Research Highlights at the GIIF

Cal Student Research Highlights

Undergrad research goes tropical
Every fall, the undergraduate students in the course, Biology and Geology of Tropical Islands (ESPM C107), travel to the island of Moorea in French Polynesia for nine weeks to learn first-hand about tropical island ecology and to carry out semester-long research projects. The GIIF held a day-long workshop, training the students on GPS and GIS so that they could use the technologies for their studies abroad (Fig. 1). Lori LaRue (Fig. 2), 4th year Conservation Resources Studies major, looked at sediment changes in Moorea’s Temae Estuary, to understand ecological changes from development around the estuary. She collected GPS locations at 1000+ soil plots and interpolated surfaces and created distribution maps of the estuary’s bathymetry (depth) and sediment distribution. Zachary Hanna, 4th year Molecular Environmental Biology major, studied the distribution and dispersal of the native tree Fagraea berteroana. As part of his study, he collected GPS points of the tree locations across Moorea and calculated tree density which he then correlated to environmental factors (slope and aspect). The GIIF is building a webmap of data collected by this year’s students for future classes to use to analyze change.

Mapping threatened species habitat
Orien Richmond, a 3rd year PhD student in the Environmental Science, Policy, and Management Department, is analyzing IKONOS satellite imagery to find and map wetland habitat for metapopulation studies of the California Black Rail, a threatened subspecies in California. While the Black Rail occurs throughout the San Francisco Bay-Delta Region, populations were recently discovered (in 1994) in Yuba and Nevada Counties in the Sierra Nevada foothills. He is targeting Black Rail habitat, patches of freshwater emergent wetland consisting of cattail (Typha spp.), rush (Juncus spp.), and bulrush (Scirpus spp.), to understand how patch size and patch isolation affect local colonization and extinction dynamics (Fig. 3). In addition, he is trying to map habitat characteristics of the wetland patches that might affect metapopulation dynamics and viability, including density of certain emergent plant species and the proportion of different wetland cover classes.

California’s historical vegetation
John Dingman, Undergrad Forestry Honors Student and SPUR grant recipient, is working on relocating historic plots from the California vegetation Type Mapping (VTM) project around the Bay Area, including Mount Diablo State Park, CA. John is examining how land use has impacted vegetation change over time, and the VTM historic database is critical in this work (http://vtm.berkeley.edu). After obtaining research permits to conduct research on State Parks, John collected high spatial resolution satellite imagery and digital elevation models from various GIS databases for his study areas. At each VTM plots(Fig. 4), he collects tree species, DBH, height, species density, age and fire history data.