Our team of high  school students went down to the Otay River bottom to do a plant related survey.  We sampled a total of 611 plants in an area of 895 meters.  We went down there trying to answer these Questions.  Our answers are written below:
1) How many different plant species are growing in this area?
    50 plant species are growing in this area.
2) What plant species are growing in this area of the Otay River bottom?
     Please Refer to our Alphabetized list for the names of the plants.
3) What percent of these plants are native to this area?
    74.5% (455) are native plants to this area.
4) What percent are non-native?
    25.4% (155) are non-native and 2% (1) is unknown.
5) How has this area changed overtime?
    The land has been abused by man.  It has been mined.  It has been used as a dump.  A lot of the native plants are no longer found in this area.  As recently as 1994 species of native plants were found here that are no longer found.
6) What changes will the future bring ?
    The study site will be part of the Otay Valley Regional Park.  The people that work there with volunteers from the community will dig out the non-native plants and plant native plants.

    Through this project we hope that this land will be well taken care of.  We noticed that the closer the plants are to human activity the less native plants there are.  The farther you go away from the roads the more native plants you see.  Another observation is that most of the plants are chaparral plants rather than riparian because of the lack of year round water.