Aimee Bullard
Aimee was born as a mermaid in the seas off Catalina Island. Sometime in the 1980s she crawled up on land and took up life as a human. As irony would have it, she now spends her time studying marine biology and putting on scuba gear trying to live underwater once again.
B.A. in Biology and Environmental Studies, UC Santa Cruz 1998
Expected graduation date: Spring 2004
Email: achele@aol.com
Master's
Thesis:
Net primary productivity of southern California's rocky intertidal communities:
current levels and changes over the past thirty years.
Algal communities are some of the most productive environments on Earth, however community productivity for southern Californian intertidal algae is known only for wave-protected sites on San Clemente Island thirty years ago. Since the previous estimates the relative abundances of high producing macrophyte forms (fleshy branched and bladed algae) have declined while the cover of lower producing forms (crustose and articulated coralline algae) has increased. I hypothesize that observed changes in the abundances of southern California macrophytes have significantly reduced the net primary productivity of these rocky intertidal communities. Net community primary productivity will be estimated during summer and winter for two moderately-exposed sites known to have experienced shifts in macrophyte abundances. Using established field methods, photosynthetic rates will be assessed for the most abundant macrophyte populations at each site. Dissolved oxygen measurements will be used to calculate light-saturated net photosynthesis, expressed per unit of surface area, and converted to mg C cm-2 h-1 using standard conversion procedures. Each population's contribution to community productivity will then be determined from multiplying cover values, obtained in the mid-1970s and in 1999-2003, by current net photosynthesis measurements. This approach will generate spatial and temporal estimates of light saturated net primary productivity for these communities. I predict that the primary productivity of these two sites will be low compared with previous estimates made for temperate, rocky intertidal communities, and that significant reductions in productivity will have occurred due to decreased abundances of specific macrophyte forms.
Presentations of Research:
Phycological Society of America 2003
Southern California Academy of Sciences 2003