I studied the abundance of non-native European honey bees, and native bumble bees and others in gardens with mostly non-native plants and those with all native plants. The non-native European honey bee may be better suited to take advantage of urban, non-native gardens than native bee species due to anthropogenic support and domestication. Thus, I made the hypotheses that native bees will be more abundant in in native gardens, and that European honey bees will be more abundant in the non-native gardens. I also predicted that European honey bee abundance would be constant over the study period due to more urban resources from ornamental flowering plants.

It is commonly believed that many animals, especially prey species, benefit from foraging while in a group. Using point-count surveys, I observed Mallard at the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary in an effort to determine their propensity for foraging at an increased rate while in a group. I also attempted to determine whether or not group size altered the preferred foraging strategy of mallard.

The rapid expansion of urban areas has reduced and eliminated habitats for birds. For the purpose of this study, the goal was to evaluate how bird abundance and species richness varied from sunrise to sunset along a gradient of human activity, and how it influenced the presence of species richness and abundance of birds throughout the day.

Trace metals are crucial to many biological processes in marine environments. In estuaries linear relationships between salinity and concentration indicate that mixing is the main determinant of concentration, while exponential relationships indicate active removal. In this study it was expected that scandium would have an exponential relationship with salinity due to its similar ionic size to iron, however, Sc displayed a linear relationship while elements that were expected to be linear were exponential. To the author’s knowledge, this data represents the first river and estuary measurements of Sc, Ce, Zr, and La, and the reasons for these surprising relationships are not fully known.

This study was conducted by the students of OCN496 in the fall of 2020. The goal of this study was to quantify the amount of microplastics in Humboldt Bay by observing its sediment and water column at specific locations during the tidal cycle. Additionally, we wanted to observe how tidal fluctuations impact the concentration and transport of microplastics in the water column.

My research was conducted on the coast of Humboldt County, where I measured salamander proximity to a freshwater source relative to the distance to the ocean. I used two study sites, one in the Arcata Community Forest and one in Trinidad. I found 38 salamanders while sampling 60 1x1 meter quadrats.

Project presentation on black bear diet composition and diversity between the Klamath and Trinity river regions.

Shotguns are often used for hunting and when they are fired, they produce a plastic wad and shell that are ejected and often left behind. In order to estimate the abundance of shotgun wads and shells, eight randomly selected sites around Humboldt Bay were sampled once each during the month of March 2022. The sites sampled included the beach and bay side of the Samoa Peninsula, Arcata, and Eureka. At these selected sites, 400-m2 was inspected for wads and shells. While sampling at each site, trash was collected and weighed. Only one shotgun wad and one shell was collected at two different sites, for an abundance of 0.25 wads and shells per 100 m2, and an average of 0.26 kg of trash per 100 m2

I examined the effects of ungrazed and grazed habitats on two raptor species, Northern Harriers and Red-tailed Hawks. The study evaluates how raptor abundance varies between the two habitat types, as well as, how factors such as rodent abundance and perch availability influence their distributions.

The OCN 499 extended independent study is a time series analysis of an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) in Humboldt Bay in collaboration with NOAA's Physical Oceanographic Real-Time System (PORTS) project.