An analysis of survey data collected from students in introductory college geoscience courses with heavily project-based curriculum. Pre and post surveys were taken to determine changes in student outlook on altruistic and environmentalist attitudes towards geology content and careers and how this change is different among demographics, which potentially can be used to promote higher racial and gender diversity in the field of geoscience.

This project showcases Brunner Family Farm and the fantastic fiber production we do there. Discover the process of yarn production with our friendly Angora goats. We are able to shear, spin, and dye our yarn all within 200 miles.

Our idea poster is about our College Corps site. We volunteered with three other fellows to maintain the garden. We have been giving our time here since August and have helped hundreds since then. Some of the things we learned about are the many gardening and carpentry tools. This has helped us to remove a plethora of invasive species. We have also built fences and done trail maintenance work. We partnered up with local businesses to obtain hundreds of seeds to donate. This helped our community start more gardens around town. Overall, our site's main mission is to give back to the community one seed at a time.

exploring several studies that have looked at the pulmonary function and quality of life effects of a variety of exercises for individuals with chronic asthma.

Examining foraging behavior of Great and Snowy Egrets in wetland environments. Two study sites, the Arcata Bay and the Salt Marsh, were examined in the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary. Comparisons were made examining their strike rates, success, rates, movement patterns, and location preferences while taking into consideration the wetland composition of the two study sites.

Several bat species can be observed in Humboldt County, including the Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis), hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus), and big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus). The objectives of this study were to investigate what bat species occur on campus and how variables such as artificial light, weather, and lunar phase might influence bat activity. Ultrasonic acoustic recorders were deployed on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus to capture recordings of bat vocalizations. Additional data from the Arcata Community Forest during a previous year was used to compare the detected species in the forest in Spring 2019 to the detected species on campus in Spring 2025.

Research: The provision of organic produce to local community members via the Potawot garden

Anabaena Sensory Rhodopsin (ASR) is a retinal containing membrane protein from the cyanobacteria, Anabaena (Nostoc) PCC 7120. The ASR protein undergoes a conformational change upon absorption of orange light, which causes the all-trans-retinal to be converted to 13-cis retinal and the release of the associated transducer protein (ASRT). In order to facilitate future nanolipoprotein studies we examined the efficacy of the production of ASR in several selected recombinant strains of E. Coli through a light and dark spetrophotometric analysis of the purified ASR protein.

Shifts in the timing of snow-pack melt influences the phenological cycles of evergreen forest in the Sierra Nevada mountain range; this can lead to potential alterations in the timing and duration of green-up in these forests. This can affect the forest’s resilience to ecological disturbances, like wildfires or insect outbreaks. In order to investigate these patterns this study uses data from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), which monitors the green-up of the forest and the snow depth. In addition, the snow water equivalent (SWE) data from the National Water and Climate Center (NWCC) was used to approximate the amount of snow-pack water available to the vegetation.

Bioethanol is a biofuel already prevalent throughout industry as a gasoline additive. It is widely considered carbon neutral since the carbon released upon combustion was taken from the CO2 in the air and made into cellulose during photosynthesis. Starchy or sugary food crops are used in bioethanol production when plant waste cellulose could be used instead. Efficient and scalable cellulase enzymes are limiting this switch. We sought to characterize a novel cellulase identified by metagenomic analysis of bovine rumen by the JGI and Hess et al. We performed protein expression and characterization by SDS-PAGE, CMC and DNS activity assays to compare this enzyme’s efficacy to commercial ones.