From Tonto to Yuma Proving Ground

Took a quick trip to the desert. Thought I'd share a few photos. (Susan and Natalie, I'd like to apologize for not getting any photos of our day in the field, I think I'd left my camera in the car that day.....)

Met up with Karen, Daniel, Nat, and Tasya in Tonto

Gnarly roads in YPG

We found this lizard hiding under a rock in the road, my lizard-squeezer friend says it's a Western Banded Gecko, Coleonyx variegatus.

Beavertail Cactus

Met up with Joe and Walt

Red Team - Week 3 Tohono O'odham

The red team had quite the eventful week on the Tohono O'odham Nation. After a lovely morning in Ike's Coffee Shop and a lunch at In-N-Out, we made our way to the nation. We were fortunate enough to stay the entire week at the Sells Rec Center where the staff was friendly and the showers were hot. Even got to watch a movie on the Smart Screen! Saturday morning we had the pleasure of being locked into the rec center parking lot; the second time in my life I've been accidentally locked into somewhere. Tues morning we encountered our subplot from hell--velvet mesquite just taller than either of us (top row, 2nd from left). We're still picking thorns out of our skin. Thursday morning our slowly leaking tire finally gave up leading to a tire change on a Silverado in under 40 min. Not too shabby given that we hadn't even eaten breakfast yet.

We did see one of our first wildflowers, saw numerous burros, flushed some UDA's, and got to watch every border patrol agent that drove past our truck stop and look. It took all my will-power not to click the alarm to watch them freak out.

Thanks to Karen, the Sells Rec Staff, and all the residents that made us feel so welcomed!

from next to Nothing to beyond Hope

in the beginning, we were next to Nothing...

we found the Land of a Thousand Chollas...... and they found us.

we left our mark on the tomato during Shower Day
(good showers here in Wikiup, by the way!)

from here we encountered the Unforgettable Women of Wenden and the place where Salome danced (who's read Skinny Legs and All...?)
by the end of it all, we were beyond Hope.

Joke

How do you make a tissue dance? Put a little boogie in it!

Progress as of Feb. 22nd, 2011

WARNING: the embedded KML viewer does not appear to run very well in Firefox. It loads fast in Google Chrome if you want to try that.

These are all plots we've sampled so far. The green check-marks represent detections of our target invasives (invasives are present on at least one of the subplots), the red X's non-detections (target invasives are not present on any of the subplots), and the blue question-marks "unknowns". A plot get's an unknown classification if the data have not been submitted to me yet, or if the datasheets (where you are supposed to circle "yes" or "no" for the presence of any of the target invasives on the subplot) are incomplete. This is the case on datasheets for several of the plots. We should try to make sure this field gets an entry every time we sample a subplot. Plots for which you've submitted photos on our Picasa page have images associated with the features when you click on them on the map. It's a nice way to be able to relate what's visible in the imagery in Google Earth to what we know is on the ground.

First work period

I've been going through all of your photos to organize and file datasheets and subplot photos. I thought I should share some of my favorite non-plot photos. 

Rain in the forecast!

Phoenix, AZ

Tucson, AZ

Yuma, AZ