February 2, 2012
Catalina Island Field Trip- January 27-28, 2012
I just returned from an awesome field trip to Catalina Island. My ENST 495 classmates and I had the privilege of spending Friday and Saturday on the island learning first hand what we went over in class the past three weeks: Catalina natural history, fires in the wild, and Marine Protected Areas.
My favorite part of the weekend was an assignment to collect 15 plant specimens, identify them, and put them into a plant press. I not only learned about native and non-native species, but I am also now able to point out which plant species are endemic to Catalina.
I made a little video about some of the plants:ENST 495 Catalina Video
I think the coolest thing I learned was about why many of the plants have little hairs, or fuzz on them. This is to shade themselves from the sun. Catalina has a Mediterranean climate, which means very dry, and little rain. Therefore, the plants need to keep in moisture as much as possible, so with hairs that provide shade, the plants release less water into the atmosphere because their surrounding temperature is a little bit lower. That is SO COOL!
And to top it off, we got to go snorkeling!
Amelia Bahr & Nina Gordon-Kirsch geared up for snorkeling
This post was authored by Nina Gordon-Kirsch ’12 an Environmental Studies major (BS) with a minor in marketing.
Here is a youtube link of the video because the link above doesn’t work for everyone!
http://youtu.be/6Sl_TRmHpSc
I found the trip to Catalina Island an interesting trip because it displays so much diverse flora and fauna. However, it also shows how the introduction of non native species and human development have impacted the ecosystem. This is shown by the effect the canine distemper virus has had on the Catalina Island foxes, which was transmitted by domestic dogs and raccoons that were introduced by humans to the native foxes.