The Friends Sponsor SCA Intern on the Fire Effects Team

“.5 meter, soil…1 meter, rock…1.5 meters, IPAG…2 meters, litter…2.5 meters, litter…” 

And so on for 50 meters. It’s called a line intercept transect and it’s a part of the standard protocol of data collection for the Fire Effects Team at Bandelier National Monument. Two crew members walk along a 50-meter tape, one calling out what they see on the ground every fifty centimeters, the other logging it into the data sheet.

This summer, as in many summers past, the Friends of Bandelier sponsored an intern for the team through the Student Conservation Association (SCA). This year’s student, Maya, is a biology major at a western university. She, as others in the past, had the opportunity to gain valuable, real-world experience in field science that might help determine her future path.

Team Leader Laura Trader invited me to accompany the crew on a field day in August. I met the crew at Ponderosa Campground and in a minute we were off on a brisk, trailless hike across Escobas Mesa to an unburned stand of orange-trunked ponderosa pines.

Before I could catch my breath, crew members had scattered, located almost invisible rebar posts marking the corners of the study area, and began stringing long, yellow measuring tapes along the boundaries between the rebars. Shorter tapes were laid out at odd angles from the rectangular perimeter of the plot. Kathy the field crew leader handed me a map of how the tapes were placed and explained what data would be collected along each one.

I assisted Alec as he walked the 50-meter eastern boundary tape, recording what he saw on the ground each 50 cm along the way. Another team worked the western boundary. Most of the points are soil, rock, litter, or stick, but we got excited when we had to identify the species of plant along the line. I knew the plants, but didn’t know the plant codes used in field biology. (IPAG above is Ipomopsis aggregata, Skyrocket.)

Crew members shared the duties along the other tapes and within the plot, recording the kind of wildfire fuel lying on the ground, cataloging other plant species within the boundaries, mapping the species and size of trees, calculating the tree canopy cover, and using radar to map the site.

After three hours, about 50 sheets of data had been collected, the work of an efficient crew of five plus their visitor.

I later heard that Maya the intern was hooked. She hoped to return next summer for another round of data collection before heading off to graduate school to continue her work in field biology. That’s the real benefit of the Friends sponsorship of an intern: insuring that young, enthusiastic scientists continue the long history of valuable ecological research at Bandelier.

Citizen Science at Bandelier through iNaturalist

Imagine the amount of biological information you could amass if you sent 1,000 observers out into the field to record their observations. Image the depth of that information if they could use a handheld device to collect and transmit that information to a central location!

It’s real. It’s called iNatualist, and the National Park Service has recently established a central repository for iNaturalist data for 412 Park Service units, including Bandelier National Monument (and the Valles Caldera National Preserve).

Data is collected, you guessed it, with your cell phone, or, as I prefer, the old fashioned camera and notebook routine followed by a session on the computer at home (I get better photos that way). Download the iNaturalist app at the Google Play or Apple Apps store, set up an account, then go for a hike.

Find something interesting and take out your phone and power up the app. Look for the + sign in the lower right corner to add an observation.

The green plus sign

Next, select “Take Photo” and iNaturalist will open your camera app.

Take Photo!

If you like the photo, hit OK, if not, retry.

Ok!

On the next screen, you can identify your observation, the day, time and location will be filled in (if your phone’s GPS is on, wait a couple of seconds and it will pop up). If you are in Bandelier, your observation will automatically to added to the Bandelier iNaturalist project and you don’t have to do anything except remember to tap the checkmark in the upper right to save your observation.

Your observations will be listed on your phone, but they look better on a computer screen. You log into your account on iNaturalist at inaturalist.org and all will be displayed. iNaturalist has cool ways to display your observations on maps, lists, photos, etc.

One advantage of the site is if you don’t know the identity of your observation and if you have a good photo, iNaturalist can almost always tell you what it is. Click on Upload in the upper right, select your photo, then put the cursor in the Species Name box and click. iNaturalist will load suggestions, and the top one is often the correct ID.

(If your photo is from your phone, the Location will automatically fill in. If not, click in the Location box, zoom in on the map, and place a pin. This is a pain, but I do it this way all the time.)

Once the species and location are filled in, hit the Submit 1 Observation button and you are done. Usually another iNatualist user with a special interest in a location or species will confirm your ID or suggest a different one. (I usually review all observations from Bandelier, the Valles Caldera, and Los Alamos County.) If two people agree, the observation becomes “Research Grade.” It’s not foolproof, but at least it is a good indication that you are on the right track. I see an increasing number of scientific papers that use Research Grade iNaturalist observations to track trends in plant and animal populations.

A few pointers: bird observations almost always get confirmed within minutes, plants and insects may take days or weeks. You can edit an observation and put in more photos, those always help (I won’t confirm most sunflower family members without a photo of the underside of the flower head). Confirmation of observations in New Mexico take longer than those in Arizona and California because there are fewer users here. Although your observations are automatically placed in any project that is focused on a certain area, it helps if you “Join” the project.

Be patient with the learning curve, it takes some practice. But the amount of information is rather amazing: as of today, January 25, 2020, Bandelier’s iNaturalist Project has more than 2,700 observations of 765 species.

Thistle Thwarters at Bandelier in 2020

Musk thistles at Bandelier

Following the Cerro Grande fire, my forest hydrologist friend Greg Kuyumjian told me “Keep a watch for the bull thistles, they’ll move in and take over.” And over the years my wife June and I have spent countless hours on the Santa Fe National Forest working as volunteer thistle removers.

The Las Conchas fire in 2011 burned much of Bandelier, and last August June noticed a few roadside musk thistles, another bad plant, just inside the Bandelier boundary along New Mexico Highway 4 outside Los Alamos. We stopped to take a look, totally unprepared for what we saw: at least 10,000 musk, bull, and Canada thistles growing in waves up the hillslope. It was the worst infestation we’d ever seen, certainly the type of thing Greg had warned us about.

We immediately signed on as Bandelier natural resource volunteers, and set out to tackle the problem, only to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the task.

Thistles (in the Jemez Mountains the genera Cirsium and Carduus), are attractive members of the sunflower family of plants. Their “flowers” are really a dense cluster of small, red or purple, tubular flowers held together in a compact head. Each of the hundreds of individual flowers in a head can produce a tiny seed attached to a wisp of feathery bristles that easily disperse in the wind. Light riding little parachutes, the seeds are dispersed nearby in great numbers and can be carried on a breeze for miles. Thistles spread fast over large areas of open terrain, like burned areas.

Scott McFarland, Chief of Resources at Bandelier, offered a small crew of Native American youth to get us back on track. We met them at the site and explained the task at hand. Bull and musk thistles are biennial plants, forming a rosette of leaves their first year, then shooting up spiny, leafy stalks terminating in flower heads. In August, the flowers are in full bloom. If you simply pull up the plant and throw it on the ground, the flowers will go ahead and develop seeds. You must pull or cut off the heads, bag them, and later carry them out of the area. Then you can pull up the plant—if you leave it in the ground, it will likely just make more flower heads.

Nobody enjoys eradicating spiny plants, but the young adults stuck with us until we were all relived to have thunderstorm put a halt to the work. We regrouped the next day, but after two days, we barely made a dent in the thistle population.

It takes more than a handful of people to control thistle populations, and the Friends of Bandelier are working with monument staff and the Pajarito Environmental Education Center to hold two volunteer thistle thwarter work parties at Bandelier in spring 2020. Spring is a much better time to deal with thistles—most have not begun to sprout up, there are no flower heads, and you can just dig them out by the roots. Contact with the spiny leaves and stems is kept at a minimum.

We hope to start the thistle thwarters with a project near the Cerro Grande Trailhead, and follow that in a few weeks with work on the monster thistle patch we started to eradicate last year.

Watch for more information on the Friends web site, Facebook page, or send you email to friendsofbandelier.org to get on the thistle thwarter contact list.

Hiking Below Lower Falls

I only had the privilege of visiting Bandelier National Monument once before the floods of 2013. If I didn’t have the photos from that trip, I wouldn’t realize how different Frijoles Canyon looks today. After moving to Los Alamos, one of the first hikes I took was in Bandelier. I heard people rave about the waterfalls of Frijoles Creek and wanted to see them for myself. However, I encountered large signs warning me about the landslide that washed out the trail to the Lower Falls. I remained determined to see the Lower Falls, and heard one could access them from another direction. Today, rather than a relatively easy hike down Frijoles Canyon, you must take the “scenic” route to visit the Lower Falls!

Another intrepid traveler and I began at the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Powerline Mesa Trail just as the sun peeked over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the distance. We connected with the Ancho Springs Trail, and a little over an hour later we made it to the Rio Grande. A merganser floated by us heading in the same direction—downstream to Frijoles Canyon. It was a frigid morning, but the sun finally crept into canyon bottom when we were about halfway to our destination.

By the time we made it to Frijoles Canyon, all thoughts of being cold vanished with the mid-day sun. We shed layers as we began hopping from boulder to boulder. Lower Frijoles Canyon is littered with rocks of all sizes, forming barriers and obstacles for the creek’s journey to the Rio Grande. The evidence from the flood is everywhere. Sticks, trees, and brush formed piles along with the rocks. We picked our way through the debris and finally heard the crashing of falling water. After rounding a bend, we stood in an amphitheater with the Lower Falls in front of us. My hiking partner pointed out the place where the trail once stood, now a sheer rock face scoured away by the floodwaters.

After a quick lunch sitting atop a boulder at the base of the falls, we began our long journey back to our vehicle. At the end of the day, we hiked close to 15 miles, but I am finally able to say that I’ve seen the Lower Falls of Bandelier! While this hike is much different than before, it made for a sensational journey and the natural landscape restoration is evident.  Along the way we passed through some of the most beautiful portions of White Rock Canyon, touched the colorful geology of Frijoles Canyon, and witnessed a Golden Eagle soar overhead. Bandelier is such an amazing place for new discoveries and exciting adventures.

Pajarito Plateau Native Bee Survey

With support from the Friends of Bandelier, Dr. Olivia Carril began the first-ever native bee survey of Bandelier National Monument in 2017, with collections made near St. Peter's Dome, across Burnt Mesa, near Cerro Grande, and in Frijoles Canyon. All specimens have been labeled, and identifications are approximately half completed. Dr. Carril will continue identifications during the winter of 2018 and will resume collections in the spring and summer of 2018. 

So far, 483 specimens have been collected to date, and hint at an incredibly diverse fauna. Prior to the current study, only two species had been documented for Los Alamos County (a bumble bee, Bombus, and a sweat bee, Halictus ligatus). Over 46 species have been added to what is known for Los Alamos County from the current study, including at least three species of bumble bees (Bombus), leaf cutter bees (Megachile), resin bees (Anthidium), two genera of Cactus-specializing bees (Lithurgopsis and Diadasia), green metallic sweat bees (Agapostemon), and several sweat bees (Lasioglossum). Specimens from the genus Osmia were documented near Cerro Grande, and a unique, as yet unidentified small mining bee (Perdita) was found near the visitor's center in Frijoles Canyon.  

Plans for 2018 include the establishment of plots at Burnt Mesa, in the burned area of the Dome Wilderness on the west side of the monument, along the riparian area in Frijoles Canyon, and along the Alamo Boundary trail.

Tinware in the Bandelier CCC National Historic Landmark District

Nearly 300 pieces of handcrafted tinware light fixtures were made for the Frijoles Canyon Lodge and NPS headquarters at the park in the late 1930s. Some were made according to architects’ plans, while others were CCC craftsmen designed. There are 34 unique styles of tinware here at Bandelier! Throughout the historic district, these significant historic objects are one of the park’s many wonderful assets. Because of the fragile nature of the aging tinware, and due to the fact that many pieces like mirrors and table lamps were made for the old Lodge, most of the collection is stored off-site at an NPS museum repository. Several dozen exterior light fixtures remain installed in the historic district, however. Over the years, the park has worked to keep them in good repair and to replace them as they age. In the latter case, the original is removed for cleaning and storage, and we commission a local craftsman to do the reproduction. We are due for another round of repair, conservation, and reproduction. Our current goal is to remove and reproduce 13 fixtures that are directly exposed to weather and sun.

The initial restoration of the fixtures will be funded by the Friends of Bandelier. We hope to solicit sponsors for the restoration of additional fixtures in the coming months.