by Kathleen Wong, UC Natural Reserve System For the undertakers of the insect world, death must precede the arrival of a new generation. Burying beetles of the genus Nicrophorus need a carcass on which to lay their eggs and feed their larvae. The hitch in this plan: the fact that dead bodies tend to be […]
Coal Oil Point Reserve
SHIFT campaign links plant biodiversity and health with NASA’s remote sensing technology
By Kathleen Wong, UC Natural Reserve System NASA is ground-truthing data generated by its next-generation earth imaging technology with a major research campaign hosted at three Central California NRS reserves. The SHIFT (Surface Biology and Geology High Frequency Time Series) project marries high-definition remote sensing efforts with actual samples of land plants, plankton, and kelp […]
2021-22 Mathias Grants awarded
The border between the ocean and dry land is a tough neighborhood. Residents of the intertidal zone—tidepool animals such as mussels and limpets, snails and barnacles—are alternately battered by waves, then exposed to drying sun.
20 years of snowy plovers
By Sonia Fernandez, UC Santa Barbara They’re tiny, fluffy and almost perfectly camouflaged against the sand dunes of the upper beach at Coal Oil Point Reserve (COPR) at UC Santa Barbara. But for all their diminutive size and near invisibility, Western snowy plovers have staged a spectacular comeback, once again nesting in habitat they had been […]
2020-21 Mathias Grant recipients
By Kathleen Wong, UC Natural Reserve System Most people will be staying close to home in 2021 due to the pandemic. UC Santa Barbara graduate student Samantha Sambado will not be among them. Her doctoral research will take her on multiple journeys up and down California, in search of ticks and the human pathogens they […]
Nature center replaces former Coal Oil Point office shed
This story is part of NRS reserves transformed by Proposition 84 funds, a series describing the facilities improvements and expansions at NRS reserves supported by Proposition 84 bond funds. By Kathleen Wong, UC Natural Reserve System Coal Oil Point Natural Reserve is a quintessential slice of beachy Southern California. Located next to UC Santa Barbara, […]
Watching wildlife with help from AI
By Kathleen Wong, UC Natural Reserve System Trail cameras have become essential tools for environmental monitoring. Relatively inexpensive, and easy to operate, they enable scientists to spot local wildlife, observe animal behaviors, and even occasionally uncover the presence of rare species. At the 41 reserves of the University of California Natural Reserve System, a network […]
Oil pipeline company to pay $60M for 2015 Refugio Oil Spill
May 19, 2015 was a dark day at Coal Oil Point Natural Reserve in Santa Barbara. That morning, a rusty underground pipeline a dozen miles up the coast began spewing 120,000 gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean. Much of it drifted ashore, where beaches, where it coated birds, marine mammals, shorelines, and subtidal habitats […]