Friday the 25th

Wow, we really got to sleep in today! 7:30 wakeup call felt like the middle of the day. Today we had a really cool activity, we got to go to the US Forest Service Seed Extractory in Bend, Oregon. We got to meet Kayla Herriman, who is the National Seed Specialist for USFS and was our tour guide for the day. Before becoming the National Seed Specialist, she was actually the manager of this facility for 12 years. Kayla is an extremely knowledgeable person, I felt like I was listening to a professor! Her tour was super interesting to me, and I got to learn so much today that there was no way I could’ve written everything down, but I tried my best to get a good bit of it all! To begin, the USFS nursery system has eight facilities. Of those eight facilities, six of them are nurseries and two are seed extractories. Of those six nurseries, the only one that doesn’t also do seed extraction is the nursery in Central Point Oregon because it is so close to the bend facility. The Bend Seed Extractory (BSE) handles a lot more diverse seeds than some of the other facilities, with the BSE being able to sort over 4,000 varieties of seed different plants.


 While some of the other facilities focus mainly on conifers, the BSE will truly process any seeds sent in and are the main facility that specializes in native plants. They will process samples as small as a handful of seeds from a hobby botanist, all the way to processing tonnes of seeds for large government projects. Most of the seeds they process are from the west of the Mississippi, but they do receive some seeds from the east coast as well. They provide seed and seedling services to any government agency being a city, county, state, or tribe. Only 18% is actually for the Forest Service, which goes to show the diversity of their work. We got to learn about the processes they do to prepare seeds which include extraction, finishing, and processing. It was really cool to see the X rays of the seeds, which they use to calculate the percent fill. 

This is the amount of seeds that actually have an embryo inside and will show them viability. Before I get too into the details, I will move on from each little test and what it can show you, but it was great to learn about them and nerd out a little bit. The work they were doing didn’t seem dissimilar to what I do at my internship at the WSU IAREC facility, and it was super cool to get to see this side of the agricultural world. Another interesting thing about the BSE is that they are self-funded, meaning they don’t have to rely on appropriations. Considering the current political climate, I think it is great that a facility this important that is working with native plants isn’t at the risk of their funding being cut by the federal government. We also got a great demonstration of some seeds being sorted from their chaff by Cameron Stauder, who is a geneticist at the facility. 


He was great to talk to as well and told us about his work on productivity and seed orchard management. Some more fun things from the trip are that they did a lot of work on the I-90 project and were able to get a lot of different native berries there, and Kayla was super involved with the Artemis Moon Trees project! I’m definitely going to visit the sycamore that made it to the Yakima Arboretum! Now we are just going to process our last soil sample and maybe have some time to swim around the lake. This was a great way to end our trip. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pre trip blog

I think I have packed everything I need and I am excited to begin our trip. Hopefully sleeping on the ground for two weeks won't kill my already sad back! We had a nice drive over to the Wellpinit campgrounds where we will be staying for a few days. Luckily the weather has been nice to us so far and there hasn't been any rain or extreme heat. I am excited to learn and to get out there in the field and do some work! 
Read more

Tuesday the 16th

Image
Today we got after it in the field! We met up with Jordan Matherly, Casey Flanagan, and Brian Crossley to help them check on the progress of one of their projects. We went to Chamokane creek to see how their weirs had been doing at trapping sediment. In the past, the portion of the creek that we were working with was dredged and straightened. They are trying to help raise the stream back to its historical level where it would've flooded the plain we were on and slowed down that water. They said that when there is a heavy rain or snow event that the creek will flow very hard and lower sections can be impacted or even get washed out. We used a transit and measuring pole to check the elevation of the stream, and they had placed fixed points in the ground when the project started to have a consistent point to base elevation from. They also mentioned that usually a project like this could be harder to achieve if the landowners weren't growing pasture for cows to graze and instead we...
Read more

Monday the 22nd

Image
Today we had another early morning at 6:00am, no extra hour of sleep for us! We had to make sure we would have plenty of time for our activity today, making beaver dam analogs! I would like to express my gratitude to Yakima Nation fisheries and the Yakima nation for allowing us the opportunity to visit and attempt to restore some of their ancestral lands. I realize the significance and importance of the land we were permitted to try and help improve. The people helping us learn what to do and who are in charge of working on this project are Jeanette Burkhart, who is a watershed planner, Gerard Foley, who is a habitat biologist, and David Lindley, who is a habitat coordinator. We spent the day working in a meadow that swamp creek runs through, and we were attempting to raise the creek to allow the wetland to flood. This will slow down the water as it goes to Cunningham creek and eventually the Klickitat River. This will improve conditions for Steelhead and salmon, and is going to be ver...
Read more