This weekend I had to leave my trees in the care of some friends because I went on a trip to the Owens Valley with my water management class. I always get a little worried when I trust my work to others but they did a great job and there has yet to be any growth in the trees. The Owens Valley was very beautiful and we learned about the confusing bureaucracy that surrounds the Owens Valley. Hopefully next week my trees will provide me with more interesting results to report.
Despite working with cameras for my capstone, I have yet to have a photo of myself working. I’m heading back out over spring break with Dr. O’Hirok’s stream team, I’m sure there will be ample opportunities for field photos then. In the mean time, this is the best I have. The Lobo Canyon camera, capturing the back of my legs the last time I checked it. 
This week was spent interpolating data on ArcGIS and I began calculating the area of each year to find the total area and direction the population is moving toward.
In addition, I spent the last few days in the Eastern Sierras for Water Resources Management where we learned about and followed our water supply from the Owens Valley to campus. Here’s a picture from the trip below.
The past few weeks have consisted of compiling all my data and organizing it into tables. Here is a table showing chlorophyll levels in each stream section over time.
On 2/22, Michelle Pacansky-Brock shared 2 worthwhile tips about CI Docs. In today’s post, I want to further her discussion about CI Docs. I’ve been using it this year to foster students’ abilities to reflect on the reading and writing in my composition courses. Here’s what I’ve done and what I’ve learned so far. […]
The common garden has shown no growth yet. This past weekend, I went to Owens Valley for my Water Resource Management class, so I had my friend Melinda water the plants and she found no growth. I am hoping to see some growth by the end of this week.
This week I was able to process a few more sample populations of Sand crabs and have found evidence of microparticle ingestion in every one. Sadly the ubiquity of plastic pollution in the sandy beach ecosystem continues to be the case. I have 24 sand crab sample populations processed and have approximately 20 more to finish. I will be attending the CSU Chancellors conference this Tuesday March 8th with my colleague, Tevin Schmitt. We will be discussing our individual research projects on how petroleum bed pollution takes its toll on the sandy beach ecosystem.
The Interdisciplinary Research Learning Community is an opportunity for CI students to enter into interdisciplinary dialogue and hone their professional skills. Meet some of our Spring students, and hear about the variety of projects they are working on. Student research and the IRLC are two things that make CI a special place for students and faculty.
Who will you become at CI?
Summerland, CA Beach just below Lookout Park. Image: Harry Rabin, 2016
For the past several days we have been seeing unusually heavy oil deposition along the beaches in Summerland, centered just below Lookout Park. While we have been in a period of higher than normal seep activity for the past year or so, this tarring event seems beyond a mere seep event. This smacks of some type of oiling event from an (as of yet) unknown source, discrete or well bore.
In the midst of teaching my “Intro to Drones” class (ESRM 370) this past Friday, we got a ring from our local ABC affiliate, KEYT3 TV. They were looking for comment on this beach deposition, but my packed schedule was too full to arrange a regular interview on camera. Cue our new ESRM web camera and Skype. While Skype’s low-res connection didn’t do justice to that new HD camera, this was another example of the power of CSUCI and ESRM. Our interdisciplinary perspectives, community service orientation, and desire to communicate more widely motivated the purchase of that new camera a mere week before. On top of that, our brand-new, well-lit Tech Lab in Sierra Hall proved a convenient backdrop for an interview after our class wrapped up and before I had to run off to another meeting. Much thanks to Kim Gregory, CSUCI’s great Press Office, and AARR’s Tim Holcombe’s Skyping skills to get the whole hook-up in place while I was running between students and engagements.
Tim on tech detail as we did a sound check before the questions flowed.
KEYT pulled together a brief, but nice piece in time for their 5 O-Clock news (below).
Many locals have been quite concerned for several years about potential releases from the Becker Well or similar such long-abandoned, but not necessarily properly capped, wells. The Becker Well was drilled sometime in the late 1800s, predating our modern suite of resource management agencies, modern environmental regulations, and even effective drilling records. Becker is in the surf zone. This appears to in part explain why it was never properly abandoned. It has a history of small but persistent oil leaks, apparently often being behind deposition onto the beach or into the nearshore ocean off Summerland’s coast. These ongoing drip-drip-drip of oil releases motivated the State Lands Commission to begin a re-excavation and attempt to reseal the well starting in late fall of 2015.
Images: State Lands Commission Press Release on November 2, 2015.
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