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Take a virtual field trip with Google Earth! Google Earth is a free, online application that uses satellite imagery to allow the user to zoom across the globe in a realistic, virtual environment. Downloading Google Earth is free at http://www.earth.google.com. An overview manual is available by clicking here... Google Earth Overview (342.0K)
To continue: - Make sure you have the Google Earth software installed and running. - Copy the following latitude and longitude and paste into the "Fly to" field under the Search tab. - Hit “Enter” for Google Earth to take you to the specified coordinates, then come back here and read the following overview.
Latitude/Longitude: 33.7784, -119.628
The islands vary in size from tiny Santa Barbara, which has an area of only 2.63 km2, to Santa Cruz which is 250 km2,. Santa Cruz also has the highest mountain in the island chain, reaching roughly 750 m (2,500 ft) above sea level at the top of Devils Peak. Although the islands may appear dry and barren at first glance, they support a rich variety plants and animals. They include the Island Fox, the Channel Islands Spotted Skunk, the Island Scrub Jay, the Ashy Storm-petrel, the Island Night Lizard, the Channel Island Slender Salamander, the Santa Catalina Island Rattlesnake, the San Clemente Goat, the San Clemente Loggerhead Shrike, a unique subspecies of Torrey Pine, and the Island Tree Mallow. The kelp forests surrounding the Channel Islands are some of the largest in the world, and harbor a rich diversity of marine life. A kelp forest monitoring program sponsored by the National Park Service has now accumulated 25 years (1982–2006) of data, which includes population dynamics of 69 taxa of algae, fish, and invertebrates.
The Channel Islands offer a classic example of island biogeography. Jared Diamond's research on bird populations (described in the text) shows a balance between extinction and colonization rates based on island size and distance from the mainland. Small islands far from the mainland tend to have much smaller populations of birds and a much higher rate of extinction than those that are larger, nearer the mainland. Being a part of the linear chain of northern islands also makes migration easier and more successful than in the more scattered and isolated islands of the southern group. The island biogeography model assumes that islands are truly isolated and were never part of the nearby continent (for example, during periods of low sea level), so that colonization events are really rare. Neither of these is true for the Channel Islands, so many biogeographers have disputed the relevance of this site for the theory of island biogeography. Nonetheless, these islands remain an iconic example that is often referred to.
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