The past week has consisted mostly of me piecing together the methods section of my paper. My first draft is done and I will be getting some good peer reviewed feedback on it in class today. I also continued my data collection this week and will be turning my attention more towards the analysis and comparison of water quality between sites over the next several weeks.
Like any research, variables arise that were unplanned for. Elastic cords are used to hold the infrared cameras on a post, and apparently they were not tight enough. While my main objective is to photograph rats, the island foxes have proved themselves to be incredibly curious. One fox in Lobo Canyon was inspecting the camera, and was able to pull the elastic cord over the viewfinder, blocking half the view in the middle. After this, the camera recorded nearly a thousand more photos that are obscured by the cord until I was able to check the camera again.
Spoke with Monika Lynn Krach from the LiMPETS|Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary to collaborate in Sand crab collection as well as future student education. Monika runs the program for kids learning science through intertidal and sandy beach surveys and has collected more sand crabs for the project! We are sharing procedural information as well as data as the group is tracking parasites inside of the sand crabs. I will be creating a video for the students explaining the micro plastics procedure and writing in the LiMPETS blog to share my research. I am very excited to have more groups involved in the education of the public and hopefully some ideas on how to fix the problem!
Most people think they know what it takes to be a good teacher; in particular, most college instructors think they know how to do it and feel confident that they’re pretty good at it. Except for those few of us who have received formal education in how to teach, we model our approach to teaching […]
This photo was taken in the upper reaches of the Water Canyon Watershed on Santa Rosa Island. In this area of the watershed, the terraces are bare with eroded soil and small pockets of bunch grasses. There are steep slopes in the top of this watershed, similar to most watersheds. Vegetation not only contributes to healthy soils but also acts as a stabilizer and helps reduce erosion. Due to the lack of vegetation in this area it has unhealthy soils and the land is prone to land slides in the case of heavy storms. This photo shows the aftermath of the first rainstorm of the current El Nino. There was visible slippage of the terraces, filling the stream channel with sediment. This was the only significant change I saw after the first storm. I am curious to see the changes after all the storms during the El Nino. I predict there will be substantial changes throughout the watershed due to the condition of the soil, lack of vegetation, and types of vegetation on the terraces.
With a majority of the data collection to go and the only research left to do is tree coring, the only thing left to do is paper work. I’ve made great strides on the introduction section of the paper in the means of organization, only a few sections left until that is complete. Rough draft of the methods section is finished. An addition of several maps outlining the research area and coordinates would be a great addition.
Well this Friday I did my first lesson of Unit 3. What I thought about was why long-term research is done and why it is so important as well as talked about how the protocol for looking at mole/sand crabs will be going. It went very well. The second class went better than the first because one I had what I was going to say in my mind and I had about 15 more minutes than the first. Both lesson still went very well, I got all of the important points across so that was good. Before I taught my lessons I gave out a survey for the students to complete that asked them about how they felt about the environment, then the back side of the survey asked them a few questions about protocol and how they felt about the field trip to Carpinteria State Beach.
Then for my lecture I handed out another worksheet for the students to fill out during it. It was about the protocol for sand beach and questions about mole/sand crabs. I feel like the students really liked learning about the mole crabs. They had a couple of good questions about it. Like “How do we sex these animals?” “How do they eat detritus and filter feed?” I had a lot of fun do this and I can’t wait to continue going to the school and talking with them about something that I enjoy doing.
See you all next week for my next post.
This week has brought some very stong winds to parts of SoCal. A wind storm last Sunday in San Diego resulted in the loss of a historic cottage as well as what was believed to be one of the tallest Torrey pines left. You can read the story from local news in the link below.
This week I focused most of my attention towards the methods section of my paper. In addition I created a map of my study site. Below is a quick excerpt about the study site of my research.
Santa Rosa Island (SRI) is located 42 km offshore of Santa Barbara, CA within the Channel Islands National Park and is the second largest Channel Island (214 km2). The population of Pinus insularis is located along the island’s North coast approximately 5 km Southeast of the pier and 1 km Northwest of Southeast Anchorage. The population is located on steep, loamy marine terraces. The climate on SRI is Mediterranean with most rainfall occurring between November and April, and a dry season that extends generally from May-October. The island is frequented by consistent winds that blow year round from the northwest.
We all know that there’s always improvement in our writing, but we’ve never really used writer’s example. When we read it’s for our own pleasure, to get lost in a world completely different to our own. Other people read because they’re designated to read a certain book for class not because they want to read. But most of all we read for information, we read to understand things, to learn new things, to learn how to do things. Personally, I never read to improve my writing and after reading the article “How to Read Like a Writer” I realized that if I actually put thought into focusing on the writing techniques the writer uses it might actually help me improve my writing.
After recently re-reading The Host I realized that the author has a distinctive way of writing and specifically portraying her characters and making them come to life. The Host is science fiction novel about an alien invasion, these aliens call themselves souls, and take control of the human body erasing the consciousness of the people just leaving behind their memories and knowledge. The author really shows the bonds between her characters and how they grow together. Even though the plot is great I personally believe that the characters bring the story to life because they seem so real.
Her technique is she makes her character emotionally relate to the readers. 
The characters she creates are so emotionally human, they feel like we do and act like we do. She has an almost accurate definition of our own personal definition of beauty. “It’s not the face, but the expressions on it. It’s not the voice, but what you say. It’s not how you look in that body, but the thing you do with it. You are beautiful.” And even though it’s highly romanticized it’s still very true. Though society has a different opinion of beauty we have our own.
She thinks that there needs to be a balance in life, you can’t know happiness if you don’t know pain. “Perhaps there could be no joy on this planet without an equal weight of pain to balance it out on some unknown scale.” The technique she uses here is using her own characters to portray her own personal opinions. I’ve seen many writers use this, so they speak freely without the responsibility of their words unless they specifically say the words are their own opinion.
Just like her definition of beauty she has her own definition of love and hatred that some of us can relate to in some way. 
“What was it that made this human love so much more desirable to me than the love of my own kind? Was it because it was exclusive and capricious? The souls offered love and acceptance to all. Did I crave a greater challenge? Or was it simply better somehow? Because these humans hate with so much fury, was the other end of the spectrum that they could love with more heart and zeal and fire?” she describes love through the voice of the protagonist which just so happens to be a “soul” and the alien describes love in what she has learned through her time with the humans. The author uses the “soul’s” voice to portray her own vision of the love and hatred humans feel.
If we look closely there are so many techniques in writing that we should develop ourselves when we write.
Works Cited
Bunn, Mike.”How to Read Like a Writer.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Ed. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Vol. 1. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor P, 2010. 71-86. Writing Spaces. Web. 2 Feb. 2016.
Meyer, Stephenie. The Host. New York: Little, Brown, 2008. Print.
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