Jamie’s Wonder Blog An NR 009 Nature Blog

Otowi Mesa Trail 7/6/20 4:50 cloudy and warm post-rain with a very slight breeze.

Connecting with a place can be very difficult when you’re not actually in the place, and since one of the big ways I connect with places is by smell I decided to do a small field guide like post that depicts some of the common species of plant at my spot through the lense of smell. While I was thinking about how to do this I realized that people would obviously smell things in completely different ways from me and so I dragged a couple of my friends along to lend me their senses as well to expand the descriptions. In addition to smell, I felt that a photo would also help, and since I connected most with the photography blog assignment I thought it was fitting.

For each species, I am going to try to give some context for location and type of plant if I don’t feel it is obvious in the picture. Also, the smell observations are each three description words and are split up by person between me and my two friends.

Rubber Rabbitbush scent observations:

J: warm, light lemon A: gentle, sweet, verbena T: soft, dusty, comforting spice

Sulfur Buckwheat scent observations:

J: savory, dandelion-like, spicy A: oaky, daisy-like, rich T: beeswax, woody, old

One-seed Juniper scent observations:

J: waxy, peppery, fresh A: sugary, dense, sappy T: minty, windy, dried apricot-like

Ponderosa Pine scent observations:

J: vanilla, dust, smoke A: vanilla, cream, soft T: vanilla, holiday, organic

I hope that as you read through the observations you could get a hint of what my spot feels like based on one sense. One of the main reasons I chose this place as my site is because of the smell so I hope that by sharing this scent field guide you feel a hint of the connection I do. Overall I think this assignment has allowed me to stop and connect to nature in a way that I don’t normally allow myself to.

As a final ‘goodbye’ to my spot, I put it in quotes because I’m definitely going back so it isn’t actually goodbye, my friends and I made a rock cairn near the edge of the mesa to commemorate my final blog. As storm clouds made their way over the mountains in the distance I snapped one last picture before heading out.

Otowi Mesa Trail, Los Alamos, New Mexico. Monday 6/29/20 05:50, 20:30. Partly cloudy and warm with a slight breeze.

Today, I decided to go to my site at two different times of day to be able to see how the lighting changes the site as well as the difference in fauna at the two opposing times. First, I woke up at 5:30 so I could venture out to see the sunrise. I got there a few minutes before the sunrise so I sat and listened, I heard a few different types of birds that I usually hear outside my bedroom in the morning. One of the birds has a call that sounds like “hoo hoooo hoo”, I like to imagine that this one is an owl but I think it’s actually a dove. After sitting for a few minutes and experiencing the early morning environment, the sun began to rise over the Sangre de Cristos. I took some pictures and breathed in some of the fresh morning air then went home so I could go back to sleep for a couple hours. I then ventured out again around sunset, which is about 8:30, so I could see what differences I could find. The first thing I noticed was that there were far fewer birds which I found interesting, I did see a few ravens roosting high up in a pine tree but that was about it. The main difference between the two times was the smell, in the morning it smelled fresh and slightly humid with just a hint of dust almost like the calmness of the night settled and cooled everything down. At sunset, the dusty warm smell that is profuse during the daytime is still there but without all of the warmth that exists when the sun is beating down.

There is something I have always wondered about the New Mexico landscape ever since I was a kid. How are the caves formed in the cliff walls? So I decided that there is no time like the present to fulfill one of my childhood curiosities. When I was younger I always thought that all the caves were formed by Native Americans because I had learned that native peoples lived in the caves in the Bandelier National Park. Seeing as Bandelier is one of the most famous places for these cliff caves, I decided that I would look there to do my research. The rock, called tuff, that makes up the cliffs in this area is very soft and thus weathers easily. This is because it was formed from the ash of a large volcanic eruption that happened more than a million years ago. The soft rock that makes up these cliffs was weathered over time by wind and water and when the native people found them they were able to enlarge the caves, called cavates, using tools. So in a way childhood me was correct that Native Americans did play a role in making these caves but definitely not all of them. I had also always been interested in finding out why the rock around this area is so soft so I feel I know much more now. I got all the information for this mystery from https://www.nps.gov/band/learn/nature/geology.htm.

I really enjoyed this blog entry because I really enjoy taking pictures and I’m happy that I can show off the beauty of New Mexico. One of the big things I noticed when trying to take pictures was how I looked at the subject. The main focus I had was on how the subject fits into the environment, this was very different from sketching because I focused on the surroundings instead of just the subject. I had to look at the subject from every direction to see what angle best showed its place in the ecosystem. I think these pictures are probably some of the best I’ve ever taken and I will definitely be using photography as a means to explore my environment more in the future.

Otowi Mesa Trail 6/25/20 6:05pm partly cloudy and ~90 degrees with a slight breeze at the start but dark clouds were on the horizon and the wind started picking up.

In my last blog I talked about wanting to explore the rest of the first mesa, so that is what I decided to do for the first part of today. As I started walking towards the middle of the mesa, I noticed that the ground began to be much less exposed rock and much more sandy. Also towards the middle, I started to see a trend to where the cacti grew. The cacti grow mostly along the edge of an exposed rock or next to other plants. I thought this was really interesting and I had a few guesses for why it could be. My first guess was that the water could drain too fast in deep sand so the cacti have to be next to a rock or other plants that slow the water drainage so the cacti can take in its fill. My other hypothesis was the cacti need something to latch their roots onto in order to grow.

I was originally drawn to this plant because it is one of the few plants on the mesa that I do not know the name of. Also the little tendrils but that’s beside the point. To start my investigation into the plant I, as I normally do when I want information, asked my mom. She has lived in New Mexico for more than 30 years so I usually trust her expertise on these kinds of things. Unfortunately, she was as clueless as me so I had to turn to good ol’ google. I decided that the best way to find this plant would be to look at southwestern photographers that focus on plants. Luckily, I found the website https://plantsofthesouthwest.com/collections/trees-shrubs and after a few minutes of looking was able to recognize my mystery plant. Cercocarpus montanus otherwise known as the alder-leaf mountain-mohagony. This shrub provides grazing for many foraging animals such as deer and belongs to the rose family of plants.

Sketching makes me look deeper into the subject that I’m attempting to capture and helps me see the overall structure better. Next time I would like to see if I can zoom in to the specifics of a subject instead of looking at the larger structure. I enjoyed the act of sketching but attempting to accurately capture what I see is very difficult for me. Seeing as I am not a talented artist to start with, paired with the adverse environment of trying to draw without a surface, I found that my sketches fell short of the mark. To be fair though, sketching is not necessarily only about accurately capturing the subject, it is also about allowing yourself to find a deeper understanding of that subject. Since that was the mark I was truly aiming for, I most definitely did not fall short.

6/21/2020 7:55 Clear skies, slight breeze      

  Site Description:                                                                                                                   My site is at the end of a mesa with canyons on either side, on the south side a cliff and on the north side a steep slope. The cliff faces have naturally formed caves with a large range in sizes. The air feels dry but in the shade it also feels crisp and there is a slightly sweet but dusty smell on the breeze. There are birds calling to each other all around and flies buzzing in my ear. Lots of short trees namely juniper and some shrubs permeate the area. Also growing there are cacti, prickly pear and Dasylirion wheeleri. The ground has a lot of exposed rock with lots of lichen on it and the the parts where there is soil is very sandy and light colored meaning little organic matter is present. There are some animal droppings scattered around, I saw deer and coyote mostly but also one that I think could be bear.   

 

1.  How was this mesa formed?       
2.  What in the soil allows these plants to survive   
3.  What species of lichen is on the rocks
4.  Does the lichen get nutrients from the rocks?
5.  How long do the trees survive in this environment?
6.  Why do the trees grow taller in the canyon?
7. How were the caves in the cliffs formed?
8. What mechanisms do cacti employ to live in deserts?
9. Do plants in the desert employ more mechanical defenses than plants in other biomes?
10. What kind of rock is the mesa made out of?
11. Do desert plants employ more mechanical defenses?
12. Why are there different shapes of cactus?
13. What is the weathering process for the rocks at my site?
14. Why does grass not grow here?
15. What kind of niche exist here?
16. How well does the ground hold water?
17. How deep are the plant’s roots?
18. What kind of birds live here?
19. Does the sun’s intensity limit the kinds of plants that can live here?
20. Does the dryness effect the ability of things to decompose?
21. Where does the rock come from?
22. What was the most recent common ancestor between cacti and trees?
23. What kind of trait would allow an animal to eat cactus?
24. Why is the stone so light?
25. How many of the soil horizons are present?

I decided that the question about whether or not the lack of humidity effected the rate of decomposition would be interesting to research. To find the answer I just did a simple google search but I made sure to find a reliable source. Based on the information I found from a UC Davis website, humidity or moisture content is a very important facctor of decomposition. (http://lawr.ucdavis.edu/classes/ssc219/biogeo/decomp.htm)

Even though I have been to this location many times before this, I never truly stopped and observed. I think I have a deeper understanding of a lot more of the are now and I am very excited to continue discovering. I realized while standing at the top portion where I took the photo how much of the first mesa I haven’t explored so I’d like to go towards the other end of the mesa to see if there is any difference.