SEMINAR 1 PAPERS ---- SEMINAR 2 PAPERS ----- SEMINAR 3 PAPERS ---- MISCELLANEOUS

Class Requirements:

1. Prerequisites to count for ESSP major: ESSP 260 - Geology/Hydrology and Geomorphology or Advanced Hydrology
2. Prerequisite for other majors: Consent of Instructor and Upper Division status
3. Ability to attend some Saturday all-day field trips
4. A written and orally-presented class paper is required. Field presentations may be appropriate
5. Serious attention to your real potential to make a change through your education.
6. Willingness and ability to challenge some dogma and explore alternative theories and ways of thinking. Is diversity best? Is climate change bad? Is flood control evil? Must all streams meander? Can constructed habitats work? Can soil formation be accellerated? Is large woody debris always necessary? Should Rosgen stream classification be used in coastal California? ...

1. Three seminars required of each participant; 1 on theory; 1 on practice or applications, and 1 on a case study. Instructor-chosen limited options for choice of review works.
2. A class paper or project; possibly one we all work on together.
3. No text, but many web-based and hard copy papers and monographs.
4. Considerable field effort once day-length permits; class choice of field sites. May have field projects.
5. Field presentations/participation part of assessment
6. Class presentations and participation part of assessment
7. Instructor is a facilitator - not a lecturer. You will be guided and constrained where necessary to accomplish the primary goals, but what you learn is largely a function of what you contribute.

Coordination for plant Identification :

This semester we will try to coordinate with Nikki Nedeff's California Ecosystems class (http://classes.csumb.edu/ESSP/ESSP342-01/world/ ) to take advantage of her expertise to learn how to identify local plant taxa. Expect some plant collection and identification, using hand lenses and microscopes.

Learning Outcomes:

• Working principles of applied ecology including, but not limited to those applicable to riparian, estuarine, and upland habitat management considerations
• The role of soils and geologic substrates in plant and animal community support
• The natural functions of flood plains, streams as sediment transport systems, and groundwater recharge.
• The role of riparian systems and wetlands in water quality enhancement - hydric soils and groundwater systems
• The concepts of time in ecosystem development - linear, cyclic, and episodic
• Critical evaluation of ongoing, past, and contemplated public and private ecosystem restoration efforts, including as examples: Elkhorn Slough, the Carmel River system, the Salinas River system, San Benito/Pajaro River, El Toro Creek, Ft. Ord backcountry, a coastal dune site, and others.
• Critical evaluation of ongoing, past, and contemplated habitat conservation efforts and species recovery plans, including as examples: Coho Salmon on west coastal watersheds, upland endemic plant species on Ft. Ord BLM lands, steelhead salmonids in Monterey Bay watersheds, a Big Sur area public/private land conservancy effort, and a Native American residential support system.
• Thorough comfort and familiarity with contemporary ecological concepts and measurement of indices of plant and animal community "diversity", "stability", "resilience" and other popular perceptions of ecosystem "health".
• Critical understandings of ecological dynamics in light of changing external variables such as climate, internal variables such as species introductions and extinctions, and both long and short-term biogeographical shifts. Understanding of thresholds of change from the standpoint of chaos theory and from the conventional ecological models of succession.
• Understanding of the role of fire and fire suppression in Mediterranean ecosystems, especially coastal chaparral.
• Understandings of the role of introduced domestic plant and animal species in Mediterranean ecosystems.
• Understanding of rich vs depauperate fauna and flora on landscape evolution. Import of historical biogeography and dispersals. Study of agents of dispersal, such as Ft. Ord native ants, and opportunities to educate humans on their roles.
• Study of genotypic vs phenotypic variation and the import of local genotypes in plant and animal community restoration. The historic work of Clausen, Keck and Heisey in California, and the contemporary work on Pinus radiata on the Monterey Peninsula.
• Understanding of the concepts of balance and equilibrium in physical landscape evolution, particularly in upland watersheds and 1st and 2nd order stream systems. Concepts of geomorphic evolution, quasi-stability, thresholds of change, and cyclicity in landscapes.
• Understanding the roles of anadromous and other freshwater fisheries in stream restoration. Use and misuse of fish habitat regulatory control.
• Understand the roles of estuaries as buffers for material and information flow between marine and terrestrial ecosystems. How seaward-transported nutrients are captured and may be recycled back to headwaters, as exemplified in the Phosphorus and Nitrogen cycles
• Understanding of pathways and mechanisms of information transfer in watershed systems. Ability of geomorphic systems to respond in time and space. Concepts of Gaia in watershed systems.

Potential Class Paper topics:

   These are primarily examples of potential paper topics to be selected individually for your research effort during this semester. In some cases two or more persons may work on aspects of a given topic, but in most cases these are designed as suggestions for individual paper topics. You are encouraged to develop your own topics. A pre-proposal will be required by the 4th week, with a list of sources of information you expect to use and your strategy for developing your paper. These may become capstone projects for ESSP majors.

1. The problem of "Pampas" Grass: a) The role of public nurseries at K-Mart, Orchard Supply, etc., in distributing exotic invasive plants. A strategy for change through education, regulation, etc., and/or b) The role of public schools in Pampas Grass propagation. Why is there so much Pampas Grass around public schools and along highways?
2. Work with a Watershed Public Group, like Carneros Creek, Salinas Valley, Carmel Valley, etc., to address a topic of your mutual selections
3. Develop a GIS-based map of a California Legislative District with watersheds delimited and with the basic environmental information relating to watershed conditions depicted thereon
4. The problem and potential solutions to problems caused by Caltrans' Highway planting programs. Ongoing research to eradicate ice-plant and restore native Monterey Pine rather than New Zealand's silviculturally selected Bishop Pine cross sold in this country as Monterey Pine.
5. French (and Scotch) broom eradication research in coastal California. Simple removal versus potentials for biological control with examples from local problem sites. The same questions for other species such as Arundo donax in the Salinas River channel, tree-tobacco or tamarisk throughout the southwest.
6. The Arundo Crisis in the west as it affects irrigation & flooding
7. The consequences of community structure damage triggered by weedy invasives, using historical literature on annual European grasses, gorse hedges, brown trout, etc.
8. Loss of large frogs in California - possible causes and solutions.
9. Predator-prey linkages as triggers for ecosystem changes. How has loss of beach bears in California changed watershed stability? If the public perceived Ft. Ord mountain lions as responsible for the death of a local child, what ecosystem changes might occur upon their extirpation?.
10. How can we balance the agricultural value of Central California Coastal floodplain soils that can be cropped year-around with natural floodplain function? Salinas Valley or Pajaro River conflict resolutions -- Is the Los Angeles River model the only solution?
11. Use of fire as a restoration tool in a particular geographic setting. Rural residential conflicts.
12. Human influences on island biogeography: The enigmas of the Coco de Mer in the Sechyelles or the forests of Easter Island or flightless birds of New Zealand or pitch-canker disease in Monterey Bay. What is the message for ecological  watershed restoration?
13. Restoring soils as the basis for ecosystems. What are the time factors, and how much acceleration is possible?
14. In a global village, can restoration to native species be a realistic goal? What can we learn from epidemiology?
15. In an urbanizing village, can watershed restoration be a realistic goal? What can we learn from fluvial geomorphology?
16. The arroyo cycle. Can or should land-use planning protect property owners?
17. Can property taxes be linked to watershed stability as a basis for watershed-wide land use planning and management?
18. The coyote population explosion in coastal suburban California. Will it balance ground squirrels and what does that do to watershed sediment yield balance?
19. Is watershed or stream channel restoration justified or even appropriate where the human cultural infrastructure has developed in ignorance of natural processes such as it has in the Carmel River Valley or the lower Pajaro river course?
20. How can groundwater management (water quality, water quantity, and use of groundwater reservoirs for storage) be used as an incentive for stream channel and watershed restoration?

Version 1.4 March 28, 2005