On a July 4^th weekend where many were relaxing, and watching the fog roll in along the Mendocino Coast, the “Steam Donkey Crew”, the trail builders of the Mendocino Coast Cyclists (MCC), spent their holiday putting in the final hours and last bits of work to establish the multiuse SweetPea trail, which is now listed as an official trail on Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF). The effort to maintain and improve access on this popular 3.8-mile multiuse trail was a five-year collaboration between CAL FIRE and the MCC– further enhancing the recreational offerings at JDSF for locals and visitors alike.

RECREATION: Building Bridges on the SweetPea Trail 

Trail crews and JDSF staff have been hard at working bringing the SweetPea Trail to life and that includes making water crossing safe and sustainable. In these two videos you can see the effort and attention to detail that went into making SweetPea a trail to be proud of.

RESEARCH: Historic Watershed Research Continues at Caspar with New Flume Installation 

The historic Caspar Watershed Research Area is home to a hotbed of forest research. Recently, staff from the Pacific Southwest Research Station of the U.S. Forest Service and CAL FIRE worked to install a new flume deep in the Caspar watershed area to help measure sediment runoff. This new flume, along with several others in the forest, measures sediment runoff both in storm events and as part of a long-term study to measure the effects of timber harvest. Long-term research projects like this one are part of what makes the landscape at Jackson so unique; research, recreation, and demonstration coming together to create a combined sustainable forest management model that helps build knowledge and examples for private forest landowners, Registered Professional Foresters and others who conduct work in forests statewide and beyond.

CAL FIRE staff have been hard at work over the summer upgrading many of JDSF’s recreational facilities. Camp 20 has received particular focus due to its high traffic and unfortunate frequent vandalism. New picnic benches were much needed at Camp 20 and CAL FIRE staff have been hard at work removing the old and installing new benches built from locally sourced timber. Next time you are headed through the forest stop by and check them out.

You may have heard of a “BioBlitz” – an intense, and usually time limited survey of all the organisms living in a given geographic area. A MycoBlitz is a similar survey, but with the focus solely on fungi. Participants work to catalog as many species as they can from the survey area, during the survey time period.

The continental-scale mushroom-collecting foray is a part of Mycota’s effort to document all the macrofungi that exist in North America. To participate just review the requirements by following the link below, post your observations to the iNaturalist project during the foray week (October 13 through 22 for this edition), and submit your ten most interesting collections to the processing facilities. Thousands of specimens from the event will be selected for DNA sequencing. Your most interesting finds can help Mycota to understand the mushrooms of North America. We look forward to discovering fungi with you!

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