richcoca
Registered: December 2016
City/Town/Province: Canoga Park
Posts: 2
View this Member's Photo Gallery
|
An oasis within the waters of the Pacific, Santa Rosa Island provides a home to a great diversity of life. Previous trips to the research station with the science magnet have fostered within me a great desire to promote the stewardship of resources and cultivate an appreciation for nature in others. The island really does have a rich history and its native species were one of the many reasons why I wanted to dedicate time during the summer to volunteer to protect the biodiversity of the island. The current restoration efforts on the island have showed to me that there is hope in getting society to change its current trend of disturbing fragile ecosystems in exchange for “necessary” resources. Along with others, I have helped create a genetic inventory of insect biodiversity on SRI as part of the ongoing restoration program. The DNA-barcoding based inventory has been started with a systematic survey of bees of the clade Anthophila. Prior work has been done with Coastal Marine Biolabs in establishing reference barcodes for rockfish species in the Santa Barbara channel. As a bioindicator species, it allows us to keep a “pulse” on the health of Lady Rosa as well as the other Northern Channel Islands. My love for the island itself is why I find it so important to protect its health. Although it feels like a second home to me, it’s the first home to many living organisms such as the island fox and the island scrub-jay. However, restoring the island to its previous conditions is not an easy task, that’s where volunteers come in play. That’s where I came in.
This summer I was one a few privileged students that were selected to return to the island to assist undergraduate students with their research projects. Besides getting exposure to networking opportunities, we all got the opportunity to talk to these universities students and learn more about their personal aspirations and how they sought to help the ongoing restoration efforts with their research. On the first day, I did ecological sampling with Aaron, a CSUCI alumni who returned to the island because she felt personally indebted to the island for inspiring her throughout her course of study. The following day with Tyler, I collected data on the island’s dudleya to determine whether geological aspect- northern v southern facing slope- really had a major impact on the succulent’s stress levels. Now, since the north facing slopes receive less direct sunlight there is slower evaporation on the north side which means that dudleya will have more available moisture. Because of this, you’d expect the dudleya on southern facing slopes to be more stressed however the data we collected proved contrary. As a result of this, we couldn’t disprove our null hypothesis and as an undergraduate assistant I was asked to speculate why and I remembered one of the topics of a lecture that we had the night before: the nurse plant theory. Seeing theory being practiced in the field was really enjoyable for me in the sense that I could feel accomplished by taking ownership of what I’ve learned.
Two other students and I also conducted sandy beach monitoring. Using quadrat sampling, we monitored sand crabs and other critters that are bio-ondicator species. Their abundance usually suggests up-swelling of nutrients. That data we collected helped the National Park Service in their restoration efforts.
|
