Place-Based Learning Communities on a Rural Campus: Turning Challenges into Assets

At Humboldt State University (HSU), location is everything. Students are as drawn to our spectacular natural setting as they are to the unique majors in the natural resource sciences that the university has to offer. However, the isolation that nurtures the pristine natural beauty of the area presents a difficult reality for students who are accustomed to more densely populated environments. With the large majority of our incoming students coming from distant cities, we set out to cultivate a “home away from home” by connecting first-year students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) to the communities and local environment of Humboldt County. To achieve this, we designed first-year place-based learning communities (PBLCs) that integrate unique aspects and interdisciplinary themes of our location throughout multiple high impact practices, including a summer experience, blocked-enrolled courses, and a first-year experience course entitled Science 100: Becoming a STEM Professional in the 21st Century. Native American culture, traditional ways of knowing, and contemporary issues faced by tribal communities are central features of our place-based curriculum because HSU is located on the ancestral land of the Wiyot people and the university services nine federally recognized American Indian tribes. Our intention is that by providing a cross-cultural, validating environment, students will: feel and be better supported in their academic pursuits; cultivate values of personal, professional and social responsibility; and increase the likelihood that they will complete their HSU degree. As we complete the fourth year of implementation, we aim to harness our experience and reflection to improve our programming and enable promising early results to be sustained

Chemical Analysis of Whale Breath Volatiles: A Case Study for Non-Invasive Field Health Diagnostics of Marine Mammals

We explored the feasibility of collecting exhaled breath from a moribund gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) for potential non-invasive health monitoring of marine mammals. Biogenic volatile organic compound (VOC) profiling is a relatively new field of research, in which the chemical composition of breath is used to non-invasively assess the health and physiological processes on-going within an animal or human. In this study, two telescopic sampling poles were designed and tested with the primary aim of collecting whale breath exhalations (WBEs). Once the WBEs were successfully collected, they were immediately transferred onto a stable matrix sorbent through a custom manifold system. A total of two large volume WBEs were successfully captured and pre-concentrated onto two Tenax®-TA traps (one exhalation per trap). The samples were then returned to the laboratory where they were analyzed using solid phase micro extraction (SPME) and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). A total of 70 chemicals were identified (58 positively identified) in the whale breath samples. These chemicals were also matched against a database of VOCs found in humans, and 44% of chemicals found in the whale breath are also released by healthy humans. The exhaled gray whale breath showed a rich diversity of chemicals, indicating the analysis of whale breath exhalations is a promising new field of research

Estimating population size when individuals are asynchronous: A model illustrated with northern elephant seal breeding colonies

Our aim was to develop a method for estimating the number of animals using a single site in an asynchronous species, meaning that not all animals are present at once so that no one count captures the entire population. This is a common problem in seasonal breeders, and in northern elephant seals, we have a model for quantifying asynchrony at the Año Nuevo colony. Here we test the model at several additional colonies having many years of observations and demonstrate how it can account for animals not present on any one day. This leads to correction factors that yield total population from any single count throughout a season. At seven colonies in California for which we had many years of counts of northern elephant seals, we found that female arrival date varied < 2 days between years within sites and by < 5 days between sites. As a result, the correction factor for any one day was consistent, and at each colony, multiplying a female count between 26 and 30 Jan by 1.15 yielded an estimate of total population size that minimized error. This provides a method for estimating the female population size at colonies not yet studied. Our method can produce population estimates with minimal expenditure of time and resources and will be applicable to many seasonal species with asynchronous breeding phenology, particularly colonial birds and other pinnipeds. In elephant seals, it will facilitate monitoring the population over its entire range

southeastern Alaska in 1998

Abundance, range and movements of a feeding aggregation o