I discovered a large mound just outside of the gate that is covered in rabbit footprints and, erm, other evidence of rabbit presence (i.e. poop). Perhaps that’s where they were all hiding when we did the rabbit survey! We didn’t see very many animals during the rabbit survey this month–which is probably attributable to the size of the Gutierrezia and the Larrea rather than small numbers of rabbits.

Inside of the scrape site, between the first and second BSNEs, it appears as though kangaroo rats are moving in. Lots of rodent digging, and a few holes (the beginnings of a K-rat mound, I think), have appeared there, along with a little rodent path headed towards the second BSNE. The most obvious rodent activity is taking place in the center, in that space where there are a lot of abnormally large Dasyochloa pulchella and very few Salsola kali.

Yesterday, while walking the control transect taking probe measurements, I discovered that coyotes had taken five out of the eight probe tube caps on the college playa–not just the cans, but the rubber stoppers as well. I found two cans further up the transect in the mesquite, chewed to the point of uselessness. One of the stoppers was near a probe tube, also showing many tooth marks. It seems that they are more active on the northern side of the college playa; those tubes (as well as the northern P-COLL NPP tubes) were the ones missing stoppers.

That’s all for now. For the next entry, I’ll try to remember to take the camera out so that my blog entries are as pretty as John A.’s…

Cheers,

lisa

Life in the field (summer 2007)

Hi all,
A “life in the field” update for you–
Weather permitting, we’ll finish NPP vegetation measurements tomorrow [28 September 2007] with M-RABB. Yahooo! No rain delays this year…

Lehmann’s lovegrass (Eragrostis lehmanniana) is spreading like wildfire through the upper grasslands on the east side of Summerford, both above and below the powerline road. I think black grama is well on its way to losing the battle there. Lehmann’s is particularly pervasive between the powerline road and the creosotebush boundary just downslope from it, though it’s moving upslope through the NPP site as well…

I was surprised at how poorly the grasses looked at T-TAYL. Usually this tarbush site is better than the other two. Not this year. SCBR and MUAR look really bad there, but they look good to excellent at EAST and WEST sites….

Black grama at G-BASN looked the best, followed by G-IBPE (so-so, really), then G-SUMM….All dominant shrubs at all NPP sites are happy campers….

It’s a bumper year for Four-wing saltbush in the mesquite dunes….Very bad year for forbs at all sites. Biodiversity and richness are Very low. Quite the contrast to last summer. Annual grasses are virtually non-existent. We had good rain in July, not so much in August, and nothing to write home about in September (to date). Didn’t even get germination of forbs in July, though, so I don’t think lack of rain is too blame. Soluble nutrients are limiting, perhaps, and the mass of users of nutrients last summer and this spring maybe contributing to that drawdown as well….

The very high germination numbers last summer of Sporobolus grass at the mesquite NPP sites can be readily seen. There has been little mortality with most individuals now with an aerial cover of about 10 cm diameter and height of about 10 to 20 cm. Five or twenty Sporobolus plants per square meter in the interdune area is not uncommon, and there are often multiple individuals growing within the mesquite. The few that are flowering can be identified as Sporobolus flexuosus (Mesa dropseed), though there may be other Sporobolus species as well.

Cheers,

John