Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Seaside, California
Maria Cardenas, Andrea Vega, Jillian Robb, Abigail Melchor-Aguila, Tanya Amarro
Stakeholders
The current state of the issue is that in Monterey County and in many places around
the world, there are some invasive species that take over the habitat of the native species
that were already present and with urbanization increasing, it leaves room for invasive
species to grow and decrease the biodiversity of that area. With 50% of the population
living in the suburbs and 30% living in cities, the growth of urban land is growing at a faster
rate than the land being preserved for national parks, preservation and conservation efforts
(Mckinney, 2002). Not only does urbanization affect native species but it decreases
biodiversity and can cause local extinctions by the removing of most vegetation and topsoil.
In addition to a decrease of biodiversity, studies show that there is an increase in nonnative
species because it allows the nonnative species to utilize new resources (Mckinney, 2002).
For this reason it is important to inform the community to be educated on these issues and
to also teach them to be able to garden and plant to help out and increase habitat space
and biodiversity. One of the ways to educate the community is through the students and
their parents, through intergenerational transfer. A study in Costa Rica showed that
students were taught conservation principles in a school environment to teach their
parents. The students were taught about given a one month course about Macaw
conservation and natural history. Students, parents, and an adult control were given a
pretest and posttest to show the improvement; The students showed improvement by 67%,
the parents 52% and the adult group 29% which showed that the parents retained
information from the students (Vaughn, Gack, Solorazano and Ray, 2003). This can be an
alternative to educating the community, in addition to providing a plant guide for the
community. It is important to educate the community as a whole to allow every generation
to get educated for a better future. For this reason, the plant guide should be implemented
in all levels of school to continue the education through generations to come.
For stakeholder such as city officials and people holding a place in government, it is a
problem having to do with high costs. It is estimated that 137 million dollars are lost in
damages and losses worldwide dealing with nonnative species making it a big issue with
the government, and the people. Locally in Monterey County, Arundo, a plant that looks like
a forest of bamboo is taking over the Salinas rivers riverbank and moving inland. The plant
was originally planted in the 40s to protect the riverbank and stabilize the levies and started
to spread quickly (Mcintyre 2018). Now to completely remove it, it has to go over four to five
treatments that costs millions of dollars for the Resource Conservation District of Monterey.
It seems that the introduction of this species would not have happened if it wasn't for
people being educated about native species or species that are invasive to a certain area.
Survey:
The survey consisted of a total of 11 questions, where the last five were demographic
questions consisting of age, ethnicity, income, gender, and current housing situation. The
survey questions are as follows:
3. If the City of Seaside were to provide a visual plant guide, would you utilize it for your
landscaping/gardening needs? 1 being you definitely wouldn’t use it and 5 being you would love to have such
a guide.
Guide
In total the guide included a
total of 76 native plants,
categorized into perennials,
grasses, shrubs, ground
covers, and trees. We
started off with 263 plants
in the palettes, but since
we were only focusing on
native plants, the list was
drastically reduced. For the
guide, we decided on a two column layout (Figure 3 & 4) where the left side included the
common name, scientific name, water requirement, wildlife, and sun requirement. The right
side has a description, flower color, season, whether it can be potted, and if there is a fun
fact attributed to it.
We kept it simple and included important information so anyone from a young child to an
adult can follow. We made sure that we added whether the plant was drought tolerant or
not because we understand that water is limited and to drought conditions. We also made
sure to indicate if the plant could be potted or not because we did not want to exclude those
who do not have the privilege to change the landscape of their surrounding home or for
those who are limited to mobility and can only care for potted plants. Once the English
guide was created, our team translated the guide to Spanish (Figure 4). By having the
guide in two languages, we are able to include the majority of Seasides population. This
guide is accessible, easy to follow, and helpful to almost all the residents.
Future Directions
Our team’s goal is that the plant guide will continue to be developed in the future. While we
worked on the plant guides for a full semester, there are areas of opportunity for the guides
to be expanded on a larger scale. Some ideas for future additions include: adding non-
native and drought tolerant species that would do well in Seaside’s Mediterranean climate,
referencing species that are poisonous, harmful and/or not recommended to plant,
improving digital accessibility of the guides to Seaside residents (in particular to the
Spanish speaking residents), and lastly to contribute and share our guides with the
nationwide community.
While our guides focused primarily on native species, there are hundreds of non-native
species that are drought tolerant and would prosper in the many microclimates within
Seaside. When planted with the local flora, it would promote increased biodiversity within
the area, attracting an array of wildlife. It would also be greatly beneficial to residents if
there was a section of the guides that included “at a glance” information on species that are
poisonous to touch or consume, as well as species that are harmful and/or not
recommended for the local ecosystem. While creating the guides, we realized that there is
currently zero accessibility of city wide plant lists for the Seaside community. For the
average person, unless you know exactly where to look, the information is nearly
impossible to find. For this reason, we want to improve and simplify how residents find this
information on a digital platform. Further broadening this idea would include a nationwide
community which would collectively promote the “greening” of cities all across the country.
Tree City USA is a national movement in partnership with the United States Forest Service
and National Association of State Foresters sponsored by the Arbor Day Foundation that
has been encouraging green cities across the country since it was founded in 1976. To
date, over 3,400 cities within the United States has taken part in Tree City USA. It is a
program that focuses on expanding and managing cities public trees in four fundamental
ways: A tree board department involves business owners and residents to encourage
awareness in the benefits that trees and plants provide to the community. Secondly, a tree
care ordinance that promotes the beautification, property value enhancement, noise
abatement and other positive attributes of all trees within each city. Thirdly, a forestry
community that is community based, which promotes inclusiveness and connectivity (Tree
City USA, 2018). By including said suggestions, we feel that the guides we have created
have the potential to be further developed and enriched to provide easily accessible and
useful information to promote a greener Seaside for many years to come.
Appendix A:
Due to both guides being over 40 pages, it was impossible to include the pages onto the
appendix. However, the English and Spanish plant guides can be found on the following
link:
Sources:
California Native Plant Society. (n.d.). Benefits of California Native Plants. Retrieved from
https://www.cnps.org/gardening/why-natives/benefits-of-california-native-plants
Elmqvist, Thomas; Zipperer, Wayne C.; Güneralp, Burak. 2016. Urbanization, habitat loss,
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Farnsworth, E. (2015, March 24). Plant Native Plants: Even in Cities. Retrieved from
http://www.newenglandwild.org/blog/plant-native-plants-even-in-cities.html/
Gaertner, M., Breeyen, A. D., Hui, C., & Richardson, D. M. (2009). Impacts of alien plant
invasions on species richness in Mediterranean-type ecosystems: A meta-analysis.
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Ecology and
Mcintyre, Z. (2018, November 23). SPECIAL REPORT: Non-native plant invading Salinas
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