dawg days in the desert
College of the Environment Lunch and Learn in the Desert
Wed. March 7, 2018 11:30 a.m.
Thunderbird Country Club, Rancho Mirage, CA
Join us for the lecture, “Dead or Alive: What seabirds tell us about ocean health.” This lecture is part of Dawg Days in the Desert, a southern California UW tradition, celebrating the Husky spirit over food, friendship and purple pride.
Nearly 20 years ago, Professor Julia Parrish had a simple idea: invite coastal residents to join her in monitoring the health of the nearshore ecosystem. Today more than 1,000 people living in coastal communities from Mendocino, CA to Kotzebue, AK patrol a stretch of beach monthly and send their observations to the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, or COASST, one of the largest citizen science ocean-oriented projects in the world.
Join us as Julia — a White House honoree in the Champions for Change program who has been featured in National Geographic, the San Francisco Chronicle and High Country News — describes why beachcombing for dead birds is both fascinating and important, and what these unlikely sentinels tell us about the state of the ocean and the health of the planet.
Admission: $40
Julia K. Parrish is an ecologist whose research follows three major routes: marine conservation, seabird ecology and the ways that fish and seabirds behave when they’re in groups. A committed advocate of citizen science, she is the executive director of the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST), a project that enlists volunteers all along the U.S. west coast to walk beaches in search of dead birds. Additionally, she is associate dean of Academic Affairs at the College of the Environment. She holds the Lowell A. and Frankie L. Wakefield Endowed Professorship, has been a Leopold Leadership Fellow and more recently was one of 12 “Champions of Change.” For this she was invited to the White House to speak on public engagement in science and scientific literacy.
