The Carmel is a lovely little river. It isn’t very long, but in its course it has everything a river should have. It rises in the mountains, and tumbles down a while, runs through shallows, is dammed to make a lake, spills over the dam, crackles among round boulders, wanders lazily under sycamores, spills into…
Field trip
Pools, plants, and ponds
The other day my students and I lucked out with the weather and managed to get in a full day of exploring a former military base. Fort Ord, on Monterey Bay near the small city of Marina, was an Army base until it was closed in 1994. Since then, most of the land (~14,600 acres)…
There’s gold in the forest
Combine the words “gold” and “California” and you automatically come up with the Gold Rush, don’t you? After all, California is the Golden State. And while that nickname may be to honor the golden hills of summer or the poppies that are the state flower, it may also be a tribute to the discovery of…
Winter wildlife
The spring semester started this week, which means that every Friday I’ll be taking my Ecology students on field trips. Yesterday’s field trip, the first of the class, was to Rancho del Oso and Waddell Beach. Every year I’ve taken the students to these sites to visit two different habitats: forest and beach. And all…
Playing in the sand, for science
This semester I am teaching a lab for a General Biology course for non-majors. I polled my students on the first day of lab, and their academic plans are quite varied: several want to major in psychology (always a popular major), some want to go into business, a few said they hope to go into…
Saving a species
How does a group of people go about trying to save a federally endangered species? The answer, of course, depends on the species. However, you can bet your bottom dollar that it takes a tremendous effort over many years by many dedicated and talented people, all of whom know that in the end their work…
Getting skunked by birds
This week I took my Ecology students to the Younger Lagoon Reserve (YLR) on the UC Santa Cruz Coastal Science Campus. The YLR is one of 39 natural reserves in all of the major ecosystems throughout the state of California. The UCSC campus administers five of the reserves: Younger Lagoon, the Campus Reserve, Fort Ord Natural…
Students begin observing succession
This week’s field trip for my Ecology class was the first of two visits to the Santa Cruz harbor. The students’ task was to select a site to monitor for a semester-long study of ecological succession. The floating docks at the harbor are the ideal site for this kind of study because I know from…
Blitzin’ the intertidal, part 2
The intertidal portion of my participation in Snapshot Cal Coast 2017 is complete. I organized four Bioblitzes, two of which consisted of myself and Brenna and the other two for docents of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center (Tuesday) and the docents of Año Nuevo and Pigeon Point State Parks (Wednesday). The four consecutive days of…
Snapshots of Snapshot Day
Since 2000 the first Saturday in May is Snapshot Day in Santa Cruz. This is a big event where the Coastal Watershed Council trains groups of citizen scientists to collect water quality data on the streams and rivers that drain into the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, then sets them loose with a bucket of gear,…