On a fine morning this coming autumn, 27 UC undergraduates, all strangers, will meet in a parking lot, assemble a small mountain of tents, sleeping bags, notebooks, and backpacks, and head out in a convoy of passenger vans to begin a true educational adventure. For the next seven weeks, the students of California Ecology and […]
Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve
Warmer, drier climate shifts forest structure
By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley Media Relations Historical California vegetation data that more than once dodged the dumpster have now proved their true value, documenting that a changing forest structure seen in the Sierra Nevada has actually happened statewide over the past 90 years. A team of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, UC […]
2014-15 Mathias Grants awarded
Sixteen University of California graduate students have been awarded 2014-15 Mildred E. Mathias Graduate Student Research Grants from the UC Natural Reserve System. The students, from six different UC campuses, received up to $3,000 to fund field projects at 22 different NRS reserves. Virtually all of this year’s successful proposals will study ecology, evolution, or […]
From the HMS Beagle to Barcroft Station
The Value of Natural Reserves and Field Stations In 1831, a young British naturalist by the name of Charles Darwin sailed to the New World on the research vessel HMS Beagle. Along the way, the ship put in at both mainland South America and the Galápagos Islands, landforms separated by over 1,000 kilometers of open […]
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 […]
Paper Published on Mediterranean Exchange
In 2011, the NRS awarded a $5,000 Mediterranean Reserve Managers International Cooperative Fellowship to Fiorenza Micheli, a Stanford University professor of biology. Micheli planned to use the funds to develop science-based conservation measures for a Tyrrenian Sea marine sanctuary and a proposed marine sanctuary in the Adriatic Sea. With the grant, Micheli invited her collaborators […]
Live Learning: The UCSC Supercourse
Reading a textbook is a time-honored way to absorb information. But to fully grasp a concept, to make that information indelible, there’s no substitute for firsthand experience. Just ask the students of UC Santa Cruz’s Ecology and Conservation in Practice course. Over the course of an academic quarter, the class travels to NRS sites such […]