Last updated: January 2, 2025
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The Klamath Kaleidoscope: Fall-Winter 2024
In this issue of the Klamath Kaleidoscope, we share updates about white-nose syndrome in bats and how we are addressing it, learning from fire at Lassen Volcanic National Park, new network staff and other new faces offering valuable support to network parks, and we highlight where bat intern, Kira Ware has landed in her career. Scroll down for updates from vital sign monitoring this past summer and recent outreach and publications.
White-Nose Syndrome Updates
While the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome (Pseudogymnoascus destructans, Pd) in bats makes a slow but steady advance into California, efforts to stay a step ahead of it are also advancing in small but meaningful ways.
Fungus Spreading in California
Starting in Humboldt County, now five California counties are “Pd-positive,” including Sutter, Placer, Amador, and Inyo Counties. Pd-positive means that the fungus is present. Several more California counties have had low-level detections, suggesting that Pd is present. Based on the disease progression in other states, Pd’s presence suggests that the disease, white-nose syndrome, could develop in California’s bats in the next few years. The disease invades the skin of hibernating bats, damaging wings and often causing white fuzz (thus, “white-nose”) on their faces. Bats with white-nose syndrome wake from hibernation more frequently, which burns up their energy stores, starving them. They may also leave hibernation early, when food and water are too scarce for survival.
NPS
Surveillance and Roost-Finding Telemetry Efforts Continue
Klamath Network crews, led by Dr. Alice Chung-MacCoubrey and her field lead, Bat Conservation International biologist Dylan Rhea-Fournier, continue their multipronged work to track the spread of Pd in northern California and southern Oregon. Each spring, they capture and swab bats just out of hibernation when evidence of Pd should still be detectable (see next article in this newsletter).
The crew also radiotags bats in the fall to follow their movements into potential roosting or hibernating sites using telemetry. Bat hibernacula are not well understood in the western US. The hope is that identifying more of them will help managers protect these sites and better understand how Pd is spreading. But finding bat roost sites with telemetry has never been easy, and the crew is learning as it goes. Some of these method adjustments include
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Night telemetry: Instead of searching for radio signals only during the day, when bats are not flying around, the crew has begun searching at dusk, when bats first leave their roosts, and dawn, when they return. This helps them identify specific areas to search during the day.
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Lightweight telemetry stations: In addition to hand held telemetry receivers, crews also set up telemetry towers with receivers for 24-hour a day data collection. These towers are similar to the international Motus wildlife tracking system towers and are remotely connected to transmit incoming data in real-time. However, these towers and associated equipment are heavy and bulky, limiting their placement to areas that can be reached by car. To expand the area covered by a 24-hour receiver, the crew also designed a scaled-down, lighter weight “pop up” station that can be backpacked into areas without roads.
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Motus radio tags: For years, the crew has been fitting bats with Motus-style radio tags, which use a single frequency for multiple animals tracked in an area. Each animal’s signal can be detected and distinguished by receivers tuned into that one frequency. In 2024, the crew made a switch that vastly expanded their listening range. They began using the official Motus radio tag, whose frequency is received by a growing network of Motus towers across the landscape. Motus tags are typically used on birds that migrate long distances—thus the need for an expanded network of receiver towers. By carrying the actual Motus tags, bats that travel outside the study area can be detected across a much larger area when passing a Motus tower.
NPS
With these refinements in technique, the telemetry crew has gained some clues about potential roost areas. One potential roost site is in the blocky rocks of a lava flow. The crew set up a motion-detector camera at the site to look for bat activity but caught a surprise visitor instead—a ring-tailed cat!
Learn More
- Contact Alice Chung-MacCoubrey (alice_chung-maccoubrey@nps.gov)
- Experimental tools for fighting white-nose syndrome:
Alice Chung-MacCoubrey
Hands-On Bat Conservation
Article by Emily Heller, Southern Oregon University Intern
Bats come in many shapes and sizes, but they all have one thing in common: they play a critical role in their environment. Some species are pollinators, aiding in the fertilization of crops such as agave, while others help disperse the seeds of fruits they eat, like figs. Insectivorous bats help control pest populations, benefiting agriculture. Whether they are insectivores or pollinators or seed dispersers, they are indispensable to the healthy functioning of rainforests, deserts, deciduous forests, and other biomes. However, a major threat has emerged that endangers many bat species: white-nose syndrome (WNS).
In 2006, WNS arrived in North American bat populations. Caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd), which thrives in cave environments, WNS poses a serious threat to hibernating bats. The disease disrupts bats’ hibernation cycles, leading to starvation and death. Since its discovery, WNS has significantly affected eastern North American bats, with no effective treatment yet. The loss of these bat populations could have severe ecological consequences, impacting humans and the environment.
In southern Oregon and northern California, the NPS Klamath Network is part of a multiagency effort to do something about this threat. The first step is finding out where the fungus is spreading in the West through surveillance. I joined the network’s bat crew in May to watch surveillance in action. Read more
NPS/Lauren Youngblood
In an age of explosive fires in the western US, land managers need accurate information about vulnerable resources, and sometimes they need it fast. In late July 2024, northern California’s Park Fire surged unpredictably toward Lassen Volcanic National Park’s southwestern boundary. Park managers sent an urgent request to Klamath Network ecologist, Lauren Youngblood, for high-value whitebark pine stand locations. Over the course of two days, Youngblood analyzed the network’s 12-year monitoring dataset to map the park’s healthiest stands. These were stands with the lowest blister rust infection and the highest number of cone-bearing trees. She also identified potentially blister rust-resistant trees. Fortunately, the fire stopped just outside the park, but Youngblood’s swift analyses and data-driven insights were available to help fire planners prioritize resources for protection and evaluate fire containment strategies.
As our monitoring datasets grow, so will opportunities like this to help parks respond to emerging and sometimes urgent management issues with actionable data—a key goal of inventory and monitoring networks.
Learning from Fire at Lassen
Wildfires have been burning more land, more frequently, and at higher severity levels since the mid-1980s in the western US. Some forested areas may convert to non-forest as a result. Though patchy openings in forests are ecologically valuable, extensive loss of forest means an overall loss of habitat for forest dwelling wildlife. It also means degrading water quality and losing valuable carbon storage. Because of these factors, and other impacts from large, severe fires, land managers need ways to reduce future fire severity. To do this, they are partnering with scientists like Dani Niziolek. Niziolek, who worked with the Klamath Network as a data scientist, has been studying how fires shape forests and what strategies work to minimize forest loss at Lassen Volcanic National Park over the past several years. Based on data she and others collected for her master’s degree research before the Dixie Fire, and data she collected after the fire, she has recently published two journal articles about fire and forests in Lassen.
Dani Niziolek
Forest Resiliency—Some Evidence in California Montane Forests
The first journal article is about forest resiliency. It examines how well forests have been regenerating and what influenced that resiliency over the past three decades of fire at Lassen. To do that, the researchers synthesized data on conifer seedling counts from areas burned by eight fires between 1984 and 2012. They then connected those seedling counts with environmental factors that might affect regeneration and the mix of species that returned. Regeneration was more likely within 1-2 football fields of live forest patches and was also more likely with time since fire. This indicated that eventually seedling propagules will reach pretty far into a high severity burn patch but that recovery takes time—time during which forest regeneration is vulnerable to reburns. Climate conditions had less influence on the number of seedlings returning but more influence on the mix of species type. Regeneration was also common at most plots, suggesting a baseline level of resiliency. They concluded that California montane forests are resilient to prescribed fire and managed wildfire, making them useful tools to manage California forest landscapes.
Read the article:
Forest resilience and post-fire conifer regeneration in the southern Cascades, Lassen Volcanic National Park California, USA - ScienceDirect
NPS
Fire Severity—Benefits of Thinning and Prescribed Burning
The second journal article, coauthored by Niziolek, is about mediators of fire severity in the 2021 Dixie Fire. The Dixie Fire was California’s largest single fire to date, at 374,000 ha. The study explores how previous fire and fire suppression operations during the Dixie Fire affected how severely it burned through Lassen Volcanic National Park. The study identified which types of fire suppression operations in combination with different levels of previous fire severity were most effective in reducing severity during the Dixie Fire. Suppression operations include offensive backfiring (backburning during “normal” weather conditions long before the wildfire arrives) vs. defensive backfiring (riskier, last minute backburning during “extreme” weather conditions as the fire is sprinting towards the line), fuel breaks, retardant and other tactics.
Some of the study findings surprised conventional narratives. For example, they found a smaller risk than expected from heavy-handed defensive firing in emergency situations. Though limited to the national forest and park lands in the northern footprint of the Dixie Fire, their findings point to the value of matching strategic fire suppression operations with past fire history for the best chance to reduce severe wild fires. In addition to strategic fire planning based on these findings, they also concluded that more training is needed for land managers on large fire tactics, particularly complex firing operations, to boost forest resiliency in the face of high severity fires.
Read the article:
Severity of a megafire reduced by interactions of wildland fire suppression operations and previous burns - IOPscience
NPS/Daw
Lauren Youngblood - Scientist Profile
Lauren Youngblood grew up running around the woods in southeastern Pennsylvania—flipping logs, digging holes, and catching tadpoles in creeks. She always knew she wanted to be a biologist, dreaming of life as a marine biologist/photojournalist in a second-grade writing assignment. And indeed, her innate curiosity for the complexity of nature has opened interesting doors of biological inquiry. From studying lizards and their thermal environments, to exploring how habitat structure can influence animal behavior, to examining how plant communities may respond to wildfires, her research has always centered on the dynamic interactions between organisms and their changing environments. As ecologist and vegetation program lead at the Klamath Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Network in Oregon since 2023, with access to long-term monitoring data, she’s now able to ask even larger scale questions about complex phenomena. Read more
Welcome to Trent Berrian—Vegetation Monitoring Crew Lead
Trent Berrian is the Klamath Network’s new permanent Vegetation Monitoring Crew Lead. He is excited to be part of the team and looks forward to exploring the rich diversity of plant life in network parks.
Berrian earned his MS in Botany and Plant Pathology from Oregon State University in 2023, where his research focused on the management of potato diseases. Prior to his time at OSU, he worked for the USDA Plant Protection and Quarantine in Honolulu, Hawaii.
In his free time, Berrian loves playing music, snowboarding, surfing, and enjoying the great outdoors.
Welcome to Amelia Weiss—Cave Scientist
Amelia Weiss, Cave Scientist, joined the Klamath Network in August 2024. As a cooperator with the Great Basin Institute, she supports cave monitoring, analysis, and reporting for the network's two cave parks, Lava Beds National Monument and Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve.
Weiss comes to us from Ypsilanti, Michigan. She has a PhD in aquatic ecology and has spent over a decade researching subterranean biology in North and Central America. She’s the rare biologist who scuba dives for data!
In her free time, Weiss loves hiking, diving, and chasing critters in the outdoors.
Welcome to Philip Tanimoto—Interdisciplinary GIS Specialist
Philip Tanimoto began work for the national parks in the Klamath Network in September 2024 as a GIS Specialist. Though based in Ashland, Oregon, at the Klamath Inventory and Monitoring Network offices, he is employed by Whiskeytown NRA and serves all the parks in the network. He will support projects with the network and the parks, standardize the development and organization of geospatial datasets, conduct spatial analysis, and help incorporate our data at regional and national levels.
His background in Zoology (BA), Wildlife Science (MS), and Environmental Dynamics (PhD) led him to work with several nonprofits using GIS as a tool for environmental analysis and conservation. It also led him into the jungles of Guatemala, where he spearheaded a conservation project that now protects an important area of virgin montane cloud forest. In his new position in southern Oregon/northern California, he’s excited to learn about the region’s amazing biodiversity.
Tanimoto grew up near Boston, Massachusetts, where his passion for birds, nature, and canoeing was first kindled. For fun nowadays, he enjoys nature photography, learning about wild mushrooms, family genealogy, and cedar strip canoe building.
NPS/Daw
Meet Dani Niziolek—Data Ambassador
Quality science depends on quality data. And Dani Niziolek is on a mission for quality data. Not Inventory and Monitoring Division data, but other kinds of park data. As a Data Scientist for the Pacific West Region, her role is to learn what park managers are studying and how to support the best care and use of the datasets underlying those studies. She is making the rounds, calling park managers to offer guidance and point them to data management or analytical support where needed. Some of this work will uncover datasets that are underutilized—data that could answer more questions with further analysis. She’s also offering templates for documenting datasets (adding “metadata”) and sharing best practices for managing large datasets. In this consultant type role, she’ll be able to help parks troubleshoot problems with their datasets and explore new uses for them. In the big picture, her work will help the region:
- Identify common data needs
- Identify collaboration opportunities among similar projects
- Gain a more complete overview of scientific data available in the region’s parks
Niziolek, a fire ecologist, previously worked for the Klamath Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Network as a data scientist. At the network, she learned I&M’s high standards for data management and quality control, knowledge she’s putting to good use in her new position.
NPS / Allison Taggart-Barone
Meet Erik Meyer—Tackling Noise and Light Pollution in Parks
Quiet moments in nature and stargazing parties attract visitors to parks that can offer those experiences. But natural quiet and dark skies can be disturbed in many ways. The Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division (NSNSD), which is part of the Natural Resource Stewardship and Science directorate, helps parks identify and address those disturbances. Parks in the Klamath Network are fortunate to have access to a NSNSD biologist based in our region for virtual or on-site help—Erik Meyer.
The Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division can assist with a variety of projects:
- Collect baseline acoustic or sky quality data
- Identify source specific impacts to the natural soundscape and dark skies
- Engineer solutions to reduce, mitigate or prevent human-caused noise and excessive light in and around parks and national trails
- Offer bioacoustics support that scans acoustic files for vocalizing species
- Assist with park planning, compliance, and external project reviews to help parks reduce noise and light pollution impacts
- Assist with air tour management, airspace design, military overflights, airport capacity enhancement, and park specific administrative flights through their Overflights Program
Klamath network parks can request help for any NSNSD topics through IRMA and the technical assistance request (STAR) system.
Parks may also reach out directly to Erik Meyer for an initial consultation: erik_meyer@nps.gov
Big Thanks to Scientists in Parks Intern, Jeri Stoller
National parks and networks in Regions 8, 9, 10, 12 had the benefit of a year-long science communication intern—Jeri Stoller—through the Scientists in Parks program during 2023/2024. Stoller learned the ropes quickly, editing complex reports and creating a variety of high quality public friendly outreach. Check out some of her highlights!
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A podcast about Hawaiian bird conservation that was featured in Park Science
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A story map about fire and resiliency in Whiskeytown NRA (link coming soon)
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A short video about monitoring lakes in Lassen Volcanic NP
Where Are They Now?
The Klamath Network works with a variety of interns to support our program and to offer educational experiences. Interns may find themselves sampling water quality, monitoring whitebark pine, identifying native plants, mist-netting bats, or writing about our science. Here we highlight where our interns have landed professionally or educationally.
Meet Intern Kira Ware
Klamath Network position: Scientists in Parks bat and vegetation technician, 2022
Current job: US Forest Service field lead for northern spotted owl bioacoustic monitoring
As a Scientists in Parks intern, Kira Ware spent the summer of 2022 swabbing bat noses, listening for bat calls, and surveying plants for the Klamath Network. The bat work led her onto the remote, rugged roads of southern Oregon and northern California and taught her the intricacies of setting up acoustic monitoring stations. It also required navigating off trail using a hand held GPS unit.
“Moving out west from North Carolina for this internship was scary but getting the chance to work under a strong woman like Alice [Chung-MacCoubrey] gave me a new perspective and goals to strive for. My year at the Klamath Network helped me gain confidence in myself and hope for my career entering the wildlife field.”
She currently works for the US Forest Service as the field lead for northern spotted owl bioacoustic monitoring in southern Oregon. Come rain or shine, she hikes (or snowshoes!) out to monitoring sites to place the bioacoustic recorders that she’ll pick up six weeks later in hopes of detecting the owls or their competitors.
“Without these learning experiences at KLMN, I would not be successful as a leader and field technician in my current position. I often think back on my time with KLMN with fondness and know that I would not be where I am today without those experiences.”
2024 Vital Sign Monitoring Updates
To find out which Klamath Network scientist leads each monitoring program, visit the Contact Us page for the Klamath Network.
Crater Lake National Park
streams
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Stream surveys occurred off-cycle at Crater Lake NP this year due to the crew being displaced from Lassen Volcanic NP by the Park Fire. With a smaller than normal crew size—two technicians—18 stream reaches were sampled of 30 total.
whitebark pine
- All 10 sites were surveyed.
Lava Beds National Monument
cave monitoring
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Successful data collection for cave visitation, climate, entrance vegetation, invertebrate communities, scat and visible organic matter, and bat monitoring. Ice surveys were completed in all 5 ice caves. In addition to traditional ice survey methods, park and I&M staff began pilot testing a more efficient, accurate, and less labor intensive method for ice floor monitoring in 4 of the 5 ice caves.
terrestrial vegetation
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Completed all 30 matrix (upland) plots.
Lassen Volcanic National Park
landbirds
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Only half of routes completed due to unexpected data loss. Surveys will be completely repeated in 2025.
streams
- No sites were surveyed; crew relocated to Crater Lake NP due to the Park Fire.
whitebark pine
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All 10 sites were surveyed.
Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve
cave monitoring
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All cave monitoring protocols were successfully carried out. 102 bats were counted during winter hibernacula surveys, which is slightly less than the 109 counted last year, but nevertheless still continues the overall upward trajectory over the last 15 years.
landbird mist netting
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The banding station caught 257 birds of 28 species during the breeding season and in the fall. Oregon Junco, Nashville Warbler, and Macgillivray's Warbler represented 50% of the total captures.
Redwood National and State Parks
rocky intertidal zone
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This is the 7th year of the biodiversity protocol and the 20th year of targeted species monitoring. All regularly scheduled sites were surveyed.
terrestrial vegetation
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Completed 21 of 26 matrix (upland) and 17 of 21 riparian plots. Logging and road decommission work from Redwoods Rising prevented us from accessing all the plots.
Whiskeytown National Recreation Area
landbird point counts
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Completed surveys at all 25 planned routes.
streams
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10 stream reaches were surveyed, of 24 total; this is the 5th cycle of sampling. Sample size was reduced due to a smaller than normal (two-person) field crew.
Recent Publications and Presentations
Publications
Dinger, E. 2024. Analysis of stream types in Klamath Network parks based on physical habitat and chemical characters. Science Report NPS/SR—2024/195 National Park Service, Fort Collins, Colorado. https://doi.org/10.36967/2306085
Lohse, D. P, K. N. Ammann, and E. C. Dinger. 2023. Long-term monitoring of rocky intertidal communities: Lessons and implications from the Redwood National and State Parks, Northern CA. Northwest Science 96(3-4):147–163.
Niziolek, D., L. B. Harris, and A. H. Taylor. 2024. Forest resilience and post-fire conifer regeneration in the southern Cascades, Lassen Volcanic National Park California, USA. Forest Ecology and Management Volume 561, 121848, ISSN 0378-1127, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2024.121848 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112724001609?via%3Dihub)
Stephens, J. L., T. H. McLaren, C. R. Gillespie, and C. Stuyck. 2024. Landbird monitoring: 2022 results from Crater Lake National Park, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve, and Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. Science Report NPS/SR—2024/111. National Park Service, Fort Collins, Colorado. https://doi.org/10.36967/2303313
Webb, S. N., T. H. McLaren, C. R. Gillespie, L. Zawadzki, and R. S. Terrill. 2024. Landbird monitoring: 2023 results from Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve, Lava Beds National Monument, and Redwood National and State Parks. Science Report NPS/SR—2024/196 National Park Service, Fort Collins, Colorado. https://doi.org/10.36967/2306091
Park Presentations
Face to Face Briefings allow Klamath Network staff to present detailed results from annual monitoring of vital signs with park staff. The briefings are conducted either in person or via a Teams call and provide time for questions and dialogue. We invite interpreters and other park staff outside of resource management to join the higher level overview at the start of each briefing and to read the 2-page public-friendly brief (“Vital Sign Update”) that accompanies each briefing.
Dr. Lauren Youngblood, vegetation ecologist with the Klamath Network, recently presented three in-person Face to Face Briefings:
- Oregon Caves NMP, 9-20-24: 2023 vegetation monitoring results. View the brief.
- Lassen Volcanic NP, 7-22-24: 2012–2023 whitebark pine monitoring results. View the brief.
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Whiskeytown NRA, 10-1-24: 2022 vegetation monitoring results. View the brief.
More Face to Face Briefings are planned for the coming year, and some of their corresponding vital sign update briefs are already available (see list below). Each of these is a two-page public friendly description of how we monitor a specific vital sign, with a map of selected results.
- 2022 results for streams monitoring at LAVO
- 2022 results for streams monitoring at ORCA
- 2022 results for streams monitoring at RNSP
To see all vital sign update briefs to date, visit the network website’s Quick Reads page and click on Monitoring Briefs.
Science Communication
Vital Sign Overviews
The sixth and final (!) public-friendly vital sign overview article for each of the Klamath Network parks was published in 2024 for Redwood National and State Parks:
Checking Redwood’s Vital Signs
To see each park’s vital sign article, visit the network website’s Quick Reads page and scroll through the articles at the bottom, or click on Vital Sign Overviews widget for a printable, 508-compliant brief.
Joseph Dixon, public domain
Featured Creature Natural History Articles
NPS Klamath Inventory & Monitoring Network
Southern Oregon University
1250 Siskiyou Blvd
Ashland, OR 97520
To view past issues of this newsletter, please visit the Klamath Kaleidoscope Newsletter page on our website.