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The Oasis Newsletter: Fall 2024

Death Valley National Park, Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, Great Basin National Park, Joshua Tree National Park, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Mojave National Preserve more »

This biannual newsletter of the Mojave Desert Network Inventory and Monitoring Program features: highlights from our Science Symposium in October; staffing changes; increasing information about science and inventory & monitoring on park web pages; and our fall and winter monitoring schedule.

Woman stands a lecturn with microphone while a slide is projected on the screen behind her. — Carissa Wilkerson, with the Southern Nevada Water Authority (and former MOJN employee!), gave a presentation about water quality trends in Upper Lake Mead.
NPS / Allen Calvert

Our fourth Science Symposium was a success!

On October 16–17, 2024, MOJN welcomed about 100 attendees to the 4th Science Symposium (the 3rd in-person edition!). People from parks, partner organizations, universities, local governments, and other agencies gathered in the Water Safety Center at Lake Mead National Recreation Area (LAKE) for a day and a half of presentations, posters, a data management workshop, and a native plant nursery tour. Twenty-one presentations were given, along with a handful of lightning talks, and introductions by Allen Calvert (MOJN Program Manager) and Mike Gauthier (LAKE superintendent).

Woman in national park service t-shirt talks to a group gathered around a table with lots of seedlings in pots in a greenhouse. — A group of symposium attendees enjoyed a tour of Lake Mead National Recreation Area's Song Dog Native Plant Nursery.
NPS / Allen Calvert

The wide variety of presentation topics included response of vegetation communities to wildfire, wildlife monitoring or habitat modeling, invasive species management, threatened species recovery projects, water resources status and management issues, techniques for communicating with increasingly diverse audiences, employing science-informed leadership, and more. Two Mojave Desert Network staff presented updates on bristlecone pine and bat monitoring projects. MOJN Data Manager Mark Lehman also hosted an afternoon data management workshop on best practices for documenting and publishing data, with data scientists Sarah Wright (MOJN) and Rob Baker (IMD Central Support Office) assisting remotely. Kelly Wallace (LAKE biologist) led a tour of the park’s Song Dog Native Plant Nursery following the first day’s presentations.

The presentations were not recorded, but if interested in more detail about the posters and presentations, download the symposium abstracts and agenda. The symposium received predominantly favorable reviews. Here is a sampling of general responses from participants:

I really enjoyed the variety of topics and got excited about the work happening in our network.
Cool work going on!
For me all the topics presented were great and there was a great variety. And most presenters had enough information they shared in a way that was easy to understand or interpret, to gain knowledge to share back at my park with staff and the public.
MOJN staff did an excellent job organizing the symposium and effectively running the sessions. Nice job!
I thought the variety of topics was wonderful. I learned a lot.
Overall, a great symposium. It is always great to see what is going on at the other parks and the possible ideas and experience we can use and/or learn from.

Staff Updates

Person in helmet with headlamp standing in a cave and admiring the formations on the cave ceiling. — Em Michael, Physical Science Technician

Welcome

Em Michael just recently became a part of the MOJN hydro team as our new lead Physical Science Technician. They will coordinate logistics and planning for MOJN's Desert Springs, Selected Large Springs, and Streams and Lakes projects as well as perform data quality control and help maintain water quality equipment. Em's educational and recent work background were in geology-related fields. They studied geomorphic hazards while at the University of North Carolina and went on to working with the North Carolina Geologic Survey, mapping bedrock. Em also worked previously in the NPS, as a cave scientist at Carlsbad Caverns and Mammoth Caves national parks. Outside of work, Em enjoys rugby and playing cello professionally in orchestras.

Smiling woman in a rocky, open-forested, mountain landscape. — Wendy Zamora, Physical Science Technician

Wendy Zamora recently joined us as a Conservation Legacy intern. She will be assisting with our hydrology projects in her role as Physical Science Technician. She is excited to use the skills obtained from her Conservation and Resource Studies degree (UC Berkeley), as well as from a variety of internships and jobs related to environmental stewardship, to help us monitor our aquatic resources.

Smiling woman holding a large camera in an open field with mountains in the distance — Sofia Elizarraras, Ecology Assistant

After her seasonal wildlife technician job in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve this summer, our former bat monitoring intern, Sofia Elizarraras, has decided to return to MOJN for another season! She will once again be working on our bat monitoring program, conducting mist-netting and acoustic surveys and surveilling for white-nose syndrome. Sofia will be back in MOJN desert country starting in January. Welcome back, Sofia!

Man holding field notebook and wearing sun-protective clothing squats near knee-high Joshua tree. — Joe Ladd monitors an Integrated Upland Vegetation plot in Joshua Tree National Park in 2024.

Farewell

Our vegetation field lead, Joe Ladd, left in September to pursue a graduate degree in the field of another passion of his. After six years with our vegetation team, Joe has packed his bags and shipped off to Germany where he was accepted into a “Planetary Sciences and Space Exploration” master’s program in Berlin. Thank you, Joe, for your years of camaraderie and great service, hard work on our vegetation projects, and much more! We wish you the best in your next adventure and will miss you! Below, Joe shares his reflections on his park service career:

It is with mixed emotions that I say farewell to the Mojave Desert Inventory and Monitoring Network. The last 6 years of leading the Vegetation Team has been some of the best years of my life! So many lifelong friendships have been forged from the countless wonderful individuals I have met along the way. The breathtaking landscapes of the Mojave Desert have been my office and I have felt fortunate to explore all the nooks and crannies of our network parks. Alas, I will be greeted no more by the rising sun over endless mountain ranges as I prepare for the workday. In the fall of 2024, I will embark on a new journey in a new place far from the southwest deserts which I have called home for so many years.

Two smiling men in blazers and neckties standing outside NASA headquarters. — Joe Ladd with Bill Nye ("the Science Guy") at NASA Headquarters.

My career with the National Park Service began during the summer after college 16 years ago with an internship at Mount Rainier National Park. During that first season of hiking around the foothills of mighty Mount Rainier, collecting water samples, counting salamanders, and snorkeling in mountain streams I developed a passion for scientific fieldwork. I was hooked, and over the next 10 years I had the privilege to live and work for National Parks in the rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula, the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, the alpine tundra of Alaska, the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, the Black Hills of South Dakota, and the Mojave Desert of southern Nevada. After a decade of living the nomadic seasonal life, I landed my first permanent position, returning to the Las Vegas area where I was born and raised until the age of 14, as the vegetation crew leader at the Mojave Desert I&M Network. In total I have held positions at 3 Inventory and Monitoring Networks and 4 individual National Parks, allowing me to work in over 30 National Park units during my NPS career!

I feel overjoyed when reflecting on the experiences I have had during my time donning the gray and green. I have become deeply connected to the wild spaces in our stunning American West through years of studying its plant communities, basking in its sunsets, breathing its crisp and refreshing air, sleeping under its star-studded skies, and exploring its most remote and untouched places. More so than the places though, I will miss the people who have made my time with the National Park Service and I&M so fulfilling and inspiring. As I leave to follow my passion, I am comforted to know that there are dedicated people who will continue doing great work for our National Parks, following their passion to be faithful stewards of our most treasured lands. Something being a seasonal Park employee has taught me though is that goodbye is never forever, and I now have friends whom I have made over the years spread far and wide just waiting to be bumped into. I am sure our paths will cross again in this small world of ours, and until then – see you soon!

Two women in personal protective clothing, gloves, and masks handle tiny bat by headlamp in the desert. — Sofia and Ashleigh swab a bat to test for white-nose syndrome at Birdie Spring, Death Valley National Park.
NPS / Allen Calvert

We thank Ashleigh Green (Great Basin Institute, bat monitoring field lead) and Sofia Elizarraras (Conservation Legacy, bat monitoring assistant) for their help recording, mist-netting, and swabbing (for white-nose syndrome) bats this past spring and summer. Sofia also assisted with social media posts and web articles during her time with us. They both moved on to new adventures: Ashleigh pursued her love of working with bats via several projects across the country, primarily with consulting firms, and Sofia spent a season working in Alaska.

In mid-June, we also bid farewell to our "A Team," the four Conservation Legacy vegetation interns Adam Watson, Alex Herzog, Athena Lynch, and Ayden Kelly. They helped us with monitoring integrated upland vegetation and spring vegetation since February – thank you A Team!

New Streams and Lakes Monitoring data published in the NPS DataStore!

This data package contains 2009–2023 hydrologic data collected for our Streams and Lakes protocol, which is conducted in Great Basin National Park. We monitor the hydrology and health of nine streams and six subalpine lakes in the park to identify and assess the effects of stressors such as climate change, groundwater withdrawal, and atmospheric nutrient deposition. The data include lake surface elevations, water quality measurements, stream channel characteristics, water chemistry samples, and benthic macroinvertebrate samples (the benthic macroinvertebrate data will be published in a separate data package).

Fall and Winter Field Schedule

This table provides the schedule for Mojave Desert Network monitoring projects for the months of October 2024 through March 2025. DEVA=Death Valley National Park, GRBA=Great Basin National Park, JOTR=Joshua Tree National Park, LAKE=Lake Mead National Recreation Area, MANZ= Manzanar National Historic Site, MOJA=Mojave National Preserve, and PARA=Parashant National Monument.
Park	October	November	December	January	February	March
DEVA	–	Desert Springs	Desert Springs	Bats¹, Desert Springs	Bats¹, Desert Springs, Selected Large Springs	Bats², Integrated Uplands
GRBA	–	–	–	–	–	–
JOTR	Selected Large Springs	–	Desert Springs, Selected Large Springs	Bats¹, Desert Springs	–	Selected Large Springs
LAKE	Selected Large Springs	Desert Springs	Selected Large Springs	Bats¹	Bats¹	Bats², Selected Large Springs
MANZ	–	–	–	–	–	–
MOJA	Selected Large Springs	–	Selected Large Springs	Bats¹, Desert Springs	Desert Springs	Selected Large Springs
PARA	Selected Large Springs	–	Selected Large Springs	Bats¹	Bats¹	Desert Springs, Selected Large Springs

¹Acoustics
²Capture

Assisting MOJN Parks with Science and Research Content on Their Websites

We continue efforts to assist network parks with adding content to their Science and Research webpages, including adding links to information about MOJN Inventory and Monitoring work conducted in their parks. Most recently, we reached out to staff at Mojave National Preserve (MOJA). MOJA now has enhanced science content on their site that includes links to our monitoring project webpages! Visit their updated Science and Research webpage to see the result. We see these as win-win collaborations, with parks getting new science content on their sites and MOJN gaining increased visibility.