Tag Archive for: instructor-sean.anderson

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.

This past week was primarily focused on producing maps in ESRI’s ArcGIS for my final report. The map below shows the locations of my six study sites in the Former Red Gum eucalyptus grove. It should be noted that this is the first draft of this map. Other than preparing maps, the past couple weeks have been pretty quiet. My last update was focused on the seeding that had taken place. I was fortunate to have two storms come through the area after the seed was broadcast! I will be making a trip out to the study sites in the next week to check on any germination progress. Rain is also forecasted for the end of the week, so fingers are crossed that the forecast holds up!

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.

This week the students had a guest speaker from LiMPETS to talk to them about long-term monitoring and why they do it for the sandy beach and rocky intertidal.  Students then played a game of jenga that is representing an ecosystem. Students were to pick up a card and read it out loud to their groups and the either had a direct or an indirect or a positive impact on the ecosystem.  The direct and indirect impacts are the orange and red blocks and the green are positive impacts. The more orange and red blocks that were taken out the weaker the tower so the green blocks were there to support the tower if they were played.

Jenga game 

We also got into the rocky intertidal monitoring protocol and students were given some species they might find on the field we have next week. Students then went outside to try to identify some of the algae, and other species.

Overall I think the students enjoyed their activities for the week. I saw excitement in their faces when they were doing the activities.

I found out some good news today from professor Patsch. I will have access to ENVI from a school computer in about a week or less, which will allow me to do the Dark Object Subtraction from all map years. Atmospheric Correction