Test Plot Log

DISTURBANCE

Elysian Test Plot
By Jenny Jones
Test Plot Co-Founder, Terremoto Partner

DATE: July 08 2024

This post is long overdue. I kept meaning to write, but each time I was ready to document the latest events in the plots, something exciting would happen. Or, something devastating—making it hard to write an objective update without being clouded by emotion. But time has passed, dust has settled, and hopefully this entry has just the right amount of both objectivity and heart.

We started the year extremely hopeful, bolstered by the success of the Rainbow River and our experiments with seed in 2023. We planned to expand the Rainbow River with wildflowers from seed, but also created a new plot, our biggest one yet, to test establishing shrubs from seed. We call this new area the Row Plots, as we decided to lay out the plots into agricultural rows, to make for ease of weeding and management. The Row Plots are also a nice foil to the snaking form of the Rainbow River.

The first seeding of the season started very organically: we were simply inspired by the beautiful tufts of seedheads that were proliferating on our goldenbush, goldenrod, and coyote bush plants within the existing plots. One original dream of the Test Plots at Elysian was for them to serve as seed sources for further expansion of native ecologies, outward from the plots. This past fall, it was obvious that the plots were ready to play this role. The seedheads were calling to us, and were just begging to be cast around. Over a series of weeks when I was at the park alone, on a daily walk, I would stop at the plots, and simply break the branches of the bountiful plants. Then I would walk the adjacent hillsides, beating the branches together to dislodge and spread the seed. I felt like a true plant witch, casting spells with my wands, sending dreamy drifts of seeds floating through the air. It was easy, free, joyful work.

Then we got a little more serious and made our plans. We re-seeded the Rainbow River, unable to let ourselves be patient and see if it would reseed itself. It was simply too beautiful last year to not do it again. Maybe next year we’ll hold back and see what comes up on its own. We also laid out the Row Plots, and used flags to carefully mark both seeded areas. While the Rainbow River was about putting on a show of wildflowers, in the Row Plots, we seeded mostly shrub species. We dappled in some clarkia and poppies for a little splash of color in the first year. The rains blessed us big time this year, and our adorable seedlings quickly started coming up.

Enter the first setback. One day in February we showed up to work at the plots, to weed among the seedlings. And we found every single one of the hundreds of flags we had laid out, simply gone. We were confused for a bit, wondering if possibly Rec and Parks didn’t like what we were doing this year and had intervened. But then we found all the flags, along with some lovely hand-painted signs we had made, all thrown down the hill scattered in the brush. We still haven’t found the logic in this act, as none of the plants themselves were damaged. All of our work was technically still intact, which was a relief, but it still felt like a violation, nonetheless. We collected the flags we could reach, some of us getting poison oak in the process, and we re-placed the flags as best we could. And kept going.

In March we held several events to bring in and train new volunteers. It was heartwarming to see so many folks come out to lovingly tend to the seedlings, pulling invasive grass and mustard by hand to allow the wildflowers a chance to compete. In addition to hand-weeding, we did a lot of scything this year. We had been experimenting with simple hand-mowers for a few years, but this year Terremoto acquired two real scythes, and we sure had a lot of fun with them. We decided to scythe all around the Rainbow River, thinking it might just be helpful to slowly beat back the mustard and interrupt is cycle of going to seed. We also used the scythes in the Row Plots, both to do the initial site clearing, as well as to keep the weeds between the rows in check. We found that the scything is indeed helpful, and gets a lot of work done in a short amount of time. We also found success in the Row Plots with scything as the only site prep. When timed perfectly before a big rain, no other soil or site prep was needed to see seedlings come up and compete with the invasives. This bodes well for expanding, getting more seedlings established at a larger scale throughout the park, because the labor inputs are fairly low.

By April we had blooms coming along nicely, and we kept weeding out the grass and mustard. Critters started appearing on the blooms, butterflies, bees, flies, and moths. We suffered another little setback when someone decided to walk through the Rainbow River, leaving a little path of destruction in their wake. We decided to not assume it was intentional, and we simply adjusted some of the wood stakes we had out there marking where to walk across the river. We propped some of the seedlings back up and hoped they’d bounce back. The Row Plots were a few weeks behind the Rainbow River in terms of growth, a mixture of slightly later seeding and the fact that they are on a north-facing slope.

When May came, so did the flowers. The Rainbow River seemed to pop overnight, into a technicolor array of blooms: Owl’s Clover, Phacelia, Poppies, Lupines, Chia, and of course Clarkia. This year we added in Clarkia bottae that we had collected from the next ridge over in Elysian Park. It’s a tall, striking Clarkia with flowers that are perfectly freckled with dark pink spots. We hope to do even more seed collection from around the park this fall. This year did not bring the massive amount of White Lined Sphinx Moth Caterpillars that we saw in 2023. We did see a few, but nothing like the hundreds if not thousands that were on the Rainbow River last year. We can’t say whether that was just nature’s way, or whether it’s because we did something different. We can’t control all the variables at the plots, and we’re ok with that. We still worshipped the few that showed up.

Then on the morning of May 22nd, I went to check on the blooms, and saw that the Rainbow River had been trampled. I was devastated. I wondered if there’s any way it could have been coyotes having a romp, or someone accidentally walking through at night when they couldn’t see. But then I noticed that all the flags in the Row Plots were gone again, and my only conclusion was that it was another intentional act of vandalism. My heart was broken at the thought of someone deciding to trample all those heavenly beings. After all the hours and hours of loving care that dozens of people put into bringing these wildflowers into the world, over months and months, one person in one night trampled it all. I couldn’t understand, and I was angry.

But I called Jen Toy, who kindly commiserated with me, but then also wisely reminded me that we are working in an urban park, where realities like this are inevitable. She reframed this event as simply one of Disturbance, just another Test for us. Once that sank in, I calmed down and was able to see the trampling as an event to witness and to work with, not one to get defeated by. I moved through the sadness to see the good: that our Row Plots were still coming in, and miraculously hadn’t been damaged; that all of our original plots with fencing were unharmed and were in full glory of flower and abundance; and that actually, people walking through the park were still stopping to tell me how beautiful the flowers were, even though they were now lying down on the ground, broken and withering. And in fact, the bees were still visiting them.

However there was more Disturbance to come. A few weeks later, the brush clearance crews swept through the park. Despite the fact that we had already cleared most everything with scythes, the weed whackers still came through and went scorched earth on the land. A saving grace for me after the flower trampling was that there were still many tiny goldenbush and coyote bush seedlings that were coming up all over. But the crews came through and cut down everything in their path, unless we had a fence around it, or there was a flag marking it. I realized when I witnessed the crews doing this, how very violent and counterproductive this annual brush clearance is. Any tiny native that tries to come up in the spring is destined to get mowed down, essentially maintaining the park as a constantly disturbed site where no native ecology is allowed to live. Not to mention the countless birds, insects and small mammals whose lives are disrupted or destroyed when an army of men with machines tear through the park. Rec and Parks should be caring for the park, not inflicting this violence upon the land. Their brush clearance this year has upset other community members as well, when they destroyed a beloved children’s garden that was full of mature native plants, all in the name of fire safety.

So.

What can we do? We’re trying to help regenerate an urban park that suffers from constant vandalism and violence, from without and within. We plan to speak with our coalition of concerned community members to see what we can change with the overall management of the park. We have a proposal brewing for a pilot project of turning brush clearance duty in and around the plots over to our coalition of community groups. Although we were hoping to be able to not always need fences at Elysian, we’ve learned the hard way that the plants need protection. The disturbance we experienced this winter has lit a fire in our bellies, and we are planning to go even bigger with our scything and seeding work in the years to come.

And as it turns out, a few of the goldenbush that were whacked down are actually still alive, eager to persist. We’ve marked them, protected them, and are watering them this summer. We will keep going with our steady acts of care, moving slowly, gently, and lovingly, inspired by the resilience and persistence of our beloved California plants.

WATCHING WEATHER

Elephant Hill Test Plot
Interview with Joey Farewell by Jen Toy

DATE: October 16 2023

Jen: I wanted to create this post to share information with our Test Plot community about the wondrous topic of weather. Watching weather patterns and climate forecasting is both an art and science. It’s also increasingly necessary for the business we’re in, and a field that I want more people to understand given the weather extremes we’re all living through nowadays. To that end, please enjoy this conversation with Joey Farewell, a resident of El Sereno, conservation co-chair of Los Angeles CNPS, and unofficial Test Plot meteorologist.

PS. easy access to the links that Joey mentions:

WeatherWest Blog (check out the comments)
Tropial Tidbits (access to GFS model)
National Weather Service
Ambient Home Weather Station
Weather Underground (crowd sourced data from home stations)

From Joey's Yard: Our 2022-2023 Superbloom in El Sereno. Follow the cold rains and you’ll always get your seeds going!

Jen: Hey Joey, welcome and thanks for chatting today. How did you get interested in following weather?

Joey: Hi Jen! I’ve always really enjoyed the weather and its nexus with many of my favorite interests –– chasing powder for skiing & snowboarding, growing native plants, and learning about Californian habitat. I also grew up with a father who’s totally obsessed with weather, so meteorology was (and still is) my way to connect with him. Nothing gets my dad more fired up than a big snow cycle forecast for 5-7 days out in the Sierra Nevada –– and it’s really fun to share that excitement.

Also I’m a trusts & probate lawyer, and while I really enjoy estate planning work, meteorology makes for a fun side hobby.

Jen: I’ve heard you talk about how following weather makes you feel good...can you share about that more?

Joey: Yea, accurate forecasting is kind of like having a superpower for the stuff I’m into. You ski better snow (because others foolishly made plans without following the data –– leaving more tracks of deep powder), you plant native plants at better moments (see: our impeccably timed Elephant Hill Test Plot installation, which was followed by 3” of rain just a day later, and our relaxed watering schedule), and you are just generally more connected with the natural world around you. Rain isn’t something that just happens to you that day; instead, you observed a process, maybe learned something along the way, and then perceive the phenomenon of water falling from the sky. It also gives one an illusory feeling of control in an otherwise indomitable universe. So that’s cool too.

Jen: Weather is kind of interesting because it connects global patterns with local experience. How do you think about scale when you are following weather trends?

Joey: That’s an interesting question. I would say that, when it comes to precipitation and snow in California, the storm door is (as we well know) closed more often than it’s open. Global patterns often conspire against us here, particularly in Southern California –– and that seems even more true in an era of climate change and “stuck” weather patterns. When that storm really opens, though, it’s both (generally) great for us and really problematic for other places that are far more accustomed to receiving rain and snow. Big precipitation years in California usually indicate some level of drought in the Pacific Northwest, fires in Australia (particularly during El Niño years), and below-average snow on the East Coast. When we’re scoring, the world often isn’t. That translates to forecasting, too –– when we see big high pressure building in the Hudson Bay region, for example, we can usually assume that the Northeast will get shut out and we can expect stormy low pressure out west. And when we see a pattern favoring cold temperatures and snow in New York, it’s usually time to put away the skis and break out the hose in the garden.

Beyond pitted after chasing 3ft of Hokkaido powder, freshly frothed by Siberian winds across the Sea of Japan, in the Kiroro backcountry. Guide said it was the first time a client told him where the deepest snow was.

Digging out for the third time that day –– February 2019 in Mammoth Lakes, CA. A cold powder cycle unlike any other (until last year)

Jen: What is your favorite forecasting model? What is it useful for, and what are the limits?

Joey: Let’s put it this way –– all models are wrong, but taken in context, and in sum, they’re useful. Supercomputing, the internet, model aggregator websites such as Tropical Tidbits, weather blogs like WeatherWest, they all have made for what I consider the golden-age of home forecasting, but with that comes a myriad of ways to misuse that data and get humiliated in front of your friends and colleagues.

So here’s what I do. I generally use the USA-based GFS, not because it’s the best (that would be the ECMWF, the European model and gold-standard for forecasting) or because I’m particularly patriotic (our tax dollars at work, though!), but because it’s freely available, it’s generally pretty good out to 7 days, can spot things with some accuracy out to 10 days, and after that is, to put it kindly, useless. We call the post-12’ish day forecast “fantasyland” in model data, because it’s just too hard at the moment to forecast that far in advance with (1) our computing limits and (2) the inherent chaos of weather. It also “runs” (produces readable data) 4x a day, whereas the ECMWF only runs 2x a day (viewable around noon and then midnight), so the latter isn’t quite as good for a daily weather nerd routine.

For big cycles and events, it’s best to use multiple models –– so that’s when we are looking at the GFS, the ECMWF, and other models like the German IKON and Canadian CMC, all to try to find a consistent solution between them to best anticipate what is really going to happen. And then there are also short term models, like the NAM and HWRF, which are run at higher resolutions and can spot things (like isolated thunderstorm development or rain shadowing –– which is when topographical features such as mountains “catch” the moisture from rain-bearing clouds and deny it to the areas behind them –– where certain areas might get skunked) that the lower resolution models can’t. There’s also the ensemble models, which is when the GFS, the ECMWF, and others, are run multiple times and then averaged together in a super-model of sorts –– but that data is more available to the pros than the lay forecaster.

And what’s critical is to corroborate model findings with other users, too. The internet makes this more possible than ever (though I’ve got to shout-out a few weather nerds of mine in real life, where “lol dude the 18Z GFS is totally bonkers” is a real thing that we text each other), where we can connect with other model-riders (yes, that’s a real thing) on fabulous online weather forums like WeatherWest. On the comment board for each post (follow the activity on the most recent post for up-to-date analysis), you’ll find general chatter about current conditions, model data, storm prognostications (and post-mortems), banter, and –– my personal favorite –– the absolute hazing of folks who call “bust” on a storm far too early, before any meaningful precipitation or effects were forecasted to begin in the first place. These folks aren’t professionals, but they’re close. And oftentimes these users are the first to spot long-range patterns and atmospheric perturbations that result in that thing we all love: storms.

And speaking of pros –– I’ve absolutely got to mention that the National Weather Service is an invaluable resource for both confirming your own read of the data, but also illuminating many other things you will invariably miss in your forecasting. They present their accessible info through social media, but the good stuff is in their AFDs –– called “Area Forecast Discussions.” These discussions (updated 2 to 3 times daily) contain thorough, high-level analysis of both short and medium term forecast windows. They usually don’t go out past that time-frame (see the above community WeatherWest for proper fantasyland chatter) but are seriously invaluable for learning to understand this stuff. And again, National Weather Products reflect our tax dollars at work! In a world of complicated, slow government –– I love reading and learning from the professionals at the National Weather Service. It’s public work at its best.

Modeled Precipitation ala GFS model via Tropical Tidbits

Click here for all the weather discussion you could ever want! (www.weatherwest.com)

Jen: What kind of weather station do you have at your house?

Joey: Ambient Weather station. You could pay more for a Davis, etc, but these work great, are user-friendly, and connect well with Weather Underground and a range of data supporting apps.

Jen: Couple more questions. You’ve said that this has been “the best year ever” for habitat restoration plantings –– can you tell us why that is?

Joey: Oh man, the 2022-2023 planting year! Wet season for the ages. Deserving of a treasure trove of superlatives (I’ve written too much already –– so I’ll spare you). We had a strong storm in early November (2-3”), a couple smaller fronts that kept things moist and happy through early December –– at which point a series of atmospheric rivers took aim at California and just unloaded consistent, cold storms through late March, early April. We had one “long” break from precipitation, like 12 days in late January and early Feb, and then it was game on again. Then, as if all that rain wasn’t enough (but at 38” in El Sereno, it definitely was), May was downright cold and cloudy, June went full gloom, July wasn’t that bad, and in August –– it rained like (almost) never before during a SoCal summer! 4” in El Sereno (bringing our season total up to 42” incredible inches for the wet season ending September 30), 6” in Glendale, just all totally bonkers. After all that, the weather gods delivered perhaps the most unexpected coup-de-grace: September was nice and cool for once! I think we watered the Elephant Hill Test Plot like 6 times all year. Unbelievable.

Jen: Finally, any thoughts on this coming year and the predicted El Niño?

Joey: I’ve got a few thoughts! More likely than not that we get above-average precipitation in SoCal –– which is a big deal in California, where we are more likely to have a dry year than a wet one –– as strong El Niños are as sure a bet as you’ll find for wet season forecasting. In fact, it’s really only strong Niños that move the needle in that regard for CA, and we certainly can get wet years without them (last year was a La Niña).

Indeed, on one hand, things look good. A strong El Niño (particularly an east-based one, as we have now) should theoretically amplify the southerly jet stream into Southern and Central California, propping the storm door open for mid-latitude cyclones to provide the ultra rare back-to-back wet years for LA.

But in an era of climate change and rapidly warming oceans, things seem less predictable than usual. Because El Niños operate via an oceanic-atmospheric relationship that relies fundamentally on ocean temperature anomalies –– in layperson terms, a bunch of warm water in a certain place (certain zones of the equatorial Pacific) that are markedly warmer than areas around them –– they may be less impactful when the entire Northern Pacific is basically on fire. The temperature gradient might be there for strong Niño effects (ie, a strong southern jet stream), but what if the overall oceanic temperatures in the mid and northern latitudes are warm enough to disturb that effect? That’s what some folks smarter than me think happened in 2015-2016, the last strong El Niño (which, outside of a riveting week in early January, was a total bust for SoCal storms).

So yeah! Looks good, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we go dry, perhaps owing to the extraordinary warmth above, or for another fly in the ointment yet to be discovered. But that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?

(OK well, not the global warming thing)

Jen: Thank you for sharing your knowledge with our Test Plot community. Next time, let’s talk more about local weather and microclimates.

Satellite footage that produced the Mammoth snowstorm above. A mid-latitude winter cyclone to quit your job for!