Posts

Water Quality Probe Training

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Last Thursday I continued water quality probe training and now I just need one more training session in the field to check out the probe for my project. My goal is to check it out this weekend and survey all five sites in one day. Then I will check it out again in about a month, hopefully after some rain, and collect more data so I can compare water quality before and and after the main bulk of El Niño rains. The purpose of this data is determine how adequate the sites are for UTS survival, and how rain can increase or decrease the quality of water in their habitat. Pictured above is the Soledad Canyon Site which is owned and managed by the U.S. Forest Service.

Working with LiMPETS in Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary

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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!

Desk Work and Paper Pushing

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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.

View from research site of Santa Cruz
View from research site of Santa Cruz

First lesson

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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.

Student Survey
Student Survey

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.

Mole/Sand crab worksheet
Mole/Sand crab worksheet

 

See you all next week for my next post.

Wind downs Torrey pine in San Diego

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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.

Torrey pine toppled

Update 2/6/16

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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.

About midway up TP trail relaxing in the shade of the P. torreyana
About 1/2 way  up the infamous Torrey pine trail

Methods and TPSNR Permit

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For the past week, I have been working on my methods section for Capstone. Also, I have received my collecting permit for TPSNR. Next weekend, I will be heading to TPSNR to collect Torrey pine pinecones for my common garden experiment. I am super excited that my permit went through!!!DSC_0500

Starting Unit 3

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I started unit 3 on Friday and it was a great start.  The studens got a lecture about long-term monitoring and why it’s important. It was also the first time I was able to get some data for my capstone. I gave the survey to the students and for the whole unit I will be writing down how the students are responding to the lesson.

Mainland Collections

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Although I already finished my collection of pine cones on the island I still have to finish collecting seeds from the mainland population.  This morning I located a pine grove near Lompoc California and started my collection but i have to make one more trip back to get a few more pine cones.  It was a beautiful are in the hills above Lompoc but I missed the secluded nature of the island.  While there i noticed that there were much fewer dying trees and the majority of the trees in this population were taller than those of the Santa Rosa Island population.  There were also  far fewer saplings in the mainland grove.  The most notable difference I saw between the two populations was the size of the pine cones.  The many of cones of the mainland population were far larger and much longer spines than those on the island leading me to believe that the climate on the coast is more suitable to the Bishop pines than the climate on Santa Rosa Island.

 

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Amazing presentation at Ventura Surfrider!

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Tuesday night at Patagonia headquarters Dr Clare Steele, Michaela Miller and I presented our Pervasive Plastics research to the Ventura Surfrider chapter.  The rise above plastics campaign from the national surfrider foundation is directly inline with our overall project of removing plastics from our sandy beach and marine environment and educating the public on the need for change.

We were able to discuss our current projects and where we are headed with the different facets of the plan.  I was very excited to meet so many other people that love the beach and want to protect it! I hope that more students from The ESRM Dept at CSU Channel Islands will be able to share their projects and be able to achieve a higher rate of public involvement.