By Audrey Glazier: One dark, cloudy day in November, my Restoration Ecology class was joined by students in another ecology class to attend an educational field trip with the Laguna Foundation. The goal was to learn about the Foundation’s restoration efforts along the Laguna de Santa Rosa, and also gain Read more
By Krissa Klein: Sonoma State University has two ponds on the north side of campus, not far from Copeland Creek. These ponds were originally meant for fire suppression, and are thus in ecologically poor shape. The water is an unappealing brownish color, with scum and litter floating on the surface. Read more
By David Wentworth: During our visit to Lagunitas creek, we were shown many different structures that had been created around and in the creek to better improve the health of its inhabitants. These man-made structures were created from a combination of natural materials (mainly wood) held together by rebar. The Read more
By Cindy Tanaka: Lagunitas Creek is a home for many species of salmon and for a rare species of shrimp. In the past, the morphology of the creek was changed due to agriculture to increase the farmland area. Not only was the morphology changed but there was a dam installed Read more
By Audrey Zitnay: On Friday, October 6th our Restoration Ecology class had the opportunity to travel to the Lagunitas Creek arranged by our professor Wendy St. John. Lagunitas Creek is a 20 mile creek located in Marin County that flows through Mt. Tamalpais area and eventually enters the Pacific Ocean Read more
By Makayla Freed: On Friday, September 1st, Professor Wendy St. John took the Restoration Ecology class for a walk up part of Copeland Creek, where previous Restoration Ecology students had both proposed and implemented a restoration plan. Our mission for the day was to get a better grasp of Copeland Read more
By Heather Kelly-Cavanaugh: Our first lab session, on September 1st, consisted of our entire class going out to Copeland Creek with professor Wendy St John. It runs through the back of Sonoma State University, which surprisingly not many students know it even exists. As we walked up and down the Read more
The penultimate day of the summer term! Compared to some of our other days, this one was pretty low key, but we did have a little unexpected adventure.
I’d intended to lecture on ecosystem services in the morning, and then watch one of my favorite “teaching” films, “Hurricane on the Bayou.” And this is mostly what happened, except for a little detour part way through. When I arrived on campus, I noticed some flyers posted in the science building – one of the biology grad students, Vanessa Dodge, was giving her thesis defense. Not only was I really interested in her research, as I’d been up to the field site in Point Reyes a couple of times, but I also thought this would be a good way for my students to learn a bit more about the process of science. So, I gave them the choice – do you want to listen to me lecture all morning? Or do you want to go hear someone else talk for a while? They voted in favor of variety, so about an hour into the day we headed upstairs to the thesis defense.
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We covered a lot of ground today. We started out with a lab activity, since we hadn’t had time to explore biomes fully the previous day. I started them out with a super cool Google Earth file that I found here. One of the resources is an interactive Google Earth map with layers that show various aspects of climate – average winter temperatures, average summer temperatures, that sort of thing – along with a layer that shows the location and distribution of biomes, worldwide.
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Not a whole lot to post about this day . . . once again (as usual on exam days), I didn’t take any photos. Our morning was taken up with the third exam, including an exam review session. No Pictionary this time, though . . . instead, I put together a game of Jeopardy, using this awesome Powerpoint template.
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