UC Santa Cruz professor Michael Loik tests how plants respond to climate extremes Acute drought is parching Santa Cruz. For the past four years, the coastal prairie of Younger Lagoon Reserve, on the west end of town, has received just over half the rain that normally falls. The situation is so dire it’s likely to […]
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Learning to swim, elephant seal style
Elephant seals were born to swim, and scientists have the data to show it. For the first time, researchers at the University of California have tracked the diving behavior of northern elephant seal pups on their inaugural journeys into the open ocean. Like videos of a toddler’s baby steps, the recordings show the 300-pound youngsters […]
Reviving field research with living laboratories and outdoor education
By Lily Dayton for UC Santa Cruz In the spring of 1948, UCLA graduate student Ken Norris was eager to return to his field research site in the Coachella Valley, where he’d spent previous seasons crouched in the sand dunes, observing the desert iguanas that scurried beneath the Dicoria bushes. When he arrived at his research plot, […]
2019 Simes award recipients to study Lyme disease, woodpecker cooperation
The NRS’s Hastings Natural History Reservation has awarded financial support to two graduate students conducing field research at the Carmel Valley reserve. Kacie Ring of San Francisco State University and Russell Winter of Old Dominion University will each receive up to $1500 from the William Simes Fund. Ring is exploring how host animals affect a […]
Groundwater shepherds California forests through long droughts
By Lorena Anderson, UC Merced The health of California forests depends on water stored several feet below ground, making them especially vulnerable to multiyear droughts. The evidence comes from a new study of wildlands across the West, including at the NRS’s James San Jacinto Mountains Reserve in Southern California. “Each year our forests, grasslands and […]
Jen Hunter, new director of Hastings Natural History Reservation
The NRS’s oldest reserve is now under the leadership of its newest director. Jennifer (Jen) Hunter took the reins of Hastings Natural History Reservation in December, after former resident director Vincent Voegeli relocated to Kauai. Hunter, who holds a PhD in carnivore community ecology from UC Davis, learned about the NRS as a graduate student. […]
Sun protection for mosses and records of paleo climate: the 2018-19 Mathias Graduate Student Research Grant awards
The tiny mosses that glue desert soils together spend the majority of their days dormant—the better to withstand a harsh environment. Yet within seconds of absorbing water, the crumbly wisps of brown green up in a frenzy of photosynthetic activity. How these hardy desert residents withstand the harsh UV rays of the sun while essentially […]
Spreading resistance: NRS scientist returns frogs to high Sierra lakes
by Shelly Leachman, UC Santa Barbara In a box, within a canister filled with snow, tucked tightly into a backpack strapped to one determined ecologist. Twenty at a time they travel, these unassuming native frogs, departing places where they’re thriving for sites from which their species has vanished. Their mission: population recovery. In ecology-speak this […]