Capstone Intro Is ALL Done!

Here’s my abstract:

“For many of us, water simply flows from a faucet, and we think little about it beyond this point of contact. We have lost a sense of respect for the wild river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for the intricate web of life that water supports.” Sandra Postel from Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity. (1997). This paper and subsequent monitoring will try to begin to understand the complex workings of the wetland marsh systems located on Santa Rosa Island in the Channel Islands National Park. Furthermore, the purpose of the monitoring protocol will be to provide a more in depth understanding of the functions, structure, and ecological significance of this marsh system.

There are typically two, occasionally three coastal, apparently tidal marshes, which flow out of Old Ranch Canyon, Old Ranch House Canyon, and Quemada Canyon watersheds. These are ephemeral streams on a semi-arid Southern California Island that receives only 15 inches of rain a year (NOAA weather data 2015). Even though these watersheds are some of the larger streams on Santa Rosa, the lagoons do dry up, especially during this time of extreme drought. This vital signs monitoring project will perform water quality and temporal-seasonal change surveys on a long-term periodic scale. This protocol is in efforts to help the National Parks Service and other ecological surveyors better understand the history and the future of a semi-arid climate marsh and watershed system. The long-term monitoring program being implemented for the marsh systems on Santa Rosa Island must look at a number of parameters to determine the health of this ecosystem along with its potential productivity and ecosystem services. By deploying the salinity, temperature, and other water quality parameters, along with vegetation and aerial photo studies, we can get a significant snapshot of the changes and varying influences of the marshes.