Annual Reports

The Roberts Environmental Center (REC) conducts environmental research and analysis to enhance understanding of the relationships among environmental protection, economic growth, and technological change. The overall goal of the REC is to involve students in real-world environmental issues and to train them to analyze the issues from as broad a perspective as possible, taking ecology, economics and policy into consideration. Students and faculty working in the REC have their main academic focus in one of these areas but are interested in the other areas as well, and many of the students involved with the REC have chosen the Environment, Economics, and Politics (EEP) major which incorporates all three disciplines.

In order to analyze an environmental issue properly, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of its physical scope, of the data that can be brought to bear in its analysis, and of the ecological, economic, and political processes related to it. Increasingly, this understanding is facilitated with computer technology. The physical scope of projects—the basemaps, overlays, three-dimensional renderings, photographic records, and contaminant visualizations—are implemented in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), as is much of the spatial data analysis. The relevant data, both those used by the GIS and those used for documentation and analytical purposes are stored in computer databases, and the design and maintenance of these databases has become an important discipline in itself. Understanding the processes is the province of models. Models initially exist at the conceptual level—they are, fundamentally, what someone thinks will happen to the environment or the economy when some disaster occurs or some policy is implemented. When conceptual models are formulated as mathematical constructs or computer simulations they tend to become more testable, more rigorous, and if they seem to be predictive, more influential.

Students anticipating careers related to the environment or expecting to hold positions that influence an organization's environmental posture need to understand these current methods of environmental analysis, and there is nothing quite as effective in cementing this understanding as having hands-on experience. The EEP clinics, thesis projects, outside contracts, and independent study opportunities in the REC provide an opportunity to conduct various aspects of environmental analysis using the latest technology and techniques.

In Academic Year 1996-1997 the REC began a transition that has included the establishment of a dedicated laboratory in the W. M. Keck Science Center, a change of focus to emphasize the use of computer technology in the analysis and management of environmental issues, and the acquisition adequate new funding to acquire the necessary hardware and software to implement this focus.

Goals and Accomplishments for the 1996-1997 Academic Year

Goals

• Establish a physical presence for the REC.
• Establish, with student involvement, a World Wide Web site.
• Develop a computer-intensive research and clinic program that would give students a clear understanding of the way professional environmental assessment is done, and that would give them hands-on experience with the current analytical and presentation tools used in environmental research and in the environmental business.
• Develop new funding to acquire the hardware and software for this research program.
• Initiate discussions with vendors of software for managing industrial environmental data and explore the possibility of setting up a laboratory to use one or more of these systems as a basis for future clinics.
• Develop a summer research program that would enhance the utility of the Mono Basin Field Station at the Burger Reserve.
• Initiate a long-term working relationship with state and federal agencies in the Owens Valley and Mono Basin, and with the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Southern California Edison Company who jointly control much of the natural resources management in the eastern Sierra.
• Initiate a program to provide environmentally related summer internships to students and in some cases provide the funding.
• Bring a variety of environmentally-oriented speakers to campus

Accomplishments

Roberts Environmental Center Laboratory

The REC now occupies its own space in the W. M. Keck Science Center, Room 104. The space, made available by Professor Guthrie's willingness to relocate and the feasibility of permanently dividing an existing large laboratory, is ideal and makes the REC far more visible than it was previously.

World Wide Web Site

The REC now operates a moderate-size World Wide Web site which includes a good deal of student input. Students use the site for establishing web pages containing material developed in the REC and in EEP clinics, and it serves as a laboratory for devising and implementing new web techniques.

EEP Clinic Program

The REC clinic program is now based on three kinds of technology at the cutting edge of environmental management: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the associated Global Positioning Systems (GPS), environmental database management (DBMS), and environmental and ecological simulation modeling. The GIS/GPS suite was initiated with the spring 1997 EEP Clinic, resulting in a variety of student products, the most complete of which was a detailed map and key to all of the trees on the Scripps campus. We should have sufficient skill built up by the spring 1998 clinic to offer GIS services to outside clients. Database modeling tools and database management software are available, but have not yet been used extensively by students. We have acquired environmental simulation software that will be used by some seniors doing theses in the fall of 1997 and we should be able to make sufficient progress during this academic year to place students into internships next summer to apply what they have learned.

Research

The REC funded two students to spend the summer of 1997 at the Mono Basin Field Station. Sam Mulder did detailed vegetation mapping which will become his senior thesis and the first serious REC research using the GIS. In other research, David Bisher and Emil Morhardt designed and constructed a field instrument to read passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags from trout in the field, and Morhardt made an initial test of this technology on brown trout in an eastside Sierra stream. In addition, both the GIS and ecological modeling software are highly suited to Mono Basin research and are of interest to the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG). Our discussions with DFG staff in Bishop make it clear that there are projects in these areas on which they would like to collaborate and we hope to find students interested in such collaboration for next summer.

In addition to these REC activities, Emil Morhardt is actively engaged in three inter-related areas of research, which together invoke a set of tools useful for addressing complex fisheries resource issues. These are: 1) development and critical analysis of habitat suitability models, particularly variants of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service Instream Flow Incremental Methodology (IFIM); 2) development of dynamic population simulation models using combinations of abiotic [habitat] and biotic [species and individual interaction, and physiological] variables, and 3) use of passive integrated transponder (PIT) technology for characterizing daily and seasonal movement of trout in small streams. Students have been involved in the latter two areas and we hope to get some interested in the former area this year.

These research areas are directly applicable to developing recovery plans for endangered species such as the just-listed Steelhead trout and to predicting and monitoring recovery of natural systems following environmental insult, either anthropogenic or natural, such as that presently occurring in the Mono Basin. The Steelhead issue in Southern California ought to be potent thesis material for students interested in policy and economic considerations as well as those with strictly biological interests. We anticipate that recovery of ecosystems in the Eastern Sierra (e.g. Walker River, Mono Basin, Owens Gorge, Bishop Creek, and lower Owens River) will become a major staple of students using the resources of the REC. The development of habitat quality and population simulation models is a powerful way to grasp the potential effects of management actions, and can be highly informative both in elementary and in highly sophisticated manifestations. For students less interested in the analytical aspects of these issues, the GIS as a mapping and image archiving tool provides experience in one of the principal activities of natural resource managers. Finally, students interested in field biology will be able to make use of the PIT tag technology. We hope to add an electrofisher and an acoustic Doppler velocity meter to our inventory of field equipment before next summer's field season.

Summer Internships

Supporting meaningful summer internships is one of the most important things the REC can do for our students, and we were able to help six of them this year. Sedina Banks, Yee Kee Lam, and Sam Mulder stayed at the Mono Basin Field Station: we arranged internships at the Mono Lake Committee for Sedina and Yee Kee, but had to fund Yee Kee because his Singapore citizenship prevented the Committee from paying him. We arranged and funded an internship for Kathryn Gaffney at the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, working on the fresh-water mixing issues in Mono Lake (another thesis project), and funded James Uwins to spend the summer working with the environmental wing of Scottish Nuclear, an electrical utility in Scotland. Through the help of our board of governors, we also arranged an internship for Tom Sheets with CB Commercial Real Estate.

Speakers

The REC brought four speakers to campus (Kenneth Downey, chief litigator for the City of Los Angeles Mono Lake Cases; Mike McCorison, U. S. Forest Service Southern California air quality specialist; Larry Watson, Environmental Coordinator, March Air Force Base; and Sia Morhardt to talk about her experience in developing habitat conservation plans). The REC also helped fund Paul Hawkin (Ecology of Commerce) at the MMCA and had him speak at the EEP clinic, and brought John Hart (Storm over Mono) to a clinic session as well.

The Environment, Economics, and Politics Major

Graduating seniors

In June six CMC seniors graduated with the EEP major (thesis titles follow names):

Kate Beardsley—The evolutionary and physiological significance of the lanugo pellage in the harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) population

Ryan Bogan—Environmental factors affecting golf course development and operation

Gary Feramisco—American football's global promotion

Christopher Hamilton—Elements of environmental web sites: A study of environmental web sites on the World Wide Web.

Megan Murphy—The Yakima River watershed council using the watershed approach to solve water shortage in the Yakima Basin

Mary Jean Van Vliet—Environmentally degradable materials—Biodegradable polymers from naturally occurring organic materials, synthesized degradable polymers, and new inorganic alternatives such as ormosil versus 100% organic (plastic) materials

Current EEP majors

There are currently five seniors, nine juniors, ten sophomores, and five incoming freshmen registered as EEP majors, a total of 29 majors, the same number as at the beginning of Academic Year 1996-1997.

EEP Clinics

Fall Semester 1996—The EEP clinics have historically been standalone semester-long projects involving, in some cases, external clients, and in other cases, internal activities. The fall semester 1996 clinic followed in this pattern, consisting of a study for the City of Diamond Bar to evaluate and attempt to find a solution for a point source stream pollution problem. It established that the problem was relatively innocuous and suggested some possible solutions for the City to try.

The intent in this clinic was to have the students experience the specific kinds of problems facing an environmental consultant encountering a new project. To that end, they were present during the initial client visit, they designed and conducted all field and laboratory studies, and they wrote the report. They were treated just as they would have been had they been new employees at a real consulting firm, being forced to identify problems and come up with solutions, but also being provided with helpful suggestions and editorial comments and support.

Throughout this process we had two underlying goals in mind: 1) have the students acquire hands-on experience with as broad a range of techniques as would characteristically be needed; and 2) force them to take personal responsibility for identifying and solving the problem.

1997 Spring Semester—We made a radical change in the format of the clinic in the spring in order to try a different approach and to implement the changes we were making in the Roberts Environmental Center (see below). We wanted to get the new GIS hardware and software fully operational and we had eight students enrolled with a broad range of computer expertise (from absolutely none to reasonably skilled). Students, working either alone or in small groups, devised their own projects built around a combination of environmental issues and either GIS or World Wide Web technology. Several students involved themselves in mapping vegetation at the colleges and at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, and one produced a complete digital map with some linked photographs of all the trees on the Scripps campus, overlaying a digital aerial photograph. This is probably the most useful work product, and presages a more complete GIS of the campuses that the clinic will begin to implement in fall 1997. Other students learned to use our geographic positioning systems (GPS) and did some preliminary mapping of trails in the Pitzer Outback and in the near-by San Gabriel Mountains overlaid on downloaded and processed digital terrain models (DEMs). Others did primarily web work, producing a map of the major environmental consulting firms in the Los Angeles Basin as a prelude to developing a detailed database for future student use, and producing a web presentation of the history of the Grove House at Pitzer. All of these students greatly increased their general computer skills and most got experience that will be useful to them in the future. Cedric Tisserand, for example, this summer has produced all the maps for the Florida Museum of Natural History shark projects (http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/research/) ; another, Sam Mulder, is doing his thesis research at the Burger Reserve, making a database and digital map of all of the pine trees on the site.

Other Activities of the Director

This year Professor Morhardt gave a paper at the annual meeting of The International Association for Hydraulic Research (San Francisco, August 10-15, 1997) and attended the annual meeting of The American Fisheries Society (Monterey, August 24-28, 1997), the annual international Users' Conference of the Environmental Systems Research Institute (San Diego, July 8-11, 1997); and a conference on National Security and the Environment (Monterey, November 11-13, 1996). He also made a presentation at Claremont Leadership course sponsored by the Kravis Leadership Institute, made one of the CMC Humanities evening presentations, made a CMC Parents' Day presentation, and served on an evening panel at the University of La Verne. He has also been active in the on-campus days in support of the EEP major and the REC.

Roberts Environmental Center Goals for 1997-1998

The basic goal of the REC is to provide students hands-on experience in dealing with the full ramifications of real-world environmental issues. The current plan is for the REC to focus on Southern California and the Eastern Sierra, dealing both with the management approaches to natural resources, and with the management of industrial and corporate environmental matters. These are two very different activities—the former is administered by resources agencies such as the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U. S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the California Department of Fish and Game; the latter by regulatory agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Activities associated with natural resources management in which we intend to get students involved include

• Development and analysis of habitat suitability models
• Development and analysis of environmental simulation models
• Development of GIS coverages related to natural resources management
• Field studies of natural resources including, particularly, vegetation and trout

Activities associated with commercial and institutional management of environmental information, which we intend to pursue, include

• Facilities mapping and environmental inventorying using GIS, probably continuing with our initial work on the Claremont Colleges campuses as a prototype of contract work later on.
• Management of the environmental data of some small corporations if we are able to obtain industrial environmental management software.

In the course of these activities the REC will

• Make an additional upgrade to the Mono Basin Field Station at the Burger Reserve, including replacing much of the furniture and providing CMC signage.
• Attempt to acquire additional field equipment (electrofisher, velocity meter) for use by students and faculty in east-side Sierran field studies.
• Increase the number of agencies and corporations willing to take REC summer interns, and seek paid internships.
• Work with the CMC development office to add board members to the REC, and to increase the current budget for equipment and student internships
• Seek outside contracts to support student employees during the academic year.
• Bring several speakers to campus

Board of Directors Meetings

The board of Directors met once at the Burger Reserve at the end of June 1996 and again on campus on April 4, 1997, in conjunction with Institutes Day. The meeting at the Burger reserve was the official opening of the facility.

---