Service Learning at Gold Park

   The event that I took part in was Earth Day at Gold Park. I was there from 10am till 2pm. The event organizers were Ekaterina Rar and Sam Iebrun. Their emails are Ekaterina.rar@email.edcc.edu and Sam.Iebrun@email.edcc.edu. The event was sponsored by the college and the goal of the event was to help make Gold Park a better place by cleaning it up and getting rid of invasive species. My duties involved weeding out invasive species such as yellow archangel and Himalayan blackberry.
    One thing that I have realized and understood through my time at Gold Park is the importance of collaborating and coming together with other people. Not much work could be done with just one person, but since we had a lot of people we were able to make progress on our goal.
                                                                                                                                                        Marine biology is interdisciplinary because have many of the same problems
  both on land and at sea. We must seek to solve problems and try to understand how we got here in the first place. It is possible that the solution in one area can show us the solution in another.
   An example of this would be the problem of invasive species. This is certainly a problem at sea. They can get there several ways, but no matter how they get there we know that they are not good for the ecosystem and that they are capable of out-competing native species. The same is true of species on the land.
   During my time at Gold Park, I became aware of possible solutions that are being implemented with regards to the problem of invasive species. The public was educated about the problem of invasive species, told which plants were invasive, and we worked together to get rid of invasive species. Though land and sea are very different perhaps some of the solutions applied to one could be used on the other. Certainly both land and sea would be better of if people were more aware of the problem of
  Here are some questions that came up during my service learning activity.
  1. Why do people introduce non-native species when there are all ready similar native species?
  2. How can we help people to think more consciously about the plants they choose to buy?
  3. Are any effort being made to deal with the problem of invasive species at sea?
  4. Why are stores selling invasive species in the first place?