Week 6

At our first stop of the day next to the Yakima river, the first thing I noticed were the columnar basalts in the mountain side. This stood out to me because I am also taking a geology course, and briefly discussed these formations, and now get to see a real life example. The columnar basalts we saw later in the day when we visited the Ponderosa forest were especially cool because they looked like man-made ancient ruins despite being natural formations.

These volcanic rocks also stood out to me, porous from gas bubbles
getting caught in the rock during the cooling process. 

In my geology course, I haven’t taken any field trips, so it’s interesting to see geological processes out in the field as opposed to in class where it doesn’t seem as tangible or relevant. 

These areas east of the Cascades had much different fauna than on the west side. Most simply put, things were mostly brown instead of green, due to the drier weather caused by the rain shadow effect of the cascades. Vegetation on the leeward side of the Cascades has adapted to drier weather and can survive on less moisture year round. The predominant plant in this area is sagebrush, both tall and stiff. They have fuzzy leaves for the purpose of retaining moisture on their leaf surface, as water will not easily slip off the surface if there is texture for it to hold on to (cohesion.)

       Tall Sagebrush. Note the fuzzy, lobed, trident-shaped leaves.

There was a lot of pale green (you can't
tell in the picture, but it's green) crustose
lichen growing on the rocks.

                                Cactus I found by the river.

Plant I'm seeking to identify. About 12 leaflets per leaf, and it produces an upright cluster of berries. Branching pattern alternate.

           

Plant with a red-brown stalk and an alternate branching pattern. The leaves look like elongated heart shapes. Leaf margins are finely toothed.

I noticed that on the east side, most species, especially deciduous species, grow almost exclusively on river banks, as they can only survive right next to the water source in this arid region. (See above picture.)

At our second stop, there were many grassy mounds that grew a different grass species than the land around them, implying a different soil. I have no idea why different soils would disperse in such a way to create mounds of a different soil type other than the underlying rocky soil of the lithosol zone. Stiff sagebrush was one of the only species growing here besides grasses, I’m assuming because the soil is too firm for roots to grow through it. I’m guessing the roots of stiff sagebrush are stiff as well to be able to penetrate through rocky soil. 

 The mounds grew the longer, more yellow grass.

The hard, rocky soil of the lithosol zone. 

Being a forest, our third stop had a lot of different fauna to check out. I noticed there was a lot of snowberry along the trail. There was also a lot of some kind of cattail. As for trees, black alders and ponderosa pines were common. 

Examples of trees that reproduce through cloning. The first picture is of a family of aspens, with the mama tree in the middle (in the background.) The second picture is a family of black alders.

The field had a lot of cattails and grasses that look like rye. 

An example of male and female catkins on one tree (Black Alder.)

Fairy Trumpet Lichen, growing from a fallen nurse log.

I noticed that a lot of trees such as black alders grow out of dead Ponderosa Pines, as if they are standing nurse logs.

It was interesting to see Douglas Fir, which towers over the other trees on the west side, be the understory of Ponderosa Pine in this area. I enjoy seeing how the roles of different trees and plants change in relativity to their environment.

A pretty deciduous plant I don't know the name of. Has a red stalk, alternating branches, and about 7 leaflets per leaf. The berries are red and not in clusters.

Because I don't go east of the Cascades often, I wasn't very familiar with the vegetation patterns in this area. All I really knew from my previous trips to eastern Washington was that everything was pretty brown and desert-looking. This field trip was a good opportunity to study this area of Washington in more detail.