Imagine yourself walking among a grove of trees at the NRS’s Sagehen Creek Field Station. Out of the corner of your eye, you spot movement reflected back at you. Then realization dawns on you–you’re seeing a reflection of yourself surrounded by nature. This is the concept behind Invisible Barn, an environmental art project designed to […]
Blog Post
Showcasing Science at the Granites
As late as 1979, California’s eastern Mojave Desert was called a scientific “black hole” because its resources and biodiversity were virtually unknown.1 Over the past 30 years, scientists have been busy shining light into that darkness, thanks largely to the establishment of the NRS’s Sweeney Granite Mountains Desert Research Center in 1978. In a region […]
The Bustling White Mountains of Yesteryear
by Daniel Pritchett Scientists’ field notes have long been recognized as a source of important historical (as well as scientific) information. For the White Mountains, UC Berkeley zoologist Joseph Grinnell and five of his colleagues (including noted botanist W.L. Jepson) all left notes of their expedition to the White Mountains in July and August of […]
NRS Summer Artist-in-Residency Program
Long known for supporting science research and teaching, the Natural Reserve System has teamed up with UC’s leading arts research organization to encourage reserve use by artists. Together with the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA), the NRS is offering summer artist-in-residency opportunities at one of eleven reserves. The Arts2NRS program […]
Building a Better Basemap
by Anne Egger Many colleges and universities use the (Cambrian) Poleta Folds of the White-Inyo range as a site for summer field mapping projects. This spectacular outcrop allows students to develop skills in geologic mapping because the stratigraphy is well defined, units are distinctive in color and character, and exposures are nearly continuous. Despite the […]
No Fukushima radiation found in California kelp
Scientists working to measure radiation released after the April 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan have seen no signs of nuclear contamination along the West Coast of the United States. Researchers participating in the Kelp Watch 2014 project announced the news after analyzing the first batch of samples collected earlier this spring. Kelp Watch 2014 […]
Field Quarter: it’s life-changing
In 1973, a group of UC Santa Cruz undergraduates filed into vans and headed for the Mojave Desert. Led by Kenneth S. Norris, founder of the UC Natural Reserve System and the University’s first professor of natural history, they would spend the next dozen weeks traveling to wild places across California. The lessons they learned […]
Seeing the bedrock beneath the trees
by Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley News Center University of California, Berkeley, geologist William Dietrich pioneered the application of airborne LIDAR – light detection and ranging – at the NRS’s Angelo Coast Range Reserve near Laytonville to map mountainous terrain, stripping away the vegetation to see the underlying ground surface. But that didn’t take him deep […]