Meeting Abstract

P2.59  Tuesday, Jan. 5  An Interdisciplinary Project across Disciplines in Undergraduate Education: Salt Marsh Vegetation, Distribution of Salt Marsh Invertebrates, and the Application of Geographic Information Science VENN, C.*; HRANITZ, J.; BRUNSKILL, J.; Bloomsburg University of PA; Bloomsburg University of PA; Bloomsburg University of PA cvenn@bloomu.edu

Students often become more engaged when they get involved in projects with a scope larger than that of a single course or lab. With that in mind, we have started a research project in the salt marshes in the Wallops Island National Wildlife Refuge, Wallops Island, VA, to relate small-scale variations in marsh habitat to sea level changes. The first step: to map vegetation changes in three 50 meter by 50 meter plots to record any differences in vegetation that might be related to small sea level differences. The primary goal of the project is to determine at what level of remote sensing those small scale differences might be detected. We have also incorporated the study area into a field project for an undergraduate course in Field Zoology, where students recorded the macroinvertebrates within 0.25m X 0.25m regularly spaced quadrats across the plots, assessing the differences in populations among the plots and among the vegetation microhabitats. Vegetation data and macroinvertebrate data collected by the students in the large scale project provide the basis for several projects for the advanced GIS course at Bloomsburg University.