Biodiversity Survey on the Mt. Tamalpais Watershed's Journal

One week until we meet for the Lake Lagunitas Nature Challenge Event! We hope to see you on Saturday, April 28th. You don’t need to register for the event but it will help you day of if you login before the event.

1. Create an iNaturalist account at www.inaturalist.org.
2. Smart phone owners: Download the app to your phone!
3. Watch these VIDEOS to become familiar with iNaturalist: www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials
4. Join this event’s iNaturalist group and learn more about the City Nature Challenge at https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2018-at-lake-lagunitas . Click “Join this project” in the top right hand corner. This will allow you to be fully registered!

The Lake Lagunitas event is from 10am until 2pm. We will host iNaturalist how-to’s, guided excursions (each focusing on a different taxa, like reptiles and amphibians, fungi, plants, birds, etc.), and be there to answers questions all day. You may join us for the entire event or show up at any point. Free parking for participants.

Don’t forget, any iNaturalist observation in the SF Bay Area from April 27th – 30th will count for the SF Bay Area Group in the 2018 City Nature Challenge. We hope you all can help us #BeatLA and the rest of the 58 cities taking part in the City Nature Challenge!

Please let us know if you have any questions. We look forward to exploring nature with you.

Suzanne Whelan
Watershed Volunteer Coordinator
415-945-1169
swhelan@marinwater.org

Stay up-to-date with observations! While this is our first journal entry since 2015, we add new observations all the time (and not just plants)! http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/biodiversity-survey-on-the-mt-tamalpais-watershed

Our list is now over 1,000 plants! When we started in 2012, we had around 900. We’ve seen a startling increase in species, and they’re not all weeds! We’ve also actually added more than 100 taxa, since we have removed a few from the list.  http://www.calflora.org/entry/plantlist.html#vrid=px77

The greater One Tam area has seen over 80 native plants disappear in the last 50 years. MMWD has lost around 100, in all likelihood, but the strongly coastal areas still within “One Tam” has populations of several hangers-on. Many of these are fire-followers and (hopefully) still in the seedbank; but lots of them have moved north and west or are wet area species and likely these losses are in response to climate change.  http://www.calflora.org/entry/plantlist.html#vrid=px453

We need fewer than 250 plants to be “done.” We have been quite successful picking these off a few at a time; last week we caught Gilia clivorum, Lupinus formosus var. formosus, and Trifolium bifidum var. bifidum, and followed up on a report and found a rare plant not seen on district land in a while (it has been seen on State Parks recently), Calandrinia breweri. It’s an excellent plant year, and we have high hopes we’ll make a serious dent in this list—sadly for the loss of society, camaraderie, and teamwork, without public safaris.  http://www.calflora.org/entry/plantlist.html#vrid=px296

If you would like to stay involved, and share your “expertise” at botanical blitzing, the California Academy of Sciences and One Tam are each running several all-taxa blitzes over the next couple months. We are working on additional ways for you to continue using your powers of observation for the good of the mountain, and appreciate all you have contributed.

Also check out the lovely article about this project in Bay Nature magazine, participate in the lecture What the Heck Is Citizen Science and Why is it So Important? and join the City Nature Challenge SF vs LA competition!

Thank you!

Our Friday June 12 safari was a success! It was hot, but every group managed to find and collect more plant species that we needed. Plus we hit an exciting milestone, as stated by Andrea:

"We got all 8 Galiums. Put that bedstraw to bed. In fact, we finished that whole family."

Our next safari dates are Friday, July 24 and Saturday, July 25.

We had another great day of safari-ing on Saturday, May 9! We've also put some more dates on the calendar for the next couple months:

Friday, June 12
Friday, July 24 & Saturday, July 25

Hope to see you out there!

We were out on safari again April 10 & 11. Slowly but surely chipping away at the remaining species we need to collect!

Join us for our next safari, Friday April 24!

For the 2015 season, we're doing something a little different - going out on safari, instead of working inside of plots! This helps in the push to get the remaining plants we know are on the watershed, but we have not yet collected.

The last week in March, we were safari-ing at the Nicasio Reservoir:

Don your pith helmet and join us for our next safaris, Friday April 10 and Saturday April 11!

from Andrea Williams, MMWD Vegetation Ecologist

The “Lakes Region” of Mount Tamalpais is as beautiful and diverse as it sounds, and the most-visited portion of our watershed lands. In 2013 we spent several days documenting that diversity and impact. With the contribution 65 dedicated volunteers and over 800 hours of time and effort, we once again made over 700 plant observations over the course of our blitz days! These observations represent over 200 taxa, including 25 not on MMWD’s species list; they are supported by nearly 350 specimens now curated in the California Academy of Science’s herbarium, by hundreds of records in iNaturalist and thousands of exquisite photographs. We documented weeds just coming into Marin: the first collections of Oriental hedge mustard (Sisymbrium orientale), African asparagus fern (Asparagus asparagoides), and woolly clover (Trifolium tomentosum) for the entire county! We found exciting wetland plants that were mysteriously not yet on MMWD’s species list: water plantain (Alisma triviale), whorled marsh pennywort (Hydrocotyle verticillata), and two species of waterpepper (Persicaria)! We owe these accomplishments to you: the team leaders, photographers, plant collectors, and data recorders who made our Saturday Bioblitz events the fun, inspiring, and productive days they were.

We're excited for the 2014 “West Side” field season, with trainings in February and survey dates starting in March! If you'd like to be a citizen scientist on our all-day bioblitz surveys, contact citizenscience@calacademy.org

You can also contribute photographs of of wildlife and plants observed in the water district by uploading your observations to this project page in iNaturalist.

Last year was amazing! With your contribution of time and effort, we made nearly 700 plant observations over the course of our blitz days! These observations represent over 300 taxa, including 42 not represented in collections from the mountain; they are supported by over 200 specimens now curated in the California Academy of Science’s herbarium, by hundreds of records in Calflora and thousands of exquisite photographs. We collected first tinker’s penny (Hypercium anagalloides) in east Marin and the first smooth cat’s ear (Hypochaeris glabra) from Mt. Tamalpais. We owe these accomplishments to you: the team leaders, photographers, plant collectors, and data recorders who made our Saturday Bioblitz events the fun, inspiring, and productive days they were.

We're gearing up for the 2013 field season, with trainings in February and survey dates starting in March! If you'd like to be a citizen scientist on our all-day bioblitz surveys, contact citizenscience@calacademy.org

You can also contribute photographs of of wildlife and plants observed in the water district by uploading your observations to this project page in iNaturalist.

Thanks to Andrea Williams from MMWD for the summary of our 2012 accomplishments.