Field data collection is finished!

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Over the pas week, I finished my beach data collection at Santa Clara River Mouth and Goleta Beach County Park with the help of a few ESRM 100 students. Santa Clara River Mouth’s beach has been wiped clean of any invertebrate life, most likely due to the river breach and large swell conditions. Goleta Beach has also suffered a decrease in invertebrate life and beach architecture due to large scale bulldozing efforts needed to protect coastal developments threatened by the large swell conditions. I am looking forward to running the stats on this collection to find significant connections between these occurrences and ecological health of these sites.

scrm with esrm100

I have also been busy this weekend creating a poster on the effects of petroleum and microplastics on beach health with fellow student Dorothy Horn. We will be presenting our poster at the CSU Chancellor’s conference in Long Beach early next month. Findings from the petroleum experiments suggest that the Refugio Oil spill did not have a lasting effect on invertebrate communities but did harm embryo development of the sand crab Emerita analoga.

embryo development

Research Update 2/14/16

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This week I submitted my methods draft for my research project. This was the first draft of my methods section and it was reviewed by three of my peers in an in class review session. I took some of the critics and comments and integrated them into the revision of my methods section. While I am still waiting for my professors thoughts and opinions of the draft this preliminary peer critic has helped improve my methods section and given me ideas on how to improve the work.

Intertidal Pool on SRI
Intertidal Pool on SRI

 

Collected Water Quality Data

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Yesterday I went out to three of my sites: two in the Santa Clara River and the other San Francisquito Creek. I collected water quality data with a YSI EXO2 probe and my laptop. In addition, I used a GPS app on my phone to collect coordinates of each sample I took. I sampled a total of 24 different spots within these three locations. With the probe I was able to measure temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, chlorophyll, and blue-green algae. Today I plan on collecting water quality data from two more sites: Bouquet Creek and Soledad Canyon Creek.