crayonsss's Journal

SETTING
I live in the Mount Washington area of Glassell Park, a suburb in the northeast part of the City of Los Angeles, California. This area has some of the last remaining undeveloped land in Los Angeles. These open spaces near my home enhance the quality of life for residents and visitors of the area by providing: safe spaces for exercise, relaxation, nature watching, pedestrian paths between city streets that are otherwise not connected, and other benefits.

Open spaces are not "nothing"! They provide critical habitat for wildlife- some species native to California, and some not native, but most of them interact and affect each other in some way. Some species would probably not be seen here without the open spaces providing a buffer zone between their nesting sites and human occupation. Others, such as coyotes, would likely have more frequent contact and conflict with people and their pets, if they lost the resources provided by these open spaces.

CHALLENGE
There are four open space canyons on the hill where I live. Residents refer to them by unofficial names as: Walnut, Barryknoll, El Rosa and Moss Canyons. All these properties are privately owned. Barryknoll Canyon is currently being built up piecemeal as an 18 house development. Walnut Canyon is at risk of a planned 32 house development.

MY GOAL
My goal for this project is to use inaturalist and the Natural History Museum's "LA Nature Map" to document some of the species of these open spaces in a public forum.

I make many observations at my home, and the 30 meter radius covers my house, and my neighbors on each side plus the street in front and hillside in back. I expect to see some differences in the types of species that can be found in the undeveloped area, versus those found more frequently in and around human habitations.

Walnut Canyon is the open space across the street from my house. It is the only one of the four canyons not referred to by the name of a street that connects to it, but for a natural feature that it contains- a stand of native California Black Walnut trees! Most of my observations (so far) are made here. The 150 meter radius covers nearly the entire undeveloped property, plus edges of some houses on streets at its border.