I went out to Santa Cruz Island this weekend to see if there had been any successful germination in my plots from the seed mixture that I broadcasted about a month ago. I’m happy to report that there has been successful germination! I documented the progress and hope to go out to Santa Cruz in another few weeks to check again. I’m hoping for some more rain in March for continued success.
I have started to analyze the data from all of my field collection. So far, I have found that beach grooming significantly reduces sand crab population density. I have also found that the change in season has coincided with the reduction in invertebrate species richness. I hope further data analysis will reveal more significant relationships between invertebrate community health and natural or anthropogenic stressors.
This week we had a field trip to Carpinteria State Beach, the students had many activities one was to look a Harbor seals. The students really enjoyed looking at then and for most students this was the first time they saw a Harbor Seal. The second activity was a presentation from a park ranger about the Chumash and how they used Carpinteria resources. After that students either did sandy beach monitoring, rocky intertidal monitoring, and explored the tide pools. Every student on this trip was excited since it was the first time most explored a tide pool. Many expressed their excitement to me after the activities. Here are some pictures from the trip.
Picture one are students exploring the tide pools and picture two are students doing sandy beach monitoring.
Today I finished processing the 20th sample population of sand crabs and put together a small graph to share.
The sample sites are listed from North to South along the California coast. Each bar represents a percentage of the sample population collected that was found to have ingested microparticles. Of the 20 sample populations, two did not have any micro particle ingestion, however the other 18 sample populations had sand crabs that ingested microparticles. Each sand crab found to have microparticles was photographed and recorded. I am interested to see how the rest of my samples look and plan to have a more complete set of results in the next 2-3 weeks.
Today, I am going to take some time to describe what it is I do when I’m out on the island counting trees. Most days, I have to hike up the mountain to my site where I peel off the road and clime down a cliff to my trees. Once, I find a tree I walk up to it and get as close as possible as the tree stabs me with its branches and then I mark a way-point on my GPS. Then, I take the diameter and breast height (DBH) and write down the height, health, and whether or not the tree is reproductive. For my day of collections i split the grove up into four sections and randomized my selection of trees. I would look for trees that were reproductive and gather three pine cones from each tree.
Here is a picture of my taking the DBH of a small Bishop pine.
And here is a picture of me collecting pine cones from a Bishop pine. The tree was a little awkward so I had to climb on top of the tree to get to the pine cones.
I completed a draft of my methods section to the research project . I have entered all the data into the computer and have been working on making an appropriate map of my site locations using ArcGis. My next trip to the island will be on March 21. During this trip i plan on staking the rebar at each site to allow for future research to be done at the same locations. 
Everyone in class has a map due this week. I took GIS two years ago, and have completely forgotten how to do basic functions since. After a bit of googling, I was able to create a basic map. This is far from the final map, but I’ve learned I need to hone my GIS skills soon.
So here is a first look at the invasive plants in my first sampling site. Definitely needs some more work but as you can see there is not too much in terms of the plants that need to be managed.
I made my last trip up to Lompoc on Friday and finished collecting pine cones! The groves of Bishop pines I found in Lompoc were much larger than the population on Santa Rosa. The mainland population also had noticeably larger pine cones and seemed much healthier than the Island population which could signify that mainland conditions are much more favorable for Bishop pines than island conditions. But the island conditions were much more favorable for me, although the view I had in Lompoc was beautiful I definitely wasn’t alone up there. As you can see from my photo I never got far from a well traveled road so I didn’t get to enjoy the silence of nature like I did on the island.
I also noticed sections of the grove where a fire had gone through and the trees had fallen down. Although I’ve seen patches of fallen trees on the island I never saw so many clumped so close together that had fallen over. It was really cool to see and although many trees died most of them looked like they were of reproductive age so the new generation of bishop pines should be coming in.
Talks have begun now about the next trips out to Santa Rosa. One trip I’ve confirmed is March 11-13 which I will hopefully be able to complete tree coring. The next trip will be sometime on spring break however those dates are not confirmed. The goal on that trip is to set demography plots within some of the groves in order to gather further data in the future. Currently paper work and research is continuing. I’ve gotten my methods section revised, work still needs to be done to the introduction. A first draft of one of my maps is complete.
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