New Remote Sensing Minor

A Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) image of the Wind River Mountains.

(click image to view larger)

The Botany Department is excited to offer a new undergraduate Minor inRemote Sensing!

You may not know that Botany has been central in remote sensing education at UW for over a decade, since we began teaching courses on the applications of satellite imagery and aerial photography for plant studies.  With increased interest from UW students, we’ve steadily increased the number of remote sensing courses we offer, and now students can be recognized on their diplomas for coursework exploring this increasingly marketable science.  Courses for the Minor cover basic and advanced remote sensing techniques, specialized applications of remote sensing, hands-on digital image analysis, other geospatial tools, like GIS, and fundamental plant ecology, which can contribute to image analysis. 

Find out more about the new Minor on the Botany Website or by contacting the Botany Department.

Introducing Laramie Junior High School Students to Remote Sensing Concepts and Applications

One hundred and fourteen students in Ron Whitman’s eight grade physical and seventh grade biological sciences classes (three class periods each on April 4^th and 5^th, 2012) learned how remotely sensed images are acquired in different regions of the electromagnetic radiation (EMR) and their uses for monitoring earth surface features such as trees, crops, bare ground, water, roads, buildings, etc.

Botany faculty member and WyomingView coordinator Ramesh Sivanpillai described the differences in the interaction of earth surface features with EMR, and how those interactions result in their appearances or colors.  Students learned the uses of images collected by satellites and airplanes for monitoring the effects of beetle attacks on pine trees, deforestation, crop growth, and changes in the surface areas of lakes and reservoirs.  Mr. Whitman commented that the presentation helped “students understand the use of different electromagnetic waves for practical applications.”

In the lab, students working in teams used ALTA ™ Spectrometers to measure spectral reflectance in 10 different regions of EMR.  Next, they calculated percent reflectance values, which were then plotted against wavelength to generate the spectral signature for each leaf.  

Analyses of these signatures led the students to conclude that the spectral signature of each leaf was distinct.  

Hands-on lab component for measuring and calculating “percent reflectance of the four types of leaves at different wavelengths, actively engaged the students the entire lab time” Mr. Whitman said.  Sivanpillai explained the differences in the spectral signatures of different earth surface features and remote sensing scientists rely on these signatures for mapping those features.

This educational outreach activity was conducted as part of AmericaView’s Earth Observation Day activities aimed at introducing teachers and students to remote sensing science and applications.

Extraordinary Discovery of an Ice Age Ecosystem near Snowmass Village, Colorado

Dane Miller

Graduate Student MS, UW Botany Department

On, October 14, 2010, Jessie Steel, a machine operator for an excavation company, unearthed bones of a Columbian Mammoth in a reservoir near Snowmass Village, Colorado. The news of the mammoth discovery captivated the locals in the ski resort towns of Snowmass and nearby Aspen. The buzz of the area shifted seemingly overnight from gossip about celebrities, luxury homes, and skiing to talk of an unimaginable world filled with huge animals such as mammoths, mastodons, and sloths that roamed the same landscape. Within days after the initial mammoth bones were unearthed, construction workers continued to find more bones including tusks, limb bones, vertebrae, jaws, and teeth of ice age animals at an astonishing rate. Reports trickled out from the construction site about the unusual preservation of the bones and plant material found in nearly pristine condition—remarkably the plant material still contained its green waxy cuticle.

Denver Post article: "Snowmass tally: 10 mastodons, 4 mammoths, one "once-in-a-lifetime" find"

Dane Miller at the excavation site
(Photo by Mr. Rick Wicker, photographer, Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  Used with permission from DMNS) 

The news of the discovery rapidly spread across Colorado like wildfire. The Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS) stepped in as the lead research group behind the leadership of Kirk Johnson and Ian Miller (curators of paleontology at the DMNS). Ian, who happens to be my older brother, immediately called me up and told me to clear my calendar for November. He said “Dane, you better start packing, next week we’re going to be excavating mammoths and mastodons.” My brother always seems to call me up when there is either a cool fossil site to excavate or going skiing—he always wants his brothers around. I have worked with my brother for more than 10 years collecting fossil plants in Washington, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. Prior to the Snowmass dig I had worked at the DMNS as a research assistant and the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History as a lab manager/curatorial assistant, so it wasn’t as if I was jumping into field work for the first time. I was asked to do several duties on the Snowmass site beyond just collecting bones and plant material: I led volunteers, assisted research scientists, and labeled specimens. My most dangerous job was running alongside the blade of massive D6 bulldozers moving at nearly full speed as I looked for bones coming out of the mud.   

Denver Museum of Nature & Science: Crews race against winter weather ...
Snowmass Sun article: Family affair ...

My first full day on site blew me away. The site was nothing I had imagined or was really prepared for: working alongside massive heavy machinery, running through three to four feet of cold mud, and tripping over fossils literally everywhere. With every pass of the bulldozers, more bones were unearthed as the site shifted from a couple animals to dozens of animals. The site truly was an emergency room, treating the critically injured (those that were badly damaged by the heavy machinery) first, and triaging the rest. No one had any idea how large this story would become, or knew how it would change Snowmass Village, Colorado. We did know we were a part of history, something truly special.

Colorado State Senator's Press Conference will unveil ...

The find that is etched in my mind forever is a mammoth jaw I discovered. I had come around the side of the portapotty, an area the Museum had originally deemed to be void of fossils in the upper clay layer. I was curious to see what the excavator was digging when I noticed a large mammoth jaw sticking out of the clay. I immediately had the operator stop what he was doing, and ran as fast as I could to get a vertebrate paleontologist to verify my discovery. My brother Ian insists that I was possessed by mastodon spirits. This is his only explanation why I was able to find so many bones. Who knows, maybe I was! 

In the spring of 2011, the Denver Museum organized a highly structured field operation to hand dig the bones where the toe of the dam for new reservoir would eventually be placed. In eight weeks of digging, and with the help of nearly 200 Museum volunteers, we dug up nearly 6,000 bones. I had the privilege of leading a team of 10-12 volunteers over the eight weeks, digging, mapping, and collecting bones and plant material. The Museum also brought in 40 scientists who specialize in Pleistocene and Quaternary time to begin bringing all the science together. By mid-spring a team of scientists from the US Geological Survey (USGS) in Lakewood, Colorado, were able to determine radiocarbon dates from a piece of wood as old as 39,500 years. Other dating techniques have constrained the age of the lake between 130,000 to 39,500 years old. 

Why is this site so special?

1. Exceptional preservation: bones, plant material, and cones still intact as if they were deposited yesterday, which is extremely rare in paleontology. 
2. Diversity:  Complete Pleistocene ecosystem: ~ 40 vertebrates and ~ 20 plant species. 
3. Elevation: Paleontological sites at high elevation are very rare. 
4. Time: The site is between 130,000 and 40,000 years old. More than 90,000 years of Pleistocene history are captured in this reservoir, providing a unique opportunity to explore high elevation Rocky Mountains ecosystems. 
5. aDNA: This site may be able to push the limits of aDNA further than ever because of the exceptional preservation.

As a graduate student in the Botany Department at University of Wyoming pursuing a Masters in Botany with Dr. Stephen Jackson, I've been fortunate enough to continue to work on the Snowmass project. My Master’s thesis is focused on the conifer cones and needles collected at the Snowmass site. I will be applying various morphometric techniques, taxonomy, and aDNA molecular analysis to help add to our understanding of Pleistocene conifer forests in the Rocky Mountains.

Additional links:

New York Times: Pleistocene Treasures, at a Breakneck Pace (July 4, 2011)

NOVA (PBS): Ice Age Death Trap (Dec 15, 2011)

People's Press: Digging Snowmastodon: Discovering an ice age world in the Colorado Rockies (Book)

Dr. Steve Jackson's Quaternary Plant Ecology Laboratory webpage

Plant Sale - 2012 February

The Botany Club recently held a plant sale in the Williams Conservatory. This is a traditional event for the club to generate support for its activities which include purchasing additional plants for the Conservatory to further diversify the collection for all to enjoy.

The Botany Club is free and open to anyone interested in plants and has funded a variety of field trips in the past to places such as the Denver Botanical Gardens, Celestial Seasonings, Fantasy Orchid Nurseries outside of Boulder, Bath Greenhouses in Ft. Collins, Cheyenne Botanical Gardens and Yellowstone National Park. 

The Botany Club is a student organization and is dependent on student initiative to coordinate meetings and activities. It is a good way to interact with faculty, staff, students, and the community.

--- Contributed by BJ Mitchell & Bill Higgins

What will Wyoming's grasslands look like in a hundred years?

Warming temperatures and rising carbon dioxide in the air are likely to shift the dominant plant species and alter soil nutrient availability, according to experimental conditions in the Prairie Heating and CO2 Enrichment experiment near Cheyenne. The experiment is being conducted in native grassland by Botany professors Elise Pendall and Dave Williams, in collaboration with Jack Morgan and other researchers at the Agricultural Research Service in Fort Collins, CO.

Results from the first three years suggest that cool season grasses, favored by grazers, may give way to warm season species with lower forage quality. However, warmer temperature increases the availability of nitrogen in soil, a key ingredient of proteins in leaves. This may offset reductions in tissue quality brought about by the higher carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and species shifts. More details can be found in our paper published in Nature.

The balance between carbon dioxide uptake by plants and decomposition in grassland soils will determine how much carbon is ultimately stored in ecosystems. Williams’ group is studying how photosynthesis reacts to the experimental conditions. Pendall is studying these carbon cycling processes using chambers designed for the experiment, shown in the photo with graduate research assistant Nick Brown. Carbon cycling is affected by the futuristic carbon dioxide levels, especially during low-precipitation years, but the grassland ecosystem is more resilient to warmer temperatures.

For more information, contact Dr. Elise Pendall, pendall@uwyo.edu, or visit the Pendall Lab website at https://sites.google.com/site/pendalllab/.

Mushrooms fruting in AV

The choice edible and medicinal mushroom Shiitake (Lentinula edodes) is putting on a fantastic showing in the display case on second floor outside AV 207, thanks to the efforts of the students in the Spring 2011 BOT 4330 Cultivation of Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms course.  


The course is taught in the Spring Semester, and these sawdust mushroom blocks have been overwintering since the end of the course in May 2011.  The cool temperature in the basement of the Aven Nelson building has encouraged these mushrooms to begin fruiting earlier than expected.


The course will begin again in January.  Further details about this course can be found in the University Catalog.  Contact Dr. Steve Miller for additional questions.

Floristic Inventory of the White River National Forest and Vicinity

Michael Kirkpatrick

Graduate Student, UW Botany Department

Unlike some of my colleagues, I wasn't born with a lens in hand.  I stumbled into botany en route, I thought, to a career in wildlife management and a desire to work with wolves.  As with many aspects of nature, learning about one leads to deeper, unexpected questions about the whole, and during a volunteer experience at a wolf sanctuary in Colorado I "discovered" my interest in plants.

Ron Hartman and Josh Irwin in the
Colorado River Valley, Mesa County

Subsequently, I've been able to develop my skills and interests in botany through several seasons of work with the US Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service.  As I became more involved in field botany, and the itinerant lifestyle it requires, I developed a nagging feeling that my work with rare plants was just scratching the surface.  I got to know a select number of taxa particularly well, but I was mostly ignorant when it came to the rest of plant biodiversity.  I also felt that I didn't have a framework to help me make sense of what I was seeing from place-to-place and year-to-year.

These concerns, coupled with fortuitous mentoring by former graduates of the Hartman lab (Brian Elliott, Walt Fertig and Laura Welp-Fertig), set me on my current path.  I can honestly say I've found in Ron Hartman's program exactly what I was seeking those many years, and more.

Over the past two summers, I and other collaborators, including Ron Hartman, Ernie Nelson, and Lori Brummer, have collected over 11,400 specimens from the White River NF and adjacent lands south of the Colorado River.  My study area comprises about 4,200 mi2 in northwest Colorado.  It is located on the west slope of the Rocky Mountains, spanning from the eastern edge of the Colorado Plateau to the Continental Divide, and includes all or part of Summit, Pitkin, Eagle, Mesa, Garfield and Gunnison counties.  It comprises a fascinating geological cross section of Colorado, beginning in the mesa country to the west and passing eastward, and upward, through the Precambrian uplifts that comprise the Elk, Sawatch, Gore, and Front Ranges.

Hiking the Continental Divide through Summit County

Geologic, topographic, and substrate diversities provide a multitude of habitats, ranging from steppes and shrublands to alpine meadows, from rock faces and talus slopes to fens and riparian corridors.  Habitat diversity contributes to great plant diversity, including numerous local and regional endemics.

During the summer of 2010, I found over 50 taxa tracked by the Colorado Natural Heritage Program, and many more "rare" species will be tallied before I’m done.  With about one third of my specimens identified, I've counted well over 600 unique taxa representing about 60 vascular plant families.

Over the coming year I’m looking forward to finding out what other surprises await in the 30 or more boxes of specimens remaining.  This curiosity keeps me coming back to the microscope day after day with renewed interest.  Some people read mystery novels; I look forward to the mysteries locked up (for now) inside my plant specimens and what they can tell me (and us) about one small corner of the natural world.

This winter promises to be busy and exciting, watching snow quietly descend over the UW campus while working through my backlog of plant collections, each specimen a unique answer to a complex question of nature.

Floristics in the Uncompahgre Basin and Greater Grand Mesa Area

Lori Brummer

Graduate Student, UW Botany Department

Summer 2011: 10,220 miles driven, 263 miles hiked, and 5,206 plants collected. Area: 4,335 square miles including 1,137 square miles of BLM land and 1,407 square miles of Forest Service land. May 27: 3 sites visited, 150 plants collected, 232 miles driven, 12 hours in the field. Don’t be fooled, these floristics projects are really a numbers game.

Adobe hills near Delta Colorado

Located in west-central Colorado, the Uncompahgre Basin and greater Grand Mesa study area ranges in elevation from 4,640 feet along the Gunnison River to the 14,150 foot summit of Mt. Sneffels. There are many trails to hike, lots of back country roads to explore, and innumerable rocks to flatten tires. The study area contains a variety of habitats including desert grass and shrublands, pinyon-juniper woodlands, spruce-fir forests, and alpine slopes. One of the most interesting habitats in the region is the adobe hill badlands. Derived from a layer of Mancos shale, these otherworldly looking hillsides are home to several endemic species including adobe hills thistle (Cirsium perplexans), Uncompahgre bladderpod (Lesquerella vicinia), adobe desert parsley (Lomatium concinnum), and adobe hills beardtongue (Penstemon retrorsus). Also found on these hillsides and in the surrounding desert landscape is the federally threatened Colorado hookless cactus, Sclerocactus glaucus.

Dominguez Canyon

Two major landforms in the region are Grand Mesa and the Uncompahgre Plateau, both excellent refuges when the temperatures in the lowlands top out at over 100 degrees. Grand Mesa, a large basalt covered mesa that reaches elevations of over 11,000 feet, is covered with spruce-fir forests, aspen woodlands, hundreds of small lakes, high elevation fens, and mosquitoes galore. The west and southwest sections of the study area are bounded by the Uncompahgre Plateau, a distinctive uplift that is part of the Colorado Plateau. Gently sloping up from the valley, it reaches elevations of over 10,000 feet. The plateau is ribboned with a series of canyons, created by down cutting of streams through mostly sedimentary rocks. One of the most beautiful of these is Dominguez Canyon with high, red sandstone walls, seeps that contain Eastwood’s Monkeyflower (Mimulus eastwoodiae), big horn sheep, and hordes of pinyon gnats.

A floristics project is not for the faint of heart – the days are long (this is not a 9-5 gig!), the work physically demanding, most of it solitary, and some of those backcountry roads…! However, with creativity, friends and family can be convinced to help. I owe much of my successful 2011 season to those who joined me in the field including Ernie Nelson, Linda Deeds, and Kim Hansen. Of course, being herbarium manger, Ernie had to help, but that makes him no less fun to be in the field with – especially since he presses what he collects. Non-botanist friends Kim and Linda traveled out from Nebraska to experience some time in the high country. Not only were they better at getting the whole plant than I, but they enjoyed pressing, and even numbered extra newsprint before heading back to the flatlands. The family dogs joined my husband Joe in the field with me on occasion. They were great company, but often more entertainment than help. As Joe has been totally supportive of this venture in more ways than one, he is forgiven for not wanting to help press plants. Botanical assistant of the year, though, has to go to my youngest son, Tyler. A graduate student at Montana State University, he made time in his busy mountain biking schedule to come down and backpack with me into Wetterhorn Basin. A pretty good botanist, not only did he collect the highest part of the basin, but he hauled out about 300 of the 400 plants we collected.

Colorado hookless cactus, Sclerocactus glaucus

The days are shorter now, but the hours are still long. The product of a field season and a half, about 6,500 collections, sit in boxes, most of which await identification. Now, there’s a number I don’t want to think about – especially since another full season is planned on the project! Classes, herbarium work, and commuting from Fort Collins have certainly slowed down the id process. And even though I enjoy herbarium work and identifying the plants I have collected, I find my mind wandering to the adventures of last summer. Flushing ptarmigan and sage grouse chicks, watching a bear and her cub climb a tree, long hikes, and backcountry excursions. What a job – driving down a road just to see what’s there, hiking, collecting plants, all in a landscape that can move me to tears. Is it summer yet?

Revised on: 3 Feb 2012


NOTE: Thanks to Dorde Woodruff for making me aware of the common name change for Sclerocactus glaucus.

A Floristic inventory of the Salmon-Challis National Forest

Josh Irwin

Graduate Student, UW Botany Department

During two summers in east-central Idaho, I saw more mountains and desert lands than many Americans see in their entire lives. This region includes seven major mountain ranges and most of Idaho's top 100 summits. There are hundreds of miles of deep gorges along the Salmon River and its tributaries. To the north, one finds groves of grand fir and alpine larch, while to the south, one finds saltbush, greasewood and desert annuals more typical of the Great Basin. In many areas, local relief is nearly a vertical mile from valley bottom to ridgetop. Whenever I climbed to the top of a ridge or peak, I would look out in every direction where, as far as I could see . . . my study area. Since the project was funded by the Salmon-Challis National Forest, most collections (ca. 11,000) occur on US Forest Service lands. Where species were expected to occur exclusively on low elevation BLM lands, these areas were also surveyed.

Foothills of the Lost River Range;
careful driving is necessary in a 2wd.

All the numbers add up to an enormous project, leaving little time for leisure. The commitment to a floristic inventory is not to be taken lightly; 12-14 hr. work days are the norm both in the field and at the herbarium. I can remember early on in my first semester here at UWyo. I thought to myself, “wow, I just finished identifying 150 plants”. Now, at the time of this writing, I’ve identified around six thousand specimens. After awhile it becomes a routine – though each specimen is unique, the process of identification is a careful balance between speed and confidence. I was not altogether inexperienced when I first arrived at UWyo, but I had never undertaken a project of such a grand scale.

While many refer to a floristic inventory as descriptive science, there are many subtle questions which one could explore with additional time and motivation. For example, what biogeographic factors influence the occurrence and distribution of the flora? what are the patterns of diversity across environmental gradients? Between patches, localities and regions? In such an inventory, one practically expects to discover new populations of rare plants, but there is also the slight chance of finding an undiscovered species.

A Floristic inventory of the Ashland and Sioux Ranger Districts of Custer National Forest

Hans Hallman
Graduate Student, UW Botany Department

June 2009 saw the start of two field seasons of floristic inventory of the Sioux and Ashland Ranger Districts of Custer National Forest in southeastern Montana and northwestern South Dakota, as well as surrounding BLM lands. Having come straight from field work in southern Nevada where I was working in burned landscapes where trees are few and far between, the ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests and relatively lush green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) draws of Custer were quite a change in scenery. Overall, ca. 9,000 plant specimens were collected during the summers of 2009 and 2010, with a quick trip back in 2011 to pick up a couple of specimens of coralroot (Corallorhiza sp.) and orchard grass (Dactylis glomerata) in a more identifiable condition than when I first located them in 2010.

A green-ash draw along with grass- and badlands

Interesting habitat types completely exotic to me when I began the project were the numerous badlands that I was able to collect on. Hosting a sparse, yet distinctive, vegetative community, including species such as saltgrass (Distichlis spicata) and greasewood (Sarcobatus vermiculatus), the badlands and their exposed substrate horizons of dark brown to rose to white, and rain-sculpted rills and gullies sometimes 50 or more feet deep, often had me thinking I was on a different planet, especially after a long, tiring day of solo hiking and collecting. A highlight of collecting in one of these habitats was locating a new population of Visher’s buckwheat (Eriogonum visheri) in Montana, only the second population known from the state.

Thanks to tips throughout the collecting seasons from Sioux District Ranger Kurt Hansen, access to certain areas of the forest was streamlined, and several populations of regionally rare plants were located, including lesser yellow lady’s slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum var. parviflorum).

Identification of plant material is nearing completion, and I expect to soon start writing my thesis.