Point of Entry 1

On my last trip out to Santa Rosa Island this semester, I decided to get a good lay of the land and outline the area of my sampling sites. The first one was the Port and Cultural Center area. I spent several hours just walking the perimeter around the area and in between all the fences to see what would match up with the National Parks guidelines on what defines the “hardscape,” which is “developed area (e.g. compacted earth, gravel, pavement, fencing) and the first 50 meters” of connecting dirt roads and trails.¹ Keeping this in mind, I walked around the area several times, each time exploring something new to see what would fit this criteria. On my last go, I had a GPS device constantly running and I walked the exact perimeter in accordance with the guidelines and came up with a hardscape for my first point of entry. There were a few errors with the GPS device cutting out in signal with this method so there are points in which it appears that I cut through structures and fences, however I will re-create this in Arc-Map cleaner now that I have a good visual of the hardscape and how far 50 meters in on the trails.

^{1 Irvine, Irina C., et al. Invasive Plant Monitoring in the Mediterranean Coast Network: Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and Channel Islands National Park. 2015. Print.}