Tag Archive for: instructor-sean.anderson

Welcome to my world! Here’s me with a very nice Hawaiian girl I met while on the Big Island…

Hey, that’s my wife!

But really, here’s my story:

Born on a chilly January day in Los Angeles County, I came into the world right in the middle of a city that is globally known for three things – “reality show” celebrities, miles of Baywatch-infused raked beaches (leave the wrack, people!), and some really bad, if not the worst at the time, air quality on earth.

(Wait, there’s a city in there??)

Perhaps that more than anything led me to the realization that environmental damage is one of the worst aspects of modern society – and although major strides have been taken (thank you NEPA!), there is still much work to be done.

Enter: California State University, Channel Islands. From all the institutions of higher learning on earth, I found myself at CSUCI, majoring in ESRM, Environmental Science and Resource Management. And over the years I have studied at CI, I have learned so much that I kind of laugh when I think about how little I knew about the workings of the world before I started in ESRM. Every choice we make has consequences – but not all of the consequences have to necessarily be negative. Recycling is a choice; not creating the product in the first place is another choice. How we as a species weigh the myriad choices presented to us everyday will decide our collective future, and the future of all life on earth.

But I digress; this is about me, not the planet and all of its intricacies.

I was born in SoCal, but raised and introduced to things in the SF Bay Area. The Bay is a great place to grow up. Although most people today will tell you it’s full of nothing but tech entrepreneurs and indigent people, there is a culture there like no other.

All my experiences have led me to the present day – in many ways I see the future as a battle between the light side of the Force (natural living, free from pollution and environmental degradation), and the dark side (exploitation of all resources, poor air and water quality, and loss of species and diversity).

I know where I stand – I will always fight the dark side; now where’s my lightsaber??

Research is continuing smoothly. The initial field research is nearing an end on Santa Rosa Island. I have made two 3 daytrips to the island and completed two of the four groves involved with the demography plots completely. I am returning over the break for a week long research trip where I will complete my field demography studies.

This week for my capstone I went to Frank Intermediate School to listen to the presentations about the Santa Clara watershed. Students at Channel Island High school did the same project you can read about in the “unit 2” blog post. Again the presentations were on invasive species Arundo, endangered species Bell’s Vireo, water quality, and urban runoff. Students needed to take notes and answer some questions about each presentation. Even though the students were nervous about giving their presentations they were done really well. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of the posters. This will be our last class visit for now. We will return to the schools in February to start unit 3. From this point on my capstone partner and I will be working on lesson plans and tests to give to the students which will be our main data collection for our project.

I took my last trip out to the island for the year and counted about 200 trees! Now it’s time to research papers and analyze data, so my view went from this

 

to this

Throughout this semester (August-November 2015) i was able to travel to the Santa Rosa Island many times. I was on the island a total of 16 days over multiple weekends to conduct research, and collect data. Over this time i was able to record multiple cross-sections throughout Water Canyon. Here is a photo that shows my cross-section locations within the watershed.