Angela Barranco, a Columbia College junior and environmentalist, was one of the five students who earned the nickname "hardcore wild desert woman" this past summer while studying at Columbia's Biosphere 2 facility in Arizona as part of the Summer Ecosystem Experiences for Undergraduates program (SEE-U).

In Arizona, Barranco's day would start at five o'clock in the morning because most of the fieldwork had to take place during the cooler hours of the early morning. The temperature would usually rise to 110 degrees by 11 AM.

The fieldwork entailed examining plants inside and outside of Biosphere 2, using various techniques and equipment. As Barranco investigated the impact of cattle grazing on plants for her project, she spent much of her morning taking a census of cacti by picking an area in the form of a long continuous line and studying everything on it. This technique is called "transecting."

Afternoons were spent doing computer analyses of data gathered in the morning, usually followed by early evening presentations or lectures. After dinner, Barranco and her group would spend time with other students at Biosphere 2 or continue to work on projects.

"It's a long day, but it's really laid back," Barranco said, adding that she especially enjoyed working with her hands. "I'm more of a hands-on type of learner, so, I found the summer so much more rewarding and interesting. It was also terrific to be able to look out my window and see environmental processes going on."

Angela Barranco

The dedicated SEE-U participants also had discussions about weekly topics. "Modules" included themes concerning deserts, forests and all the different types of ecosystems. Biosphere 2 is the perfect place to have discussions on biomes because, as one of the world's largest living laboratories, it has its own rainforest and a small saltwater ocean.

Other weekly topics were "Biotic Processes," which covered topics on natural selection, evolution, ecology, community and population of animals and plants, and "Abiotic Processes," which dealt with issues of light, temperature, geology, soils, chemical and hydrological cycles. There was also "Contemporary Issues," which dealt with habitat fragmentation, deforestation, pollution, global warming and the ozone hole.

Barranco especially enjoyed discussions on contemporary issues because it helped her relate what she learned in laboratories and classrooms to real life events. "We talked about amazingly eye-opening things," she said. "For instance, we talked about what the United States was like before people arrived. Tucson is a perfect example of where people are taking water out of aqua forests. It is water that has been there for thousands and thousands of years, and during the past hundred years people have used all the water there. We talked about the impact of this, and what we should do to make things better."

SEE-U is a collaborative effort created by the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC) and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL). The program's goal is to support the development of global understanding and field ecology by giving students the opportunity to examine individual biomes in local, regional and global contexts. It was inaugurated in Black Rock Forest, New York, São Paulo State, Brazil, and Tucson, Arizona, this past summer.

Barranco considers the small size of the program as a definite advantage because it helped her establish "wonderful working relationships with professors and other students, both personally and professionally."

Another great part of this "fabulous, incredible crash-course in five weeks" was the combination of theory and practice, Barranco said. "Seeing all the concepts I have learned in action was terrific. The ideas I learned in classrooms are great, and they were even more meaningful and had greater impact when I found out how they are applied."

When Barranco came back from the five weeks of intense fieldwork and research, she decided to change her major from biological sciences to environmental science. Not only did SEE-U help her appreciate all that she had done with genetics while she was majoring in biological sciences, but it also made her see a bridge between classroom and real life. "It all came together," she said.

Barranco considers environmental science a "beautiful way" of making connections among different disciplines, and she is more than happy to have made the change from a single approach to a multidisciplinary approach in studying the environment.

Her greatest concern about the environment is "people's lack of awareness." She has no doubt that people would care about the environment if they found out what is happening to it. "I feel that environmentalism has gotten a bad rep," she said. "It can be made profitable and cool."

One thing that environmental advocates should do, said Barranco, is to make recycling "easy" for people by having more recycle bins, for instance. More social programs are also needed to inform people about what is happening to the environment. Most of all, however, developing a global sense of importance of things, especially the environment, is crucial. "If we destroy the land, trees and the oceans, the ones who would be impacted are us. Then we couldn't do things that we thought more important than the environment," Barranco said.

The seriousness of damage that has been done to our environment was reiterated during one of the SEE-U daily trips to a forest that had burned. Looking at the barren land, it occurred to Barranco that if people destroyed nature or got rid of a species, nothing would bring them back. "Changes are taking place so quickly," she said. "And we really have to speed up 'preventive measures' in order to prevent more damage from happening. We are losing time."