I have finished my Capstone paper and will be officially submitting tomorrow. I am planning to collaborate with my friend and fellow peer Zack Buckley on writing and publishing a paper about our pinuses. We are also planning on attending the 9th California Islands Symposium.
Below is a YouTube video I made about my Capstone research on Santa Rosa Island:
I met with Dr.Anderson on Thursday to go over my paper and he gave me a lot great pointers but it’s going to be a lot of work. He gave me some good advice on how to run my stats so they are more accurate and it worked wonderfully. All of my p-values for my Pearson’s correlation were significant except for one. I also revised my maps and my regression graphs. I am currently in the last stretch of revising my paper and I am excited to turn it in tomorrow. We also had Sage on Saturday which was fun because I shared my project with other professors and students. I feel like I got some good feedback from it as well. The map above is my revised version of the sites I surveyed.
Summers_FinalDraftESRM499_s16Yesterday I attended Sage Symposium at CSU Channel Islands. The conference overall went really well and I felt reactions to my project were positive. I personally felt more relaxed at this conference than AAG because I have presented at Sage before and I felt more prepared with information on my project such as finalized figures.
Today, I presented my final poster for my capstone project at the SAGE Research conference at CSU Channel Islands. The poster session went much better than I anticipated. I presented at AAG earlier this semester and that went well. I was expecting this one to be similar. However, I felt this session was even better. At AAG, I didn’t have a finished product and was presenting midway through. My project since then has seen massive changes. Having a final result and conclusion made this poster session rewarding. Observers complimented my research and made me feel proud of all the hard work that I put in. The rewarding feeling after SAGE was much different than the end feeling of AAG. I couldn’t have been happier with how today went.
Below is a video on my methods. This was created over spring break. Although my project objectives have changed since the video was created, I added the comparison of Quemada Watershed. The methods are the same and are shown in the video. Enjoy!
This Monday we had our last official capstone class, and it just hit me how fast this year went by. SAGE is tomorrow, our final thesis is due Monday, and then we are DONE! We all have put some long hours in this semester, and especially over the last week. Everyone has been working so hard, I am looking forward to graduation,
Last weekend Dorothy, Dr. Steele, and I presented our marine debris and microplastics research at the Southern California Academy of Sciences meeting. It was my first oral presentation at a conference and I was very nervous but it went well! 
This project gave me a ton of experience. I learned more about the island every time I visited. I learned a vast amount about island bio-geography and ecology. I also had tons of fun hiking through rough terrain and making new friends at the research station. This semester was the most fun I have had at CI.
Most students have been working diligently at editing and typing the final copy of the thesis paper. I am also prepping for the SAGE symposium. I have resumes and business cards prepared for people interested. I am very excited for my first symposium, it should be an interesting experience.
A new media page has been created which features photos and videos from my research on Santa Cruz Island. Check out the link below!
The last few weeks have consisted of me perfecting my SAGE poster that will be presented at the 8th annual SAGE conference next Saturday and my senior thesis. With the poster done all of my work has been aimed at finishing and improving my paper. I look forward to presenting my data and research to my peers at the SAGE conference. Below is a picture of the final poster.
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