By Kathleen Wong, UC Natural Reserve System 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 […]
Younger Lagoon Reserve
Students power resurvey of NRS reserves
By Kathleen Wong, UC Natural Reserve System 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 […]
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 […]
From brussels sprouts field to coastal prairie
Younger Lagoon Reserve is making Santa Cruz a friendlier place for native wildlife. Its namesake waterway has long been a haven for bobcats and stickleback fish, great blue herons and cormorants to the north of this university town. Not so for the coastal terrace next door. Planted years before in brussels sprouts, the field had […]
High-tech sensors monitor ecosystems in climate change research program
by Tim Stephens, UC Santa Cruz News Center New technology is bringing an unprecedented level of environmental surveillance to sites throughout California and beyond as part of a UC systemwide effort to understand and predict the effects of climate change on the state’s ecosystems. As scientists deploy their instruments at research sites throughout the UC […]
UCSC Natural Reserves director appointed to endowed chair
by Tim Stephens, UC Santa Cruz News Office UC Santa Cruz has appointed Gage Dayton to the Wilton W. Webster Jr. Presidential Chair for the UC Santa Cruz Natural Reserves. The endowed chair was established in 2015 with a $500,000 gift from the Helen and Will Webster Foundation and matching funds from the UC Regents. […]