Comparing Community Structure of Vascular Plant Species on Nurse Logs and Ground Plots in the Arcata Community Forest

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

My study looked at the ecological role nurse logs play in the Arcata Community Forest, and whether they support a different vascular plant community than the forest floor.

Comparing Passerine Presence in an Urban College Town to a Nearby Rural Marsh Sanctuary

Jocelyn Lucente, Wildlife Undergraduate Student

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

With an ever-increasing push for urbanization, it is necessary to monitor the passerine's ability to tolerate increased anthropogenesis and ensure their persistence among changing habitats. Arcata, California is home to both a lively college campus (CPH) and a restored wildlife sanctuary (AMWS), offering ideally contrasting study sites to sample at. In order to determine if urbanization is affecting the birds’ occupancy, I will conduct a total of 30 point-counts at 15 urban and 15 rural sites to compare the number of individual passerines across land types. I hypothesize to detect a higher abundance of passerines throughout the rural settings.

Comparing Roadkill Abundance Between Urban and Rural Transects

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

A study comparing roadkill abundance between urban and rural transects on highway 101.

Comparing Salamander Activity Through Temperature Humidity and Rain

William Jones, Wildlife Undergraduate Student

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

In this project I measured changes in the level of salamander activity based upon the local temperature, humidity, and the presence of rain in the Arcata community forest behind Cal. Poly. Humboldt.

Comparison Between Native Californian and Governmental Attitudes Toward Resource Management and Conservation

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

Research on various land/ resource management and conservation techniques employed by Native communities in California; their foundations in Traditional Ecological Knowledge, influence on the natural history of Californian ecosystems/ habitats, and their relevance in today's California. Furthermore, the differences between Native community and State and Federal government attitudes toward land/ resource management and conservation will be explored, as well as the overlap/ cooperation between attitudes, especially in the case of the State of California and Native Californian communities.

Comparison of Nitrogen Inventories in the Northern and Southern Sub-basins of Humboldt Bay, Northern California

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

The nitrogen inventory of Humboldt Bay has not been quantified in the last 50 years. Our goal was to compare and contrast the nitrogen content of the surface, sediments, biomass, and water column between Arcata and South Bay. Not only was nitrate, nitrite, and ammonium in the water column and pore water tested, but many other factors including: CTD, biomass, grain size, chlorophyll-a, loss of ignition, CHN, and metals. We used past peer reviewed papers to determine differences between the two study areas, and coupled NOAA cencoos and Wiyot data, with our own testing to get the best picture we could of Humboldt Bay. Testing spanned for three months in 2015: March, April, and May.

Compiling archived spectral data of exoplanetary systems to search for trends in the atmospheric composition of hot Jupiters

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

The study of exoplanets has produced large amounts of data since the first exoplanet was discovered over two decades ago. Much of these data are archival and available online to be reused to search for new results. More specifically, spectral data that has been taken from planet-star systems to detect planets by the radial velocity (RV) method can be reused to perform transit spectroscopy if the RV curves include spectra taken at the primary and secondary eclipses and the observations have sufficient signal-to-noise ratio. Our goal is to prepare a compilation of current results on the atmospheric composition of hot Jupiter type planets and extend it by reusing archival data.

Computational Fluid Dynamics Models of RO-PRO and FO-RO Hybrid Processes

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

To address the two main issues of using reverse osmosis (RO) for desalination purposes (high energy demand and brine disposal), two hybrid systems have been proposed. One uses forward osmosis (FO) as pre-treatment while the other augments the RO step with pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO). To meaningfully compare the energy reductions from both systems, computational fluid dynamics models of the PRO and FO processes are being developed to encapsulate the complex geometries of the membrane modules and the system response to these geometries.

Computational Models of Galaxies in Kinetic Theory

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

In this research we model the distribution of mass in simulated galaxies by solving the Vlasov-Poisson system of equations. We've expanded our simulations to include multiple species of matter. This allows us to visualize the individual spatial density distributions of, for example, stars and dark matter as well as the joint gravitational potential. We have developed a library of computational tools to allow us to investigate a number of the physical properties of these galaxies. In future work we will use these tools to compare the characteristics of our model galaxies to those of observed galaxies.

Connecting Communities: Education and Resources for Humboldt County, California

Joseph Meihak, Wildlife Undergraduate Student

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

We created a website to promote ethical awareness and responsibility among the Cal Poly Humboldt community. The recent housing decisions have raised ethical concerns, and our website offers resources for housing, transportation, mental health, and local community services. We believe that these issues, such as food and housing insecurities and environmental impacts like pollution and resource scarcity, are interconnected. Our website aims to provide necessary resources to help address these issues and promote environmental consciousness.