USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts & Sciences

By Alexandria Cheung and Sabrina Lawrence-Gomez

After a wonderful breakfast cooked by Dan, our resident breakfast chef extraordinaire, Alex and I hiked over to the Wrigley campus for Associates’ Day, a day for donors to explore the amenities and projects going on! When we arrived, the day had already started with arts and crafts for the youngsters and events at the waterfront and marine lab. Alex and I were recruited to lead two nature hikes along the south facing slope of the campus up to the bluffs with Ellen Kelly, Wrigley’s Naturalist.

Before we set off, we handed them these really advanced headsets. They look like pre-recorded audio guides that you would get at a museum, but they actually tune in to a microphone so the crowd can listen to Ellen’s guide on real time. We thought this was a brilliant idea. It was also extremely useful because the trail is very narrow, and everyone has to hike in a single file line.

Ellen began the hike near the sycamore trees, and she introduced us to the the crowd. We started talking about our trail and our work here this summer, educating the hikers about invasive fennel . Then we hiked up the narrow path. Alex and I were stationed at different spots of the line, in the middle and at the end, to answer any questions. We also pointed out interesting geological features and plant species.

The crowd was extremely receptive and asked wonderful questions. Sabrina and I were happy to get to know them , especially since most of them were affiliated with USC, like professors, or had generations of family members that attended USC. Towards the end of the hike, Ellen did a demonstration on ocean waves for some of the kids in the group. We stood in a line and held hands, starting an oscillation at one end by lifting our arms, then transferred it back to the other side creating a wave. The little hikers really enjoyed it.

When it was our turn to lead the hike, Sabrina and I were super nervous, but we overcame our fears. We passed out the headsets and Sabrina led the hike above, while I lead it from behind. The experience was very nerve-wracking as we wondered what to talk about and what to point out. It became more natural as we showed plants that we knew and understood and told stories about our island experiences. It was nice to share all of the knowledge that had been imparted to us from Ellen and Charlie, and teach it to someone new. Sabrina did a wonderful job leading on top. All in all, it was a great learning experience.

After the hike, we had a delicious meal with the USC Associates. Associates Day is a great program and I am glad we could be a part of it.

Today was our second day of species collection with Sarah! We had such an awesome time working with her last week, we were excited to continue our work today. We began at the borrow pit (an area where soil is mined and deposited for various purposes) where we had left off the previous Friday. One of the coolest plant species I have encountered on this island lives in this borrow pit. It is South African native succulent part of a genus called Mesembryanthemum and it is beautiful! The plant grows low to the ground and in wide patches. Because it is a succulent, this ice plant is great at living in dry conditions and has adaptations that allow it to store water in its tissues. This trait manifests itself as tiny water droplet like structures that surround the plants stems. When they catch sunlight, the plant glitters! It is really neat, and its no wonder this plant is cultivated for ornamental purposes.

One of the things that I have learned working on this island is that invasive plants aren’t bad or even necessarily ugly, they simply just don’t belong. Despite this plants beauty, it has some gnarly effects on the ecosystem. The ice plant has the ability to concentrate salt within its tissues (which also aids with water absorption). When the ice plant drops its leaves, it concentrates salts in the soil. Many plants cannot grow in this salty environment, so the iceplant can essentially take over once it establishes. As we continued our survey we identified two types of invasive Mesembryanthemum along the trail, Mesembryanthemum nodiflorum and Mesembryanthemum crystallinum. We haven’t discussed the removal of invasives other than fennel along the trail, so I can’t speak to the fate of these ice plants, but I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t miss them. They are just that beautiful! I guess I will have to move to South Africa to have some in my yard.

As our identification work continued, we moved to from the Bird Rock lookout point to the Picnic oak. Right past the oaks, we collected one of the trail’s three endemics, the Catalina bedstraw or Gallium nutalium. We continued up the trail, still in the Island chaparral and grassland type plant community, past the fenceline up to a unique looking tree. It has beige bark that peels away to reveal a bright burnt umber interior. As it turns out, this tree is quite special. It is a Xyloccocus bicolor or mission manzanita, a tree native only to Southern California and Northern Baja. I think it is so cool we found such a rare plant along our trail! We carefully collected fruit and leaves from this tree, placed some more species in the press and continued towards the top of the trail.

Near the top, we collected some more unique plants: the Catalina chrososoma, the Island redberry, and Indian paintbrush. I remember reading The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush by Tomie dePaola as a child, and since then it has been an iconic representation of Native American culture to me. It was neat to see Indian paintbrush in the wild, especially since I wouldn’t expect to see it on Catalina.

We finally made it to the top and with 40 species samples! I was so impressed by the diversity of the plant community in this area, I would never have guessed there were so many different kinds of plants. It also goes to show how important preventing a fennel take over is; there are too many species on this trail at risk. I hope we protect this area and can highlight all of these unique plants along our trail so others can see them!

For more pictures, check out today’s photo album: Day 27 Plant Collection with Sarah

Today we had a second visit from our advisor Lisa Collins and this time she brought along some special guests; Lisa Chung a USC graduate student in the School of Animation and Digital Arts and Michelle a visiting international student in the same department. This was Lisa and Michelle’s second visit out to Catalina. As a part of one of their animation classes, they took a visit out to Wrigley and animated some of the ecosystems of Catalina. Lisa showed us her project from this trip and it is truly spectacular! (Check out Spontaneous Sea-mphony) The goal of their visit today is to begin an animation about the work we’ve been doing on the trail.

We began the morning by leading Lisa and Michelle up the trail and talking about our purpose for the project. They were so receptive to learning about all of the science! We taught them about how fennel grows into monocultures, and how you have to remove the entire root in order to keep the plant from growing back. As we continued talking, Lisa shared with us her goal for the animation: to help scientists illustrate a complex idea in a visual that is easy for the general public to understand. Often times it is difficult to bridge the gap between technical experts and the public, which is a unfortunate considering the general public is often affected by the actions experts. This is especially true in Catalina where the Conservancy is the manager of the land that local residents rely on for recreation and some for their livelihood. I hope that the animation Lisa creates can serve as a tool to share the work of the Conservancy with the community and help explain the science behind restoration.

Lisa asked us for some inspiration for the animation and two ideas came to mind. The first was an idea Charlie de la Rosa is always focused on- the future. Charlie often talks to us about points in time, how the island we are seeing today is only a snap shot of what the island has looked like and what it will look like. He often uses the phrase, if we don’t act now “what will this landscape look like in 50 years?”. When we remove fennel, our goal is not just for the landscape to look fennel free for the next year, it is so the island isn’t entirely taken over by fennel monocultures in 50 years. So we proposed this animation idea to Lisa- showing a landscape treated for fennel in a 50 year time-span versus a landscape not treated with fennel in fifty years. The second idea was comparing tactics for fennel removal, mowing (short term removal) and digging out the entire plant. In both animations we wanted to have the idea of a fennel monoculture versus a native, biodiverse landscape illustrated.

Both animators were really interested in getting some good photos of all of the plant parts of the fennel, so we spent some time taking them around and showing them different plants. I was truly impressed with their attention to detail. After we talked business, we all sat in the toyon grove and learned a little bit more about animation and the program that Lisa and Michelle are a apart of. The animation program is an extremely intense program that requires not only artistic talent but outstanding time management skills. These two traits are imperative considering 1 second of animation requires 24 drawings. I repeat 1 second of film requires 24 drawings! This truly amazed me, and I have a lot of respect for the work these women do. Lisa really seems like an expert and is super professional. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with!

In the afternoon, we spent time with Lisa Collins discussing our plans for the research project. We talked as a group and decided to focus on the affect different disturbances have on the native plant communities and the growth of invasive species. Our plan is to sample soils in the area of the 2007 Avalon fire, and the 2011 Two Harbors fire and look at plant communities in each region. We will be analyzing the soil samples for total nitrogen and pH. I am really looking forward to working on this project! I have never had an opportunity to work with soil chemistry and I think our findings will provide knowledge that the conservancy can use to guide management strategies regarding fires.

By Sabrina Lawrence-Gomez

We had a visit from Sarah Ratay, the Senior Plant Ecologist for the Conservancy today. Since this is the first time the anyone has done major work in the Deer Valley area, the Conservancy wanted to get an idea of what plants exist in this territory. So, we are completing a plant species survey much like what we did in Descanso Canyon, Avalon, except this time we are creating an entire Herbarium collection for our trail. This will be a great opportunity for us to practice our plant species identification skills and learn even more about plant and Herbarium work.

The last time we visited Sarah she gave us a field plant press, a contraption with sheets of cardboard and blotting paper sandwiched between two wooden boards strapped held together by two belts. The idea is to collect plants including their roots and flowers, place them between sheets of newspaper, then between two pieces of cardboard, and stack them inside the press and squeeze the sides together using the belts to stabilize. The goal is to squeeze the water out of the plants and have it absorbed by the newspaper so they don’t rot, essentially preserving the plants in a dried form For plants that contain a lot of water, like invasive ice plant, we add blotting paper to the mix to help absorb the excess liquid.

We started the day at the bottom of the trail and worked our way up to the first control point, off-roading and scouting around for plants. While the others started searching for plants, I worked with Sarah in determining the plant community, slope and aspect, and tracking our GPS location. We then worked together to determine the plant species associated with the community. Alex took charge of labeling all of the newspapers with the collection name and sample number. As Dan, Miller, and Sarah came back with plants we placed them in the newspaper and recorded the number of samples and the species name. Sarah would help us identify each plant and I would attempt to write the Latin species name. I had such a difficult time spelling them! But Sarah knew each plant, its common and scientific name and all of the spellings. After we finished the first site, we continued past the toyon grove to the waterfall collecting plants and recording them. By the end of the day, we had collected 20 species!

We headed home with our full plant press with instructions to keep it in a cool dry place, away from food which could encourage bacterial growth. It was a really successful day and I can’t wait to see how our specimens turn out. More on plant collection next week…