Project Overview

Seventh grade students at High Tech Middle Chula Vista created this book to discover and document the diversity of living organisms seen daily around their school. Students worked with WiLDCOAST’s Coastal Conservation Program Manager to learn about the Tijuana River watershed, and also took a field trip to the Living Coast Discovery Center to learn more about watersheds.

Once students learned about the watershed and the damage being done to it, they began to do some of their own research about animals that are native to California. Each student was assigned a species to research for the book to create the species description. Each species is depicted in chalk pastel drawings of their species in a process that included careful scaling and sketching.

The 160-page book includes a brief illustrated depiction of the process of creating the book, and a description of the Tijuana River Watershed. The individual species descriptions are presented in groups such as amphibians, bird, mammals, plants etc. The book concludes with a glossary and bibliography.

This book is available for purchase at http://www.blurb.com/b/4147435-a-shared-space-biodiversity-and-the-tijua... .