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Very proud to finally have this ready for the public - www.low-sal-life.com. It's a tidy compilation of research, recipes, and a directory of foods and products to use for people with salicylate sensitivity. If any of you design websites - you know this is a work in progress, but it's at least ready to be viewed by the public.
Check out my low-sal-life page (overview) for more information about the project including social media and YouTube.
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Here's a new story about a project I did at UW Bothell. I installed all the tags in February, so the tags are managing themselves while everyone is away for COVID-19. Cool thing is, people can still learn about plants with no one around if they walk along the Burke-Gilman Trail! Thanks to Audrey Figgins and Jessica Rouske for helping with the online profiles. You can check out the plant profiles from home at: https://www.uwb.edu/wetlands/plants.
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Campus Research Connections: Washington State's earliest plant records date back to the late 1800s, and even with 150 years of collecting there are incomplete records for Snohomish and Skagit Counties.
For example, King County has 13,000 plant records, while Snohomish has 6,000 records and Skagit 7,700. Verlinde will be talking about how and where they collect and how this provides valuable insight on plant species distribution and plant conservation.
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I'm so excited to announce and release today, The Power of Mentoring, a video I was the project manager on at UW Bothell. This video features two faculty and three students who talk about their experience working with one another through research.
Altogether, the video took several months to complete. I coordinated all the players including the UW Bothell staff, the videographer, and the interviewed participants.
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Another fantastic story about the Pacific Science Center Summer Camp, Crows: Caws and Effect. I'm so glad that it's finished and it went so well. Thanks to the UW Bothell Advancement for covering this story. -SV
Like the crows they learned about, the young students at a Pacific Science Center summer camp held Aug. 5-9 at the University of Washington Bothell had sharp eyes and moved smartly.
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My story made the Bothell-Kenmore Reporter, which included my artwork, "Carried away with Crows".-SV
...From the success of last year’s crow watch, Verlinde and Rouske spent about six months developing the new camp. Verlinde said the camp is designed to combine science, art and corvids. “It will engage students in science and art,” she said. “Those two are often separated, which I don’t think it should be that way.”
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Registration is open, classes are filling up, and the Crows: Caws and Effect curriculum is finally finished. A major thanks to my student worker, Jessica Rouske, who helped develop and complete this project! -SV
Crows and ravens are smart, quirky, and mysterious. UW Bothell is home to thousands of crows that roost on campus every night creating a unique environment for research and creative expression.
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Ashley Shattuck and I had a great opportunity to share one of our favorite places with others: Skagit Delta Estuary and Craft Island for the WNPS Study Weekend. Included in this article is a plant list, what to expect, and Becky Chaney's trip report. We had a great time! Craft Island, a rocky bald set in the mud flats of Skagit Bay, is on Rawlins Road on Fir Island between La Conner and Conway, in Washington State.
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It's that time of year again when the spring cleaning begins. All that's dark, gray, or dirty gets a revamp, and people start thinking about color again. That's how it seems in the Pacific Northwest, and this year is no exception - especially after the 20" of snow in Snohomish County this last month. If you live or work in the Bothell area, you may be familiar with the Burke-Gilma Trail that goes to Seattle. It's a trail that runs through the Cascadia College/UW Bothell Campus, and I just updated the wildlife posters on it!
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Great article featuring the Pacific Science Center Summer Camp, Crows: Caws and Effect, that my student worker, Jessica Rouske, and I are developing. Thanks to the UW Bothell Advancement for covering this story. -SV
When grade school students flock to the UW Bothell campus this summer for Pacific Science Center camps they will have a new option focused on the feathered residents — Crows: Caws and Effect.
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UW Bothell is home to an estimated 16,000 crows that roost on campus and campus wetlands during the fall and winter. It is iconic, impressive, and emotive. My office thought it was time to celebrate the phenomenon and focus on the art and research that stems from it. I was the project manager that coordinated all the components, including the many community partners that helped. We had an art exhibit, a tribal story-teller, and two researchers present. Then we finished with a time to relax and watch the crows come in.
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Ever wonder why native birds need native plants? Join Ashley Shattuck and Sarah Verlinde on November 15 for an informative presentation. Together they'll invite you to bridge the two worlds between birders and botanists. Rather than categorizing yourself as one or the other, consider just being a naturalist and enjoying the interdependence of both groups on one another (at least for an evening).
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I'm so excited to announce and release today, Guided Explorations, a video I was the project manager on at UW Bothell. This video features three faculty and their students who talk about their experience working with one another through research and creative practice.
Altogether, the video took several months to complete. I coordinated all the players including the UW Bothell staff, the videographer, and the interviewed participants.
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Thirteen years at Starbucks. What started out as something small, turned out to be so much more. I've worked in one call-center, two states, three office departments, seven cities, called eleven stores home, worked for dozens of managers, covered shifts in over sixty stores, made lattes with hundreds of employees, and served thousands of customers. This company has been a great catalyst in my personal and professional development.
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I studied under the Wetland Scientist, Darla Boyer, at the Tulalip Tribe's Natural Resources Department, spring of 2015. My project focused on the Wapato (potato) plant, Sagittaria latifolia. My study included seed germination strategies, growing tubers with different salinity treatments, and exclusion fencing in the field to help with plant establishment by deterring herbivory. In October 2015, I received the Society for Wetland Scientist, PNW Chapter Student Scholarship Award and presented at the SWS PNW Conference.
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North Creek drains into the Sammamish River and several areas along the stream have been restored with the purpose of restoring salmon spawning habitat. Our survey included mapping valuable spawning areas by documenting where pools, riffles, and glides were located. We also measured creek width, depth, and stream surface velocity. My research partners and I studied under Dr. Jeff Jensen at UW Bothell.
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The University of Washington, Bothell Campus, along with Cascadia Community College, restored a portion of North Creek wetlands as part of a mitigation contract. Planting projects began from 1998 to 2002 in phases. In an effort to visualize how the wetlands have changed in twenty years, my GIS-partner Dawn Hatfield and I converted these original planting maps into digital layers using ArcGIS.
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I was given an unknown bacterium and was instructed to use many methods to figure out what my bacterial species was. I learned to spread plates and keep my species alive for two months throughout this procedure. I used a Gram stain to discover it was gram negative. I tried several different types of sugars to find out how it metabolized.
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My Flora is a lovely directory I made for my Pacific Northwest Native Plants in Restoration and Conservation class I took with Dr. Warren Gold (UWB BES 490). It was absolutely a labor of love!
It covers ten species, several drawings of each plant, as well as practical uses in restoration and conservation, totaling 50 pages, 33 drawings, and about 100 photographs.
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Interested by research currently being carried out in Glasglow, Scotland, my group decided to learn about the functional uses Cyanobacteria are being used in.
Our central question was, "Is it possible to utilize Cyanobacteria to make a large-scale beneficial impact on mankind’s food crop production and water purification?"
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Sarah's Flowers
2003-2014
After fourteen years in the trade, I am hanging up the towel on floral work for special occasions. Even though I am not designing now, I did want to showcase some of my work within my portfolio. Having the ability to work weddings and large events allows me to feature some of my best skills: detail oriented, fresh designs, creativity, management, stress-management, and follow-through.
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Every year Snohomish County Parks Department updates and refreshes the safety labels on their buoys in five lakes. Throughout the year, buoys disappear or get damaged. The maintenance team at the county were using outdated, black and white maps that were hard to read and follow. I made them a new manual using ArcMap creating easy-to-read color maps.
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After a brief introduction of herbaria during a student tour, I put together a collection of pressed plants including their leaves, roots, and reproductive parts. Each pressed specimen was mounted onto thick cotton paper and glued. Annotated cards include Family name, Genus and species names, and ecological data. Collection included forty-one freshwater and estuarine samples, most are native but some invasive plants were included.
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Bumblebee foraging habits may be affected by warmer temperatures
Food security is a global concern and maintaining the populations of insect pollinators is vital. Bumblebees in North America are in decline. In the Pacific Northwest, understanding how bees respond to climate change could provide insight to why they might be declining. Paper was written for Dr. Susan Water's Science Methods and Practice Class (BES 301).
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The City of Bothell annexed portions of unincorporated Snohomish County. As a surface water project in my Hydrogeology class (UWB BES 318) with Dr. Rob Turner, my colleague and I surveyed these properties. We collected data on culverts, ditches, bio-swales, and drains and then mapped the flow of water in these areas.
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The Bob Heirman Wildlife Park at Thomas’ Eddy is a beautiful 343-acre park owned by Snohomish County and managed by the Parks and Recreation Department. It is located south of the city of Snohomish; at the base of Cathcart Hill adjacent to the Snohomish River.
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Convergence, parallelism, and loss of traits in plants, a look at evolutionary adaptations without a common ancestor.
We presented several modes of plant evolution when characteristics evolve without the common ancestor containing that trait. We looked at caffeine under convergent evolution, which evolved independently in coffee, tea, and chocolate plants. Next we chose a special type of convergent evolution, parallel evolution, which occurs in closer related clades.