Bushwhacking 101 offers new take on age-old environmental problems

UCLA undergraduates create a transect to survey the succulent Dudleya Saxosa on Santa Cruz Island. Most are seniors by the time they take Hartmut Walter's Field Analysis: Biogeography - and this class is often their first time in the field, using science methods they've studied only in classrooms. Photo by Hartmut Walter.

Since the 1970s, Walter has been bringing students to NRS reserves - primarily the James San Jacinto Mountains Reserve in Riverside County, which is protected, owned, and managed by the University of California, and the Santa Cruz Island Reserve, on the largest of the California Channel Islands, which is protected, owned, and managed by The Nature Conservancy (TNC). Walter explains: "At UCLA, we feel that problems in the environment are not caused by the environment; they're caused by people, so environmental studies here is more of a social studies program. This is why we have a geography/environmental studies major. But, being part of the geography department, I don't have access to labs and experimentation. I work in a social science environment, yet I'm teaching a field course, so I really need these reserves to get the students out and acquaint them with the basics of our local and regional environment."

His course, Field Analysis: Biogeography, is taken mostly by seniors. It's often their first opportunity to get out into the field and use methods they've studied in classrooms. Many have a limited understanding of the southern California environment. "Our students may learn a basic knowledge of nature as youngsters," Walter notes, "but they lose it as teenagers. So when we get them at 20 or 21, they don't know anything anymore. They don't know what an oak tree looks like. They can't identify a pine."

Walter's goal is ambitious. In one academic quarter, he wants to transform his students into environmental scientists who can tackle the complexities of field research. He begins with a series of day hikes in natural areas near campus. "First, the students have to be able to identify things," he stresses, "so I take them hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains or visit Malibu Lagoon. Fortunately, they learn very quickly and feel really proud. Many tell me that they take the same hike a few weeks later with their friends to show them what they've learned. It means a lot to them."

Once they've built up a basic knowledge of the southern California environment, the students are ready for a weekend visit to an NRS site. Walter knows both the James Reserve and Santa Cruz Island extremely well; over the years, he has developed an intensive learning program for each site. At Santa Cruz Island, for example, the students spend the afternoon of their arrival getting an overview of the different ecosystems on the huge 46,000-acre TNC preserve and learning a few field techniques, like vegetation transects or animal behavior observations.

Early the next morning, Walter takes them on an exhausting itinerary over the island's torturous roads. At each stop along the way, the students benefit from his deep understanding of the island's ecosystems. "First, we go to a pine forest," Walter begins, "where we leave the car and hike up to the Sierra Blanca, which is a beautiful area of calcareous rocks with a lot of old dead pines. For years, no new pines grew because sheep ate the young trees. Now that the sheep are gone, a forest of new pines is growing. I wrote a paper on the pines, so I've done research there. We also see a lot of Dudleya saxosa (a succulent commonly found in the Mojave Desert) growing on the rocks. The sheep were wiping them out as well. Now there are thousands of them. I have photos of the Sierra Blanca ridge from 25 years ago, so the students can see the impact of the sheep."

"The island is full of wonderful case studies for evolution and what happens in nature," Walter continues. "We take some time to look at the endemics - the rare ironwood trees, for example, or the arboreal chaparral that is characteristic for some of the Channel Islands. And there are the hybrids of different oak species, manzanita, and monkey flowers. The latter have orange flowers often growing right next to bushes with pure yellow and deep crimson flowers."

After lunch, the group continues on to Christy Beach to chart the status of the undisturbed dune vegetation. For the last 20 years, Walter's students have been doing transects of the dunes, mapping individual plants and the cover of different species. "We try to find the same places every year," Walter notes, "and compare them with the old data to see what has changed due to winter storms and beach erosion. This gives the students a bit of an idea about dune dynamics, mobility, and succession. They can also jump in the water, if they like, or we might continue out to Fraser Point. It's a long, long way, but in some years the flowering in the coastal prairie can be spectacular."

Many of the investigations during the day focus on problem-solving. "There are a lot of alien species on reserves," Walter explains. "Here fennel is a perfect example, so I divide the students into groups of four to five and send them out with questions. First, they have to identify the problem: Why is there fennel on the island? Who is moving it? Are there agents that do this? What do the pigs do? How does fennel reproduce and multiply? Then they have to consider possible solutions. What could we do to stop it?"

Even after the group returns to the field station in the evening, the students' day is not done. They still have dinner to prepare and to clean up. Afterwards they begin to work with the data collected during the day. "We have five or six laptops, and everybody is crunching the numbers," says Walter. "By the end of the weekend, most of them are proficient with Excel and have learned a number of quantitative techniques."

Each group then makes a short presentation on their findings. Walter is convinced that the students learn more from this experience than they do from him. "The students are competitive. They watch each other. They compare what they did to what others have done. They learn from their mistakes and have no hesitation asking questions or criticizing each other."

The presentations often continue until midnight. Even then, sleep remains elusive. "Camaraderie is very important," observes Walter. "Most university students never camp together or spend a night together in a field station. So we have 20 to 25 bunk beds, and some students talk deep into the night about life, school, and the world. Suddenly, as seniors, they develop new friendships that will last."

Walter sees the results of all of his efforts at the end of the weekend. "The students become more confident," he notes. "They no longer feel helpless in the natural environment because they have the means - the scientific method - to approach important questions. And that's all I really want to show. They don't need to come up with solutions, but we need to train them to ask the right questions and to find a way to answer questions in a scientific way. And to do that in the field is so much better than in the classroom."

Walter is currently planning new courses around the reserves. This spring he will offer a weekend freshman seminar on Santa Cruz Island that will focus on the island's fragile ecosystem. Walter is arranging presentations by representatives from the UC Natural Reserve System, The Nature Conservancy, the National Park Service, and graduate students working on the island.* "I want to expose younger students to the natural environment and to people who are dedicated to doing things on the island. I want to show them how many different conservation problems exist in California, even on an island like Santa Cruz where pelicans, bald eagles, and peregrine falcons all disappeared. Some of these have come back, but at a very high cost. I hope this will open some of the minds of these freshmen, so they will become more receptive to science or environmental studies."

Walter is also creating a modular CD- ROM version of his field course. "We will give every student a CD that has some basic information on every part of my field course, with links to data, case studies, and examples. This way, even if I don't teach this course, somebody else can take the CD and have a much easier time teaching it."

Walter attributes much of the success of his course to the special environment provided by protected areas: "Santa Cruz Island provides a unique experience, and students realize this. Going to this island is like going to a California that no longer exists on the mainland. It gives students a new perspective." - JB

For more information, contact:
Hartmut Walter
Geography
Box 951524, 1255 Bunche
(Mail code 152403)
University of California
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1524
Phone: 310-825-3116; 310-825-1071
Email: walter@geog.ucla.edu

*Editor's note: The Nature Conservancy (TNC) currently owns 76 percent of Santa Cruz Island (~46,000 acres); the National Park Service (NPS) owns 24 percent (~15,000 acres). TNC and NPS work together to preserve and protect the island's diverse cultural and biological resources and to restore vital habitat for scores of marine and terrestrial plant and animal species. The UC Natural Reserve System continues to operate its field station on site, providing facilities and access to the island for instruction and research, through a license agreement with TNC.