Applicant Funded	School, Dept., or Major	Project Title	Type of Project	Amount Awarded
Hiram Sarabia	Marine & Environmental Studies	Patterns in the Structure & Composition of Benthic Invertebrate Communities along a Gradient of Contamination in Bahia Magdalena, Baja California	Border Activity	$3,000
Tania de la Fuente	Marine & Environmental Studies	Aluminum Effects on the Root Tips of Eelgrass	Border Activity	$2,880

Hiram Sarabia
University of San Diego, Marine & Environmental Studies
Patterns in the Structure & Composition of Benthic Invertebrate Communities along a Gradient of Contamination in Bahia Magdalena, Baja California
Border Activity
$3,000

Description of Project:
Bahia Magdalena, Baja California Sur, Mexico serves as a nursery and refuge to gray whales, migratory birds, and a wide array of commercial fish and shellfish species. Development in Puerto San Carlos, the largest human settlement in Magdalena Bay has led to the dumping of industrial sewage into the surrounding waters. These human inputs constitute an external and novel stimulus into the Bay that could potentially cause ecosystemic dysfunctions. The purpose of this study is to determine what patterns of change in diversity, abundance, and composition are observed in benthic invertebrate communities along a gradient of industrial contamination.

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Tania de la Fuente
University of San Diego, Marine & Environmental Studies
Aluminum Effects on the Root Tips of Eelgrass
Border Activity
$2,880

Description of Project:
Research proposed will investigate the effects that aluminum has on the structure of the roots in a particular marine plant (Zostera-marina). The initial questions to be addressed by this study are: Does the aluminum disrupt the membrane structure? How does it work? Can this problem be remedied? Plants will be collected from the Pacific Ocean and taken to the laboratory were they will be kept under the same environment as their habitat. Plants are the main part of the feeding pyramid; without them higher organisms would not be able to obtain all the nutrients necessary to their survival. Aluminum is a ubiquitous metal ion that effects the growth of both aquatic and terrestrial plants. Each plant resists to a different concentration of aluminum, but this metal ion eventually inhibits the growth of the plant. This problem could be alleviated if we knew how the aluminum was damaging the interior of the plant.

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