miércoles, 22 de febrero de 2023

2023 Amargosa Valley BioBlitz

Hello All,

The Pahrump Field Office in the Bureau of Land Management will be hosting a BioBlitz from Thursday, April 20th to Sunday, April 23rd, in Amargosa Valley, Nye Co, NV. These dates were selected primarily to coincide with the best weather possible, while still having most plants and organisms active. The days we planned the BioBlitz also happens to fall on Earth Day.

The boundary of the BioBlitz will be limited to just BLM land managed by the Pahrump Field Office, within the Amargosa Valley Drainage (see map Amargosa BioBlitz 2022_PFO BLM). Within this area there is over 555,000 acres of BLM land to cover, including three ACEC’s (Big Dune, Ash Meadows, and Amargosa Mesquite). The BioBlitz will exclude Ash Meadows NWR (USFWS), the Nevada section of Death Valley NP (NPS), Devil’s Hole (NPS), private land, and other areas of the valley under Department of Energy and Department of Defense management.

If you’ve received this email I am hoping you will assist me and other biologists within the BLM to attend this BioBlitz.

If you are able to and interested in attending this BioBlitz please reply to Corey Lange (clange@blm.gov) with your contact information (email and phone number) and you will receive all future information and emails about the BioBlitz.

If there are people you know that want to attend the BioBlitz that I did not include in this original email, please feel free to forward this email to them.

Amargosa Valley is an extremely biodiverse area, with Ash Meadows considered to have the second greatest concentration of endemic species in North America. Nearly all of the endemic species in Ash Meadows rely on springs. Some of those springs occur on BLM land, and a large portion of Carson Slough falls within the BLM’s Ash Meadows ACEC. Besides Ash Meadows, Big Dune and Lava Dune are home to at least 4 described species of endemic insects, with possibly 5 to 6 more undescribed species found nowhere else. Additionally, many of the small mountain ranges and sandy areas in Amargosa Valley have never been surveyed, and just one of many questions the BLM wants answered is what rodent species live on Big Dune and Lava Dune. Other rare or uncommon species that live in Amargosa Valley that the BLM would like more location information for include the Atomic Tarantula (Aphonopelma atomicum), Mojave Fringe-toed Lizard (Uma scoparia), LeConte’s Thrasher (Toxostoma lecontei), and White-margined Beardtongue (Penstemon albomarginatus).

Amargosa Valley has received an enormous amount of interest from the solar industry over the past couple of years with the announcement of the Green Link West project. Because of that there are now 15+ solar projects proposed for Amargosa Valley. The BLM really wants to have a greater understanding of the biodiversity of Amargosa Valley and this BioBlitz will be a huge help.

This link is to the iNaturalist project that will collect all of the observations that are made during the BioBlitz. Please join the project and I will be sending more information about the BioBlitz soon
.
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/2023-amargosa-valley-bioblitz

Thank you,

Corey Lange

Publicado el miércoles, 22 de febrero de 2023 a las 05:00 PM por coreyjlange coreyjlange | 11 comentarios | Deja un comentario

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