5-11-11

I specifically came in today to work on my senior project. Because my office only has two computers, one for Rich and one for Angie, I had to find a day where one of them would be out of the office. The missing parts of my project included mostly maps, so I needed help from Angie. Rich was out on field visits all day so this was the perfect opportunity. I think working on these maps are the most rewarding aspect of working on these folders because you get a finished product when you are done and they look so official. It’s the fact that I solely created them, and they are going to be used in the client’s application. So today I made a location and soil map. I also worked on the CNDDB map, which ended up being a nightmare. The property is mostly forestland and has a huge amount of endangered species on the property. Then on top of having a lot of endangered/threatened/species of concern, they had multiple one occupying the same habitat. It turned into how to make various patterns on top of each other just to see that there were 4 species in this one place. But after I accomplished that, it was time to work on the conservation map. This was the part I was most concerned/most eager to do. I had done one before, but this had been without needing to make it generate a conservation plan. Normally Rich will make a conservation plan and then after, have someone make the map. According to Angie, the easier and best way to make a conservation plan is to have it generated from when you make the conservation map. This is the meat of the application since it shows what practices they are doing, where on their property it is going, and when they are scheduled to do the practices. I got to the point of drawing shapefiles in to represent the various practices but hit some problems as soon as it was time to attribute them as particular practices and make them generate the conservation plan. After a while, I needed a break because its frustrating working for an extended time in GIS. I have joked with Angie that we need stress relieving techniques to deal with GIS. Instead we got coffee and called it a day. I’m planning on setting aside another day to complete that next week.

5-9-11

Today felt like it went by much faster than it normally does, probably due to the fact that the morning was spent in the office and the 2nd half of the day was done in the field. I worked in the office making some Soil Survey maps for upcoming field visits. Recently, a lot of the maps have been difficult to create because they aren’t off a road, or the entire property is forested. Until you have been out to the property it is hard to know exactly where the boundaries are. I also helped Angie with a couple HEL forms. She had just recently found out a better way of doing this from the office by creating a layer that had topographic lines which you could control the intervals in which they are placed. From there you can figure out the length and do rise over run to find the slope of the field, without going into the field. We were mostly focusing on one of the HEL determinations we had gone out into the field to do, because the FSA had made his entire farm one field, rather than splitting it by his various fields. We were determining if maybe he wouldn’t be classified as High Erosion Level if they had split the fields. Unfortunately, that was not the case. There was also issues with the fact that the tenant was the one that asked us to do an HEL not the landowner. This meant the landowner was now liable for creating a conservation plan with the NRCS to avoid farming with the high hazard of erosion. I also spent some time working on modifying 2004 and 2006 plans. Apparently modifications of plans change a lot, especially to keep your funding. That requires changing the expected dates of practices so that people are labeled as behind and dropped from the program. It used to be a few years ago, Rich encouraged everyone to sign up for everything they thought they could achieve. Now people are having difficulty finishing them so practices have to be deleted.

The field visit today was a bit interesting. The property was above a pretty severe cliff face drop with a meandering river at the bottom. The property owner had redwoods at the back of the property as well as a deck. The problem was due to lot of drainage going through the deck and then falling down the cliff to cause a slide. There was also the fact that the redwoods have increased weight on the top of the slide and were in danger of falling, as they are a shallow rooted tree. The client wanted Rich’s opinion on cutting the redwoods and using them to make a slope stabilization structure at the bottom to stop the river from meandering too much. The danger was that the client wanted to do this without getting permitting. Without permitting means that he could actually cause great harm because no one would ensure it was done correctly, and if something did occur, the project would have to be removed and/or a fine would be given. Overall, I didn’t feel comfortable that someone was going to be making this big of a change without any oversight. I also don’t think I enjoyed the meeting because the client wanted us to abseil down the cliff by holding onto a rope tied to his deck. I had a sprained ankle; definitely wasn’t going to happen. Thankfully, Rich told him we didn’t have time.

5-2-11

Today I came in to find...no Rich. Angie informed me that Rich was sick and wasn't going to be coming in. I knew he had to be really really sick if he wasn't coming to work, because over the time I have worked with him, I know how passionate he is about working. He has repeatedly said how he doesn't understand the concept of retiring when you can still be creating good and even tried to work when the rest of the government was looking at a furlough week. This also meant that there was most likely going to be little for me to do. I continued my project from the previous week working on sending out paperwork to all Farm Bill applicants from the past 3 years which involved sending a lot of emails. After I had exhausted that task, I helped Angie with some Conservation Plans. Normally, you map the Conservation practices on the map creating a Conservation Plan Map with generates a Conservation Plan. But because Rich is anti-computer and not a fan of GIS, he has a tendency to create Conservation plans without a map. This has now become the bane of Angie's existence when she attempts to create Conservation Plan maps from the Conservation plan. When I attempted to do so, I found it to be really difficult to work backwards and create the map from only the words found in the Conservation plan. So you end up having to draw on an assortment of paperwork found in the folder. Another recent discovery is that almost all applications require some sort of modification so I spent the rest of the time changing dates for planned actions back so that the clients had more time to develop their practices. After this, there really wasn't too much I could do to help without Rich's guidance.

4-26-11

Today was a full field day, but I got to spend some time with Angie. Since she is new and is still technically not full time, Rich has not been giving her too much to do, but I was finally beginning to see some delegation of work. Because she is still learning her job and I am always learning, it is fun to work through it together. We had receieved a call from someone the day before asking for help with determining an HEL which confused me since we normally only perform HELs when someone is applying for a Farm Bill Program. However, after getting us slightly lost, we arrived at the farm to determine their slope. It turned out to be a farm name I had heard around down at the farmer's market so it was interesting to see where their products came from. Basically in determining an HEL, it is a matter of the soil type and the slope. So in this case, Angie used a slope determining tool, found what angle she was pointing to have it match with me across the field, and did a rise/run by determing what her stride equaled in feet. Because there was a flatter portion of the field and then a steeper portion, we considered these two different fields and determined the HEL for both. I also got to see Angie do a basic soil test to check whether the soil was loam or sand or clay. Apparently, in her undergrad at Cal Poly SLO, they would have competitions with other schools to compete on who could best determine the soil type. It was interesting to hear how different her version of environmental studies was compared to the program I am in at UCSC.

After struggling to drive on the unpaved land, we finally made it to our next appointment. This was a follow up meeting with one of the larger land owners for a strawberry field. They had previously met and created a mock up of the conservation plan, including sediment ponds and crop rotation. One of the problems they were facing was the fact that they rented the field out every other year to allow for different crops and were unsure of whether the other farmer would be ok with these practices. To be honest, there was a lot of repetition and this was mostly a meeting between Rich, the land owner, and Jim, the engineer and felt little to contribute. I have found that the initial meeting when we survey the property to find the problems are the ones that are most enjoyable to me because I have an opportunity to ask questions and develop my problem solving skills myself. It is extremely difficult to stay involved and interested when you are only watching a conversation and not contributing.

4-25-11

It's definitely Spring in the office which meant one thing; SPRING CLEANING! So I came in and helped get out forms to everyone in the last 3 years who had participated in any Farm Bill Funding programs. This basically entailed searching through a lot of filing cabinets to collect all the emails I could find. Once I wrote the list and prepared it to be mailed out the next day, it was on to the cleaning. The NRCS shares an office with the RCD and when your boss has been there for 25 years, things definitely begin to accumulate. The "conference room" had become a storage room to signs used by the RCD and years and years of files. I worked with Angie and John to move the 10 ft long RCD sign into the room and then began the long process of going through paperwork. Apparently, after a certain amount of years, most the files from the NRCS are supposed to be shipped to storage somewhere on the east coast. So we had to be really careful on what we threw out. There was also a lot of strange things we found. There were weird publications, still relevant today, and waders, and even my boss' old modeling resume. Eventually, we found paperwork that was no longer required but was confidential. There are occasionally times where I see how working for the federal branch varies from any other job. I ended up on staple removing and shredding for the rest of the day. Clearly, this was not the most educational day or fun day, but it was necessary. It shows the need to stay organized especially when you are required to keep paper files. But mostly it was a history into this organization and the kind of work they have produced over the years. There was a lot pertaining to issues that are still occuring today and shows that environmental work is a continued process in educating people and encouraging them to become better stewards of the land.