By Keith Hamm, UC Santa Barbara Just before the pavement gave way to gravel, Marion Wittmann pulled over to take in the view across Sedgwick Reserve. From a wooden bench at the overlook, her gaze lifted from the valley floor and Figueroa Creek to the sandstone ridgelines climbing toward Zaca Peak deep in the Santa […]
Sedgwick Reserve
Study of sundowner winds offers wildfire forecasting insights
By Kathleen Wong, UC Natural Reserve System Nestled between the blue Pacific and the steep rise of the Santa Ynez Mountains, the beach town of Santa Barbara is extraordinarily picturesque. But the surroundings that make for such handsome photos also have a sinister side. They’re responsible for one of the area’s greatest dangers—the sundowner winds […]
Cricket crew flocks to Sedgwick
By Nikki Evans, Sedgwick Reserve Caroline Williams is a professor of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley where she runs a lab on the evolution of metabolic physiology in ectotherms. In other words, the Williams Lab studies how energy-providing processes throughout the body evolve in cold-blooded species. Her lab is particularly interested in insects. At Sedgwick, they […]
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.
Fire and the foothills: reducing wildfire threats while boosting biodiversity
By Kathleen Wong, UC Natural Reserve System The foothills of California are familiar to anyone who has ventured into county parks to hike: iconic oak savannas, chaparral-covered hillslopes, and grasslands. They encircle the Central Valley like a bathtub ring, and include much of the Coast and Transverse ranges. Ranging from a few hundred to a […]
2021 Field Science Fellows
By Kathleen Wong, UC Natural Reserve System Three University of California undergraduates will be conducting their own full-time field research projects this summer as part of the UC Natural Reserve System’s Field Science Fellowship. This year’s fellows will get first-hand glimpses of what it’s like to be a field scientist while studying vegetation succession, lizard […]
Timeworn cattle ranch remade into NRS reserve
By Kathleen Wong, UC Natural Reserve System When sculptor and philanthropist Duke Sedgwick bequeathed his family’s sprawling Santa Ynez Valley ranch to the University of California, he wrote that he wanted to create a “conjunction of learning and land.” The more than 5,800-acre spread on the western slope of Figueroa Mountain certainly seemed ideal for […]