Last Friday Lecture Series

“Biosecurity for Catalina: Protecting the island from new invasive species” with Juli Matos, Biosecurity Manager, Channel Islands National Park

Join us as we learn how prevention is the most effective approach for invasive species management! By preventing new invasive plants and animals from being introduced to Catalina, we can protect this unique Island environment and economy from their impacts.

“Southern California Geology” with Nate Onderdonk Ph.D., Professor, CSU Long Beach

The geology of Catalina Island holds valuable information about the development of the tectonic plate boundary in California. In this talk, Nate Onderdonk presents a simplified version of the geologic history of Catalina Island with an emphasis on how the island fits into the tectonic history of Southern California. See how the rocks on Catalina are a continuation of the rocks on the mainland, but provide a valuable offshore data point for piecing together some incredible and unique stories about the often messy process of plate tectonics.

“Conservation of Island Foxes” with Brian Cypher Ph.D., Ecologist, CSU Stanislaus

The diversity and abundance of food resources are naturally limited on islands.  For island foxes, food security is greater on larger islands with more biotic diversity, such as Santa Catalina.  However, food availability is only one of the challenges for island foxes.  Despite recent recovery success, island foxes will always be a “conservation reliant” species. 

“Nature Journaling Basics: The What, Why, and How of Keeping Your Nature Journal” with John Muir Laws, Educator

Nature journaling is one of the best ways to enhance your observation, connection, and love of the natural world. Join John Muir Laws and the Catalina Island Conservancy for a virtual introduction to nature journaling. Learn the what, why, and how of keeping your nature journal. This talk will explore simple techniques to record the landscape and endemic species of Catalina Island with words, pictures, and numbers.

“Darkness at Noon: Prehumans, Humans and the Collapse of Island Faunas” with Ross MacPhee Ph. D Senior curator in residence, Department of Mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History

The land areas worst affected by terrestrial extinctions during the past 1 million years are islands. Almost all islands that humans have historically inhabited have suffered major losses—some up to 100% of insular representatives of certain groups, such as land mammals. This talk will present a global survey of vertebrate extinctions on islands since the appearance of anatomically modern people, with an emphasis on apparent causation. 

“Unique Rocks of Catalina Island” with John Turbeville, Professor, Mira Costa College

Catalina Island has a unique geology and rocks that are very different when compared to the general Southern California Region. The uplift of the Island is from a transpressional or strike slip fault complex similar in motion to the San Andreas Fault, where bends and turns in the fault create the uplift and downdrop of very large blocks. This uplift exposes a unique and complete sequence of rocks not seen in Southern California. They are metamorphic (changed form) from a subduction zone where tectonic plates collide and create higher pressures than normal, then they were uplifted some 40 km to be exposed on the island.

“California Fires and Ecological Impacts” with Jon Keeley, Senior ST Research Scientist, U.S. Geological Survey

Since the introduction of aggressive invasive annual grasses and forbs in California there has been widespread vegetation type conversion. This has been particularly marked in perennial grasslands, coastal sage scrub and chaparral. Increased fire frequency, over-grazing, severe droughts and climate change have been implicated in type conversion. Short-intervals between fires have been shown to play a key role in this process, however, some studies have questioned this conclusion and a number of studies have shown other factors at play. This presentation will focus on parsing out the role of fire intervals, site aridity, droughts and global warming in driving these transitions.

“Sustainable Groundwater Management: A Key to Drought Resilience” with Thomas Harter, Professor, UC Davis

“Gabrielino-Tongva Cuture Throughout Time” with Desiree Martinez,  Cogstone Resource Management and Pimu Catalina Island Archaeology Project

Join us to hear from a key member of the Pimu Catalina Island Archeology Project to better understand the traditions and important lessons that we can learn from the indigenous people of the Los Angeles Basin and the southern Channel Islands.

“Improving Weather Forecasts for Enhanced Water Supply in Southern California” with Forest Cannon, Ph.D., Scripps Institute of Oceanography

Southern California rainfall and snowmelt play an important role in regional water resources, and improvements in their capture are essential to reducing dependence on imports from northern California and the Colorado River. This talk will describe ongoing efforts to understand and improve precipitation forecast skill in Southern California with the goal of providing advanced decision support information to regional stakeholders and water management agencies looking to increase reservoir water supply reliability while simultaneously mitigating flooding hazards. A key component of this work is the installation of weather observing systems at the University of Southern California Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies’ Wrigley Marine Science Center that, alongside other instrumentation in the Los Angeles basin and surrounding mountains and airborne reconnaissance efforts offshore, help to constrain forecast models. This talk will give an overview of why Catalina Island is an ideal location for weather instrumentation and how each of the different instruments recently installed by the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes are being used to improve regional forecasts.  

“The Role of Hummingbirds in Island Food Webs” with Erin Wilson Rankin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Entomology, University of California Riverside

“Moomat Ahiko: Breath of the Ocean” with Cindi Alvitre, American Indian Studies & NAGPRA Coordinator at CSU Long Beach and Co-Founder, Ti’at Society

In 1996, the crew of the first Gabrieleno/Tongva ti’aat (canoe) in over two hundred years navigated Moomat Ahiko along the coast of Catalina Island, where she was greeted by her descendants and the generous community of Avalon. This event unveiled the revival of a maritime tradition that was considered to be extinct. The journey to this moment is a story is one of how dreams become prophetic in the present. The island somehow becomes the lieux de memoire’ a place of memory in which cultural transformation come alive, and the ti’aat a vessel that contains lessons and knowledge for all citizens of our ocean. This presentation will present the history of the sewn plank canoe and how a ti’aat returned to the people – just in time!

“Is Community Science the Next Revolution in Conservation, Behavior, and Ecology?” with Greg Pauly, Co-Director, Urban Nature Research Center and Curator of Herpetology, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

For centuries, natural history discoveries have been made by members of the public. The professionalization of natural history research is a relatively recent development. Professional scientists, however, are now recognizing that many questions, including understanding some of the greatest global threats to biodiversity, can only be answered through large-scale efforts in which professional scientists partner with members of the public. These new citizen science efforts can answer basic and applied research questions across the fields of ecology and behavior. This talk will demonstrate three ways in which, through the help of thousands of dedicated naturalists, the Reptiles and Amphibians of Southern California (RASCals) Project is allowing us to make discoveries that were not possible through other methods. These discoveries include 1) documenting and tracking invasive species: 2) assessing how parasitism and predation vary along urban to rural gradients; and 3) documenting rarely observed natural history events such as mating behavior.

“From the Field to the Genetics Lab: The Remarkable Flora of Santa Catalina Island” with C. Matt Guilliams, Ph.D., Ken & Shirley Tucker Plant Systematist, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

The plants of Santa Catalina Island have captured the imagination of botanists for well over a century, but recent work has provided exciting new insights and island- and archipelago-wide floristic synopses. This talk will discuss the remarkable flora of the California Channel Islands, often referred to as ‘California’s Galapagos,’ with an emphasis on Catalina Island. Work in the field and herbarium over the last two decades has resulted in a fresh understanding of the flora of the Island. This floristic work has been deepened by the recent application of genetic techniques to the study of plant biodiversity at all levels, from population genetics to phylogenetics of the entire Channel Islands flora.