Pine Barrens

Introduction Throughout the Spring 2016 semester, students were expected to volunteer at the Oasis Católico Santa Rafaela tutoring program, which located in a primarily Hispanic community with the goal of serving its local residents by tutoring children to put them on the same educational footing as native English speakers. During this volunteer work, I was exposed to challenges that I was wholly unaware of in a community that is far more underserved than I realized. I will discuss what I…

For the general assessment I brushed my teeth with my left hand for a whole month. At first it was very awkward and almost felt wrong when I began to brush my teeth. However by the third week it felt more natural and I noticed that my left hand was starting to get better with some other activities that usually felt very strange doing. By the end of the month and even after I was so used to brushing with my left hand that I do it still at times. I have even noticed that I can open door a lot…

decline of one of California’s most abundant species, the Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa). Ponderosa pine trees have a wide range and can be found throughout the western United States, southern Canada, and northern Mexico (Little 1971). Here in California they primarily occupy mountainous regions but have been found in elevations ranging from sea level to 10,000 ft. depending on latitude (Oliver and Ryker 1990). Ponderosa pines are susceptible to further decline as we continue to see…

Tuff from the Long Valley Caldera eruption which occurred approximately 750,000 years ago (Southworth, 2012), the Poverty Hills, Alabama Hills, and the Owens Valley dry lake bed found on the valley’s southern end. Of particular interest is the Big Pine Volcanic Field which offers great opportunity for relative dating of the Poverty Hills (Fig. 2). The Owens Valley is a sedimentary basin comprised of both igneous material from the west (Sierra Nevada Mountains), and meta-sedimentary material from…

Coevolution is the process by which two or more closely interacting species evolve in response to one another. Darwin is attributed with first hypothesizing coevolution in “On the Origin of Species” published in 1859; since that time, coevolution has become one of the cornerstones of modern evolutionary biology. The species that lead to the discovery of coevolution was the Angraecum Sesquipedale, a variety of orchid with a spur extending over 30cm long. When Darwin received a sample from…

The effects of white pine blister rust on biodiversity in whitebark pine stands Today we are living in a world of unprecedented and often very rapid change to the environment (Ellison et al. 2005). With the accidental introduction of exotic pathogens into areas they previously did not exist, the forest ecosystems of the world are being profoundly impacted and altered (Tomback and Resler 2007). The introduction of diseases, especially fungal diseases, have in some cases, either entirely…

1. Jonathan Maberry, the author of award-winning book Rot and Ruin, writes this story in a very eye-captivating way including interesting character development and plot through the theme of “Sometimes you have to be the change you want to see”. The story starts off with the protagonist, Benny, hating his brother, Tom, for his cowardly appearance in his first memory of his parents and the zombie-infested, ruin, outside of the encumbrance of the fence. As the story progresses Benny must find a job…

Leonard Peltier is an imprisoned Native American. He lived on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and was arrested after an incident on the property. May events lead up to his arrest. The first incident happened on February 27, 1973. Members of the American Indian Movement, or AIM, staged a seventy-two-day occupation of land called, Wounded Knee. Their mission was to protest injustices against their tribes, such as violations of the many treaties. The United States government responded with a…

region bounded by the Cheyenne River (to the north and west), the Bad River (to the east), and the White River (to the south). (Stoffer 11) The name, badlands, is given to any region where erosion in poorly consolidated sediments forms a rugged and barren landscape, which perfectly describes…

driven by a suspect of a stolen pair of cowboy boots. The agents followed this red pick-up truck onto the hostile Pine Ridge Reservation, Jumping Bull Ranch, where the shootout began when several Indians identified the agents in an unidentified vehicle. There was already internal dispute occurring inside the reservation between the two groups of Indians- full blood Indian and half-Indian. Pine Ridge had more deaths on the reservation than the entire state of South Dakota within just a year.…