Earth Explorations

It's been a long week. I needed to get away for a bit so even thought the weather was cool and gray I bombed out to the Badlands for a night. The campground was full ish. Unlike summer when people arrive late into the night and leave out early well before sunrise this crowd was pretty settled. I heard someone leave around 4am but generally the campground didn't stir until after sunrise. I walked the next day, wandered really, and found myself headed towards the confluence of Sage Creek and the South Fork creek that runs by the campground. This confluence was one of the monitoring sites for the Badlands Monitoring project. I was trying a different route, one that I had attempted before but missed the confluence and ended up downstream at the Creek.  All who wander are not lost, sometimes we are are just trying again. As always there were new (to me) things to see as I have not spent much time in the grasslands during autumn. Usually by now I move my hiking to the front part ...

I have been following the Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus for a bit now, ever since I arranged to have a ship to shore remote with the crew during the South Dakota Discovery Center's water festival.   It's been both exciting and enlightening to see exploration done real time. The other night, I tuned in to the Nautilus live feed  just because I do that sort of thing. (I also watch a lot of Explore.org ) Currently, the Nautilus is mapping the Papahānaumokuākea National Marine Monument  to learn more about the seamounts (or underwater mountains) and the biological communities that live on them. This is a relatively unimpacted area of the ocean as it not fished by trawlers. I wrote about my first hand experience with trawlers  when I went to Seattle. The upshot: they are massive. I enjoyed listening to the scientists' commentary as the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) sailed through the depths. I was impressed how scientists could identify corals at a...

Back from my week away in Rocky Mountain National Park. My husband and I took a short vacation to the western side. We stayed in the town of Granby about a 20 minute drive from Kawunechee Visitor Center. We were able to get into the park fairly early every day so we saw quite a bit of animal activity including: A cow moose and her calf. Two harems with bugling elk Random elk herds, grazing Pikas and marmots Coyote scampering through the marmot area Deer On day one we hiked and got caught in the rain. Fortunately, we had rain gear with us. On day two, we hiked the Tundra trail which is where we saw the marmots and pikas. On day three we  hiked out along the Tombstone Ridge/Ute Trail, a trail above treeline, and had to turn back because of an incoming thunderstorm. Only it didn't bring rain, it brought sleet . We made it back to the car about 5 minutes before it started to precipitate. We were hauling as we hiked, stopping for nothing, not even to take a pictu...

I am blogging about the butterfly monitoring for the Adventure Scientists project at Open Explorer . But I've been neglecting the every day exploration of Earth Explorations this summer because, well, it's been summer.  Now that it is officially meteorological autumn, I feel I should get back to at least weekly entries. So this makes a nice welcome back post. What should I find in my front yard this morning but a mushroom? I've not studied mushrooms much and my field guide is somewhat vague. It is a cap and stem with gills, I think. I can't be sure, it's hard to get a look under the cap. I took a picture but the camera didn't focus well. The mushroom is growing on the edge of the lawn, near where the leaf and needle fall from deciduous and coniferous trees are. It's an adorable little fellow. I feel like it sprung up overnight but I might be that  unobservant. I'm headed out of town for a week in a few days so I won't be able to watch ...

In my previous post about the Adventure Scientists citizen science opportunity monitoring butterflies in the wilderness I stated that I did not have any photos of butterflies from previous trips to the Badlands. When I wrote that I was consulting my iNaturalist observations rather than my photos because my photos from last year came up with this photo. I did add it to iNaturalist which identified it as possibly being a Variegated Fritallary on a rabbitbrush plant. Upon further review I would agree. I will be blogging about this opportunity on Open Explorer  with occasional hops over to the Adventure Scientists blog.

I have been watching the work of Adventure Scientists  for a while. This group equips people who are going on back country adventures with the knowledge and resources to do citizen science. They came on my radar through their microplastic work. Not surprisingly, founder Greg Treinish is a Nat Geo explorer. Adventure Scientists current campaign is pollinator s. They are interested mostly in the Rocky Mountain area but I signed up (and was accepted!) to collect butterfly and butterfly habitat observations using iNaturalist in the Badlands Wilderness area. I have to complete an online training which I will do in the next week. In reviewing my observations from the field study area, I don't see any butterflies. The only arthropods I've observed are garden spiders and tumblebugs.  I am excited to try my hand at this and contribute to body of knowledge about butterflies. Swallowtail caterpillar. Not taken in the Badlands but I will be on the lookout.

I'm still blogging on Open Explorer for the moment. I popped back over here to share this picture of Japanese manhole covers. I wrote about the covers I saw in Omaha below.