Redwood National and State ParksPage 69 of 81
Heavy Metals, Bat Fungus and Rock Libraries: Klamath Network Parks in Late 2021
In 2021 a little extra budget room, due to the pandemic stand-down, let the National Park Service's Klamath Network temporarily expand its stream water analysis to heavy metals and a class of insecticides. The network's Fall-Winter 2021 newsletter, The Klamath Kaleidoscope, also covered the westward creep of a bat disease, a new inventory of rock sections that define geologic units, and a faster way to move field data. This summary describes the network's work as of that issue.
What is in the water?
For two years the network is adding analyses of heavy metals and insecticides to its stream-water monitoring. Samples go to the lab for metals such as arsenic, barium, copper, iron and lead, alongside the usual nutrients and salts.
Image from the National Park Service: yellow-colored spring water flows into Sun Creek in Crater Lake National Park.
- Heavy metals. Acidic water makes heavy metals more soluble, and at high enough levels metals such as copper and lead harm life. They occur naturally in pockets of landscape and also collect in residue from hard-rock mining. Crater Lake's springs may carry iron, and some of Whiskeytown's streams have a mining history, so managers want to know where metals reach detectable or worrying levels.
- Insecticides. Carbamate insecticides are used on crops around the world and are highly toxic to people and animals. One of them, carbofuran, is illegal in the United States but often found in and near illegal marijuana grows. Testing for them also serves as a proxy for rodenticides used at such grows. Anticoagulant rodenticides poison fishers, martens, raptors and other animals that eat poisoned rodents or bait, but they do not dissolve in water, so they are hard to test for directly.
The first stream samples from Crater Lake and Whiskeytown went to the UC Davis Animal Health and Food Safety Lab that fall. Insecticide results were pending. Preliminary metals results showed that, in parts of Whiskeytown with a history of acid mine drainage, most metals were below detection limits, except for barium and iron, and the suspected high iron at some Crater Lake springs was confirmed. Redwood, Lassen Volcanic and Oregon Caves were due to be sampled the following year.
White-nose syndrome edges west
Surveillance by park bat crews found "inconclusive" detections of the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, in northern and southern California. An inconclusive result is not a confirmation, but later confirmation often follows. Based on spring surveys, the fungus is now suspected in seven bat species across five counties in California and northwestern Arizona. The first inconclusive detection in California came in 2018, with more in 2019 and 2021 in the north. The first southern California results, that same year, were a surprise, given no known positives nearby, but may mean the fungus has reached that part of the state.
A library of reference rocks
A newly published inventory compiles the geologic type sections in Klamath Network parks. A type section is a well-exposed, representative slice of a mappable geologic unit, such as a formation, that serves as the standard for defining and recognizing that unit. Documenting them is like building a library of information about roughly 4.5 billion years of Earth history, and they can serve as teaching sites.
Image from the National Park Service: type locality exposures of the Prairie Creek Formation at Gold Bluffs Beach campground, Redwood National and State Parks.
The inventory was funded by the NPS Geologic Resources Division and drew only on existing articles and maps, with no fieldwork, including any stratotype within 48 km (30 mi) of a park boundary. It found:
| Park | Stratotypes |
|---|---|
| Crater Lake National Park | Two type sections; a new stratotype recommended |
| Redwood National and State Parks | One type locality |
| Lassen Volcanic National Park | None; a new stratotype recommended |
| Lava Beds National Monument | None; a new stratotype recommended |
| Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve | None |
| Whiskeytown National Recreation Area | None |
From tablet to park manager
The network switched from the ArcPad software to Field Maps. Data entered on a digital tablet now sync to an ArcGIS Online project whenever the device is in Wi-Fi range. Before, GPS data were downloaded by cable, emailed as a shapefile or spreadsheet by the data manager, and then entered by a park manager into other software. Now, when a crew finds an invasive weed infestation, its location appears at once on a web map the park already uses, so staff can send crews to remove it. The system has been adopted across the Park Service, and dashboards showing species locations are a possible next step.
Monitoring in 2021
- Redwood National and State Parks: a fourth year of the rocky-intertidal biodiversity protocol and a 17th year of targeted species monitoring; all 26 matrix vegetation sites and 19 of 20 riparian sites completed.
- Whiskeytown: 21 stream sites monitored.
- Lassen Volcanic: the Dixie Fire cancelled invasive plant surveys, restricted whitebark pine sampling to one site and cut stream sampling to two sites sampled before the fire.
- Crater Lake: 24 stream sites sampled by the crew that relocated from Lassen because of the fire, and all 10 whitebark pine sites sampled.
- Oregon Caves: preliminary mist-netting data show 341 birds of 33 species captured, and the cave bat count was the second highest recorded, continuing an upward trend.
- Lava Beds: 65 bird species detected at point counts, most often western meadowlark, and all 30 vegetation sites completed.
Sources
- National Park Service, Klamath Inventory and Monitoring Network, The Klamath Kaleidoscope: Fall-Winter 2021, newsletter; rewritten in hubnx's own words. The issue's staff and intern profiles and portraits are left out.