By Kathleen Wong, UC Natural Reserve System Tim Brown spends his summers on top of the Golden State. While other Californians tan at the beach, hold BBQs, or relax at the pool, he makes a beeline for the high country. Striding across snowfields and rock scree atop eastern California’s highest ranges, this UC Santa Cruz […]
Younger Lagoon Reserve
Younger Lagoon to roll out wetland welcome mat for frogs
By Tim Stephens, UC Santa Cruz The California red-legged frog is a threatened species that has been found on the NRS’s Younger Lagoon Reserve in Santa Cruz, but has not been known to breed there successfully. That may soon change with the construction of a small pond designed to enhance an existing seasonal wetland and […]
NRS reserves adapt to coronavirus shutdown
Spring is prime time around the University of California Natural Reserve System. As winter thaws, and skies dry, scientists and students alike start migrating to the protected lands of the network’s 41 reserves. Field stations bustle with university classes on field trips, who rub shoulders with faculty and student researchers, and may intersect with buses […]
2020 Field Science Fellowship Awards
Four UC undergraduates have been awarded the UC Natural Reserve System’s first Field Science Fellowships. The fellowship is intended to enable these highly motivated students to concentrate full time on their field science research for an entire summer with the guidance of a UC faculty mentor. “The fellowship applications we received were truly stellar,” says […]
Students power resurvey of NRS reserves
While Alex Krohn was completing his PhD, he visited numerous UC Natural Reserves looking for reptiles and amphibians. With dozens of protected wildlands located in a wide variety of ecosystems across the state, NRS reserves are popular places for scientists to collect specimens and do field research. Trying to determine whether certain species of interest […]
Doctor drought
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 […]
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, […]
Disease caused catastrophic sea star declines
by Julie Cohen, UC Santa Barbara Five years ago, a mysterious disease began crippling sea star populations along the West Coast. Many sea star species died in record-breaking numbers over a short period of time, and a keystone known as the ochre sea star (Pisaster ochraceus) was among the hardest hit. The outbreak extended from […]