Pervasive Plastics: Endangered Red-Legged Frog and the Western Snowy Plover

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In collaboration with the Western Snowy plover nest monitors along Ormond, Hollywood, and other State Beaches in Ventura, we will be collecting and testing fecal samples for plastic pollutants.

As well,with the National Park Service project of the Re-introduction of the red-legged frog into the water sheds of the Santa Monica Mountains, we will be testing the water and soil for plastic pollutants.

Since we have found that at least some of the particles along the coastline and in the watersheds are synthetic the likelihood that the origination is anthropogenic is high.  I plan to test the samples to see if they contain plastics and if so we hope to use a polarizing microscope to identify them.

Winter Break Research

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The last two months have been winter break and research has been going well. I was able to finish my 2015 GIS vegetation map of SRI! I also made it out to the island for a week and collected 73 ground truth points. The points were collected with the protocol of a <30m swath of the same vegetation type, points were dropped at different locations spanning nearly half of the island (Hiked 100+ miles). The points gathered will be added to another roughly 150 points so that a robust accuracy assessment of the map can be taken. My next step before completing the accuracy assessment is to import the three maps (93, 2010, 2015) into ENVI so that dark object subtraction can be done. After the Dark Object Subtraction is complete the maps will be ready for statistical analysis, different landforms (ridges, valleys, coastal bluffs, slopes ext..) will be compared to each other as well as the change in vegetation cover.