Past Student Collaborations
The Conservation Program advises and collaborates with students on research from across academic stages and backgrounds. Projects have ranged from observing small mammals and birds to analyzing amphibian disease data and creating robots for checking out California tiger salamanders in burrows. Here are a few highlights from student-led ecological research:
Project Highlight
When she's not busy winning national cross country and track accolades, Fiona O'Keeffe might be found staring at holes in the ground. The Earth Systems undergraduate decided to explore ecological research for her senior capstone when she learned that a badger had been spotted at the Dish, and wondered how prevalent burrowing mammals were around campus. She laid out transects with the Conservation Program at the Dish throughout the winter of 2020, and quantified the number and locations of hundreds of ground squirrel, vole, gopher, and badger burrows.
Her data lays the groundwork for lots of important conservation questions, especially because threatened California tiger salamanders live in abandoned ground squirrel burrows for most of the year. “It’s surprising once you start looking how many burrows you notice. That was part of the appeal of it—an opportunity to do science in a very applied way," she said. "I was excited to be part of a bigger project and get some good mentorship as well."
Phd Dissertation
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Distributed Sensor Networks Deployed Using Soft Growing Robots
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Margaret M. Coad (2020)
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A New Paradigm for the Conservation of Turtles: Ecosystem-Based Approaches for Understanding Population Variability (2017)
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Maria Wajokawski
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Earth System Capstone Project
- Burrowing Mammals on Stanford Lands: Distribution and Environmental Drivers (2020)
- Fiona O'Keeffe
RISE Student Intern Project
- The Removal of Invasive Species of Crayfish in Matadero Creek (2019)
- Jerricho Habon, Kathryn Preson, Esther M. Cole
- Distribution and Abundance of 7 Invasive Plants along two Creeks within the Matadero and San Francisquito Watersheds on Stanford Lands (2019)
- Xavier Gomez, Matthew Fogarty, Esther M Cole
Independent Undergraduate Research Projects
- Diversity & Inclusion Report (December 2018)
- Phenology of Pelagic Invertebrates in Constructed Vernal Ponds at Stanford, California (2016)
- Nessarose Schear, Esther Marika Cole Adelsheim, Alan Launer
- Propagation of native California forbs from local wild populations at Stanford, CA (2016)
- Kenneth Qin, Vasundhara Kandpal, Esther Marika Cole Adelsheim
- Barriers to Wildlife Migration in the Coyote Valley: Year Two (2016)
- Colleen Henn, Sophia Huang, Eddie Kelinsky, and Ryan Suttle