What's Happening

The Cedar River Watershed is offering a course in lichens, taught by Katherine Glew. This course will take place on Sunday, June 5. The course will cover a description of lichens, where they occur and time in the watershed to view the lichens in their natural habitat.

There is a lot of lichen diversity in the watershed, being further out from urban pollution.

Details to be posted as we get closer to June.

A real bargain at $20 for 5 hours of fun lichen time!

Hello Northwest Lichenologists and enthusiasts,

It is that time of year again – the call for contributions to the 2016 Northwest Lichenologists Newsletter!

We would like to see contributions from the following areas:

Personals
Recent publications and web sites
Results from forays and field trips
Upcoming workshops/courses offered
New and interesting lichen species
Project descriptions and results – current and proposed
Short communications, articles

Short biographies

Lichen jobs being advertised for the upcoming year

We encourage interesting photos or links to web sites. If you would like to submit a short paper, keep in mind that it must already be edited for spelling and punctuation. As editors, we work on the formatting of submissions for the newsletter. We cannot accept papers that need grammatical revising.

Besides the above suggestions, we will consider anything relating to northwest lichenology that you can think of – including artwork, poetry, photography, etc.

Please send your submissions to Scot Loring <gniroltocs@hotmail.com> 

Submissions will generally be placed in their applicable section of the newsletter in the order received.  Please pass this e-mail on if you know of someone who is interested but does not receive postings on the NWL server. We would like to receive any submissions by March 3, 2016.  Any entries received after that date will likely be placed in the 2017 newsletter.  Apologies for any multiple copies of this email, as we use multiple mailing lists.

Sincerely,

Scot Loring

Editor

http://northwest-lichenologists.wildapricot.org/

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From Chris Lauver, of NPS:

2016 is the Centennial of the National Park Service!  In celebration, NPS is teaming up with the National Geographic Society to conduct BioBlitzes and Biodiversity celebrations at more than 100 National Parks across the country on May 20-21, 2016. 

You may already be aware that a BioBlitz is a biological inventory where teams of volunteers, each led by a subject matter expert, find and identify as many species as possible within a 24-hour period.

In the Pacific Northwest, NPS is holding BioBlitzes at 8 units of the National Park Service: San Juan Island National Historical Park, Olympic National Park, North Cascades National Park Service Complex, Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve, Mount Rainier National Park, Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, and Klondike Goldrush - Seattle Unit National Historical Park. We hope you can be part of the Pacific Northwest BioBlitz. 

We are currently recruiting field biologists and naturalists to participate in the Pacific Northwest BioBlitz, and we invite you to join us! We are excited to have your help in documenting the park’s biodiversity and in sharing your knowledge about and enthusiasm for nature with students, teachers, and the general public.

Sign up now (before February 15) at: 

https://nationalgeographic.formstack.com/forms/bioblitz_pacific_northwest_scientist_registration_form)

If you want a little more information about BioBlitzes, or need help convincing your friends and colleagues to join, here’s a short video explaining why the National Park Service is conducting them: What is your Niche?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKgYcIAsQaI&feature=youtu.be

Thank you for your consideration. We hope you will be a part of the National Parks BioBlitz!

Sincerely,

Chris Lauver, PhD

Senior Science Advisor, Pacific West Region, National Park Service

Pacific Northwest CESU & Great Basin CESU

Affiliate Associate Professor, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences

Box 352100, University of Washington

Seattle, WA  98195

Email:    Chris_Lauver@nps.gov

Phone:   206-685-7404

Web sites:  http://coenv.washington.edu/faculty/chris-lauver/

http://www.cfr.washington.edu/research.cesu/

Katherine Glew is offering a 2 hour lichen experience at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery on Saturday, January 30 from 10:00am to noon. This offering will occur - rain, shine wind, snow.........

To sign up for the course and read a description, go to the following link:

http://depts.washington.edu/uwbg/visit/calendar.shtml?trumbaEmbed=eventid%3D117230255%26view%3Devent%26-childview%3D

Cost: $25 per lichen enthusiast.

There are special rate rooms at the Super 8 Motel in Klamath Falls, for the lichen workshop, in April. The motel is very near the OIT campus. If you are interested, tell them it's for the Biodiversity Research Collective Lichen Workshop.

Phone# is- 541-884-8880

Email - super8kfalls@yahoo.com

Daphne Stone will be teaching a class on four of the more difficult lichen genera at Siskiyou Field Institute, 12-14 April 2016. The genera covered will be Usnea, Melanelia (in the greater sense), Peltigera and Bryoria.  To register, please go to their website http://www.thesfi.org/index.asp.

In 2015, NWL members Daphne Stone and Amanda Hardman and botanist Katie Beck visited The Columbia Land Trust's Margerum Ranch, near Lyle WA. The Ranch has ancient oaks in a rolling savannah setting. Katie had previously collected what we believe to be Calicium quercinum here, and we wanted to revisit the site to collect more information about the population.

This year, NWL has the opportunity to revisit the site, which is rarely open to the public. There are two ways to attend. NWL will be camping nearby and visiting on Friday, 20 May 2016.  To register and get more information about that visit, please contact Daphne Stone at daphstone@gmail.com. If you would like to take the Columbia Land Trust tour on Sat., 21 May 2016, please register at Looking for Lichen.

Sarah Jovan and Andrea Pipp were newly elected to the NWL Board last weekend. Board members serve a two year term. The continuing board members are: Lin Kyan, Charity Glade, and John Villella. Scot Loring and Steve Sheehy continue to serve as alternate directors.

We had a successful board meeting with 14 participants, lots of good discussion, and lots of exciting things planned for the future.

Remember, you are welcome to participate in these meetings -- you do not need to be on the board.

Third International Workshop on Biological Soil Crusts

September 26-30, 2016 - Moab, Utah, USA 

The Third International Workshop on Biological Soil Crusts (BIOCRUST 3) will bring together international scientists working in disciplines such as physiology; taxonomy and systematics; genetics and genomics; restoration; and population, community, ecosystem and landscape ecology. Within BIOCRUST 3, these different fields are unified by their common interest in biological soil crusts, or biocrusts, as a study system. Biocrusts are like a living skin of the Earth, composed of many distinct organisms regulating ecosystem processes in modern ecosystems, and serving as a modern analog for some of the earliest ecological communities on land.

For more information:

http://nau.edu/merriam-powell/biocrust3/

Stephen Sharnoff and Andy Kerr are starting a campaign to create a National Monument dedicated to the iconic Douglas-fir tree in the central Oregon Cascades. Similar in concept to Redwood National Park, this monument would honor the Douglas fir and the ecosystem associated with it. The area for this monument is federal land in the Cascades from Opal Creek in the north to south of the Menagerie Wilderness in the south. The campaign now has a website:  http://www.douglasfirnationalmonument.org/

Steve will be in Portland Jan 10-12 to meet with people/groups, and in Eugene for a talk on Mar. 1 and then to attend the PIELC Mar. 3-6. He then will be in Corvallis for several talks, including one on Apr. 21, another on Apr. 26. If you are interested I encourage you to meet up with Steve (lichen@idiom.com) at any of these times to learn more.