Stanford Strategies for Ecology Education, Diversity and Sustainability (SEEDS) hosted a BioBlitz at Lake Lag on Saturday, designed to assess the biodiversity of the area. The group also hoped engage the Stanford community with the ecology there. “We chose Lake Lagunita, because it is well-known, has relatively high biodiversity and is accessible to campus,” wrote SEEDS President Mattias Lanas ’10 in an email to The Daily. BioBlitz is a “rapid” biodiversity assessment of an area that takes place in a single day. Lanas pointed out multiple advantages to such an assessment, including the ability to compare results from different years and the ability to market the blitz as a one-time event to gather as many participants as possible. “The emphasis is definitely on the Stanford community, since Lake Lagunita belongs to Stanford, and we wish to promote ecology awareness locally,” Lanas said. “BioBlitz serves as a wakeup call to the community, saying ‘Hold on, there are amazing critters living right in your backyard. You just need to come out and find them!’” He added that the event had three overarching goals: to spread ecological awareness about the rich array of biota on the Farm, to collect data on the organisms living here and to promote citizen science among the Stanford community. “We want people to learn why it’s important to conserve this area and, to give an example, why it matters for Lake Lagunita to be naturally filled and emptied depending on the season,” he said. (ALISA ROYER/The Stanford Daily)
