One final project.

One aspect of my internship is to engage an undeserved community by providing a service.  I knew I wanted to do something with the prison system and then I thought back to the NPS Academy in Grand Tetons.  We talked about making the park service more relevant to more Americans.   Park visitors tend to be older and less racially diverse than the country as a whole.  The park service's own staff reflects a lack of diversity and this is a challenge because of the agencies mission to preserve and protect the natural and historical pieces of the country.  For a long time, the park service has also seen itself as interpreters and keepers of the nations history.

So I knew I wanted to do something that would expose people who hadn't had much exposure to the park service and I started asking around and met with the administrator of the Garland County Juvenile Detention center.  I spoke to her and had discussions with a few groups of kids in jail and found out some pretty heart breaking things.

Readmission rates to the jail are high, kids get out of prison and a significant amount get in trouble again and come back.  Many of these kids are growing up in poverty, they don't always have food on the table and violent crime is a constant where they live.

So I got together some park staff and after a little workshop, we got together and had an event at the detention center.  It was one part storytelling, one part sharing and getting to know each other.  We spent a lot of time just talking to each other.  Then each of the park staffers told their life story.  One woman told us about being beaten by her husband and another talked about her struggle with drug abuse.  One of the park staffers had been in that very same detention center when he was growing up.

There were a few main things I wanted to communicate to everyone

1. We all face incredible challenges in our lives
2. How we face them is what defines us
3. The park service exists to serve the american people, in other words, that we cared about those kids

At the end we closed with an activity meant to bring us together.  We had a ball of yarn that we tossed around and when we got it we talked about something that inspired us today.  It's probably too soon to say if we made a difference in their lives but I'm optimistic that we started a conversation that will continue long after I leave.


Also quick shoutout to Leah V, Ashley P, and Rhonda H who helped put the whole thing together! You guys made this event possible!

Goat Life

Emily and William and their goat friends

PhThe goats of Hot Springs are a rowdy bunch.  About 50 of them in all, they are part of an experiment to help manage the invasive species in the park.  Invasive plants are plants that are not native to the area where they live and cause significant damage to the native plant life.  The worst invasives create monocultures where a handful of plants are the only thing growing in a large area.

Emily and William are the two folks on the project.  Their study involves surveying the field before and after they let goats munch on the plants for a few days.  That way they can see what plants the goats ate and determine if they can effectively clear invasive.  They also try to protect the existing native pine trees from the hungry goats by wrapping them in window mesh.  Despite their age, many of the pine trees are only 3-5 feet tall, they are very slow growing trees.

Emily is checking a survey plot Photocred: William

So why were their so many invasive plants in the first place? The area of the national park that has so many invasive plants is called Sleepy Valley.  Before it was part of the national park it was a suburban neighborhood.  Hot Springs National Park bought the land, demolished the buildings, and is attempting to return it to it's natural state.  The area is so important because the hot springs are recharged from water that falls in this area called the "recharge zone."  Development in the recharge zone causes pollutants like motor oil, sewage, pesticides to seep into the spring water which is one reason why the park bought the land.

The results of their experiment?  Still being worked out, one thing is for sure however, the goats ate lots of invasive plants!

There experiment is so cool that they were on NPR!

One of 100 survey plots

Fuels!

Leslie setting up a scale to measure how much moisture is absorbed by the mountain environment

Not the kind you put in your car but then again, it still burns.  Hot Springs National Park has a few mountains within it's boundaries, in fact, the park basically is a ring of mountains.  There aren't any open fields or marshes but forests instead.

For thousands of years these forests have burned after somewhat regular wildfires scorched the land.   These fires may seem destructive but they are important for plants and animals who've adapted to these cycles.  Fires help break down dead trees which enriches the soil with nutrients.  Some plants even rely on the heat from a fire to help them germinate.  But as humans have moved surrounding areas of the park, especially in the past century, fires have been suppressed to protect peoples property.

Scientists are recognizing the consequences of suppressing fire on the landscape for so long and are beginning to prescribe burns to wild areas.  Enter climate change.  As the planet becomes better able to retain heat due to extra carbon in the atmosphere, the frequency of fire and length of fire seasons is increasing.  Climate change is already causing more severe droughts which hurt our ability to fight fire as well as make our planet more prone to fires.

To understand the potential effects, Leslie Fowler is building a model to show how prone the park is to fire events.  She is collecting data on soil moisture and analyzing the "stuff" on the forest floor to accomplish her goal.

Checking out a cool turtle!

With a fun name like acoustic monitoring...

Collin Mulloy rests a moment while the active monitor records bat calls

Northern Long Eared Bats like many other bats rely greatly on echolocation to find there way through the forest at night.  Within a fraction of a second a bat will make several calls that are mostly inaudible to humans.  As the sound waves bounce off objects and returns to the bats ears the difference in what the left ear from what the right ear hears helps the bat determine the position of an object.  The Northern Long Eared bat is extraordinarily good at echo locating and is able to grab an insect while the insect is in mid flight.

So to detect the Northern Long Eared Bat we set up powerful ultrasonic microphones in remote forested areas of the park.  In the office we look at the sound files with software that helps us visualize the bat call and then we try to determine the species that made the call.  This is a challenging step because there are over 1,000 species of bats and several bats have similar looking calls.  Luckily we have a program that isn't too bad at identifying certain bat calls. While the program is often wrong, it narrows down the calls that are likely to be Northern Long Eared Bats.

Kelly Bufkin with a backpack full of gear heading up the mountain to set up a mic

Linque Martin feeling pretty good after reaching the peak!

Water!

Hydrotech Ashley Rodman describes unique park geology.

I spend most workdays hiking to different places in the park to set up bat monitors but on the Natural Resources team there are several other projects ongoing.  Ashley and Kelly S. make up the Water Quality team.  Since visitors to the national park drink the thermal spring water that comes right out of the ground the park is obligated to test the water for contaminants and make sure it is safe to drink.  I got to work with Ashley for a few days collecting water quality data.  With a YSI water quality sonde we measured:

• Dissolved Oxygen
• pH
• Specific Conductivity
• Pressure
• Temperature

Kelly S. collecting a temperature probe from one of the springs

The springs dot Hot Springs Mountain and were covered several years ago to protect them from contaminants.  To prevent cross contamination each spring has it's own hose that we use to pump up a sample of water to measure.  Since the water that comes out of the springs was rainwater roughly 4,000 to 5,000 years ago and mixes with closer surface water it's important to get baseline data on the quality so that changes in the content of the water can be observed.

Dropping weighted tube into the Fordyce spring to collect a water sample.

The fungus amongus

The reason I'm at this park is because of this: White Nose Syndrome.  If you've never heard of it here are some major points

• Fungus that has killed 6 million in North American bats since it's discovery in 2006
• You can watch it grow on the nose and other parts on a bats body
• Affects many species of bats, including several near extinction
• Researchers are scrambling to find a cure or management action to stop slow and reverse the spread of disease.

You can watch how White Nose Syndrome has spread here. The disease is very deadly killing 90-100% of bats in a winter colony or hibernacula.  Before the disease, populations of Northern Long Eared bats were considered healthy but WNS has taken it's toll causing the Northern Long Eared bat to be listed as a "Threatened" species causing the government to organize resources to help protect the Northern Long Eared Bat.

So this summer I'll be looking for the Northern Long Eared Bat in Hot Springs National Park with the hope that if and when a mitigation strategy for WNS is developed we can know where we should or shouldn't be looking for the Northern Long Eared bat.  More on the process in a later post.