Introduction to Field Guide to the Santa Rosa Plateau

This is a field guide to many aspects of the Santa Rosa Plateau (SRP). The main page gives just the links to further information for quick navigation. This page explains those links and this website in more detail.

This site contains webpages that include, among other pages:

• an introduction to the history, geology and topography of the SRP;
• detailed information about the main vernal pool, including observations since 1996 of the pool depth, animal life and wildflowers versus time;
• a bloom identification guide to the SRP, including the historical records of Gordon House;
• current and historical news of the SRP;
• a collection of the information on the web and bibliography of printed material about the SRP; and
• hiking information for the SRP.

This site is far from complete, but will gradually become more complete with time.

The About This Site area of the main page contains these files, some of which are shared with my San Gabriel Mountains site:

• an Abbreviations and Sources page that defines the abbreviations used for phrases and sources of some of the information presented here;
• a Definitions page, giving definitions of some words or phrases; and
• a Style Sheet page, containing information about the style for the composition of the pages here. One item to note: I have intentionally not formatted the pages to occupy only a portion of a typical screen. I recommend that each reader size their browser window themselves to read the pages more easily.
• an Update Log, giving a record of what was added to the site on a given day;

This site has no connection with any company or organization, and results from the personal work of the author, as well as the volunteer input from readers credited either on the page with their input or on the acknowledgements page for each site. The referenced links are also mostly the result of volunteer effort by many different webauthors, although a few referenced pages come from commercial efforts. No endorsement of any kind is implied by the existence of a link from these pages, other than my belief that there is some useful information contained within those links.

It is a misconception held by some people that webauthors somehow get a fee for every reader who accesses a webpage. This is true only for some commercial sites supported by advertising. In fact, in most cases, webauthors pay money to put their pages online and make it available to the public. Fortunately, the amount of money for a site like this is small, $275 per year for this site. In comparison, since the page charges for many major scientific journals are ~$100 per printed page, my SGM site alone would cost ~$20,000, making the dollar costs of a website essentially negligible!

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• Field Guide To the Santa Rosa Plateau