Student post: Jolly Ann Cruz - Monday, December 29 (Day 1)

We just finished the first full day of the 3-week Island Ecology course. Each student is responsible for writing one blog post during the course, so you'll be seeing lots of updates on this site. Today’s blog post is from Jolly Ann Cruz, a student at Northern Marianas College on Saipan.

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Hafa Adai from Saipan!

Today was day 1 of our Island Ecology Course and what a day it was!  With 14 students, 3 instructors, and 2 teaching assistants we began the morning with lectures on the course overview and an introduction to entomology. In the afternoon we headed to the Forbidden Island Conservation Area where we got hands on experience collecting data. We also learned how to identify plants, and were quizzed on how many species of plants we could identify. In groups, we completed an exercise where we recorded the number of seedlings in a 1 meter squared quadrat, the number of adults within 2 meters, the most common plant species in the surrounding area, and whether the adult trees were flowering or fruiting.

The day was one well spent and we look forward to the rest of the course. Stay tuned for more of our activities, as we'll be posting blogs daily!