Heather Constable is the new director of the NRS’s Sedgwick Reserve.
Sedgwick Reserve
Learning to burn: using prescribed fire to keep California’s foothills safe from wildfire
Scientists examine how, where, and when to light prescribed burns to reduce catastrophic wildfire risks in California’s most populous regions.
2022–23 Mathias Grants awarded
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 […]
A legacy of research: Sedgwick turns 25
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 […]
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.