About
At the University of Southern California, I was an undergraduate research assistant supervised by Dr. Scott Applebaum in the Dr. Suzanne Edmands population and conservation genetics lab.
One of the projects I worked on was establishing environmental sensing equipment (HOBO data loggers) on Catalina Island. Data collected from these sensors are displayed below. Thank you to Scott for the wonderful portraits on this page.
About
We studied Tigriopus californicus, a copepod that lives in splash pools on the west coast of North America, from the shores of Alaska to Baja Calfornia. A male Tigriopus is displayed to the left.
Splash pools are dynamic pools of water above the tide level, with the only input of water being from the waves splashing on the rocks and from runoff. The primary way water gets out of splash pools is through evaporation. From assessing the inputs and outputs, we know that their environment is very dynamic. To understand the dynamics of their environment, I helped to set up sensors in three different splash pools at Wrigley Marine Science Center on Catalina Island.
Splash Pools Studied
We deployed sensors in 3 splash pools on Catalina Island. Though they have different geographical features, eg. volume, rock coverage, and depth, they were located in the same outcrop along the coast. We deployed several sensors studying the following parameters: temperature, pH, conductivity, and dissolved oxygen.
About
Graphs of Environmental Sensor Data
Data from the environmental sensors are graphed using PowerBI below.
Use the left and right arrows on the bottom of the graph to see more parameters measured.
Use the black bar at the bottom of each line graph to shorten to expand the timeline to zoom in on any period of time that you would like
Temperature was measured across all three splash pools. Dissolved oxygen, conductivity, and pH were only measured in the Mother Pool.
Temperature was measured across all three splash pools and put together on the same graph. The same data in table format is also displayed below.
Tigriopus samples were collected from all three pools in addition to collecting data from the sensors. As the primary author, the results of our research were presented at the Southern California Academy of Sciences 2024 Annual Meeting. Zoe Goldstein (left) and I presented our poster at the conference; the photo was taken by Scott.
