Shore­lines, wood­lands, streams, and deserts were the stars of Nat­ural Reserve Sys­tem Day, cel­e­brated at UC Santa Bar­bara on Fri­day, Feb. 8. The full day of pre­sen­ta­tions and poster ses­sions was spon­sored by the UCSB Nat­ural Reserve Sys­tem. Held at the Bren School of Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence & Man­age­ment, the event fea­tured speak­ers inti­mate with the thou­sands of acres that serve as out­door class­rooms and laboratories.

“We’re here to serve Cal­i­for­nia. The main goals are to enhance teach­ing, research and pub­lic ser­vice of our nat­ural lands, to sup­port the econ­omy and the ecosys­tem of the State of Cal­i­for­nia by doing this work at these sites,” said Patri­cia Holden, direc­tor of the UCSB Nat­ural Reserve Sys­tem (NRS) and a Bren School professor.

The UC Nat­ural Reserve Sys­tem is a net­work of 38 wild­land sites that span over 750,000 acres across the state, from forests to deserts, moun­tains to coast­lines. It is the world’s largest university-operated sys­tem of nat­ural reserves, admin­is­tered by nine of the 10 UC campuses.

UC Santa Bar­bara admin­is­ters seven reserves –– the most of any of the UC cam­puses –– rang­ing from Coal Oil Point on the coast just off cam­pus to the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Lab­o­ra­tory (SNARL) in east­ern California.

“It’s like a library of California’s native habi­tats and ecosys­tems,” said Sue Swar­brick, asso­ciate direc­tor of the UC NRS. Prior to the NRS found­ing in 1965, long-term research in California’s eco­log­i­cally diverse array of habi­tats was often lim­ited or halted by devel­op­ment, or uses of the land that would inter­fere with researchers’ work. The objec­tive of the reserve sys­tem, she said, is to set aside nat­ural areas where unin­ter­rupted research can be per­formed. The reserves are a tremen­dous resource, which the sys­tem is hop­ing to pro­mote to cur­rent and future researchers.

“We really wanted to have this event to raise aware­ness of the NRS to the Uni­ver­sity com­mu­nity and any­one who would be inter­ested,” Swar­brick said. “We really hope to attract more grad­u­ate students.”

The day was filled with pre­sen­ta­tions and poster ses­sions by fac­ulty and researchers. The cel­e­bra­tion was packed with peo­ple from UCSB and the Santa Bar­bara region, includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Santa Bar­bara Museum of Nat­ural His­tory and the local chap­ter of the Audubon Society.

Each reserve has its unique qual­i­ties. For instance, Coal Oil Point, one of UCSB’s orig­i­nal reserves, is the near­est and most eas­ily acces­si­ble of the reserves, but its loca­tion adja­cent to highly pop­u­lated areas presents a chal­lenge to Cris San­doval, direc­tor of the Coal Oil Point reserve. For the past 15 years, San­doval has been work­ing to boost the pop­u­la­tion of the endan­gered snowy plover, a tiny shore­bird that shares its nest­ing sites of the same sand that hosts count­less vis­i­tors and their dogs.

“This was an oppor­tu­nity to cre­ate a lot of con­ser­va­tion aware­ness in our local com­mu­nity,” said San­doval. Sev­eral research projects, classes, tours, and fund­ing have come from research at Coal Oil Point, she said. Through trial and error, San­doval, who described her­self ini­tially as an insect biol­o­gist “who didn’t know how to talk to peo­ple, or to han­dle them,” dis­cov­ered the kind of approach that could be used to effec­tively cre­ate a safe haven for the birds despite the intense use of the beaches near which they lay their eggs.

“I did noth­ing to the plovers,” she said at the end of her pre­sen­ta­tion. “What I did was I man­aged people.”

In other reserves, such as the Sedg­wick Reserve in the Santa Ynez Val­ley, and the Ken­neth S. Nor­ris Ran­cho Marino Reserve far­ther up the Cal­i­for­nia coast, it’s not ani­mals that are being edged out, but native grasses, which are being over­taken by inva­sive Euro­pean species. Restora­tion is a major part of man­ag­ing the reserves in the NRS system.

“How can a man­ager tip the bal­ance toward these more desir­able native species?” asked Carla D’Antonio, pro­fes­sor in the UCSB Depart­ment of Ecol­ogy, Evo­lu­tion and Marine Biol­ogy. The answer might lie in the very activ­ity that brought the inva­sive non­na­tives in the first place: live­stock grazing.

Though his­tor­i­cally asso­ci­ated with the shift from native grasses to the pre­pon­der­ance of non­na­tive species in pre­vi­ously grazed lands, live­stock graz­ing is now also one of the few tools avail­able to those who want to man­age and restore native grass­land on a large scale, said D’Antonio. Her lab is inter­ested in just how wide­spread the seem­ingly ben­e­fi­cial effects of graz­ing might be, as well as how eco­log­i­cal and topo­graph­i­cal fac­tors may play a role in the out­comes of grazing.

But the reserves aren’t just about hard sci­ences. For Lynn Gam­ble, UCSB pro­fes­sor of archae­ol­ogy, the Santa Cruz Island Reserve, known for its unique evo­lu­tion and diverse marine ecosys­tem, is per­fect for study­ing the Chu­mash, the Native Amer­i­can hunter-gatherers who lived in the region for mil­len­nia and thrived prior to con­tact with Euro­pean settlers.

“This is a site where I’ve always dreamed of work­ing,” she said of the island’s west end, a loca­tion that now holds more doc­u­mented house depres­sions –– 51 –– than any other archae­o­log­i­cal site in the Santa Bar­bara Chan­nel area. While there may have been sites as large or larger on the main­land, it’s the island’s remote­ness that has helped to keep this par­tic­u­lar site, named El Mon­ton, safe from the destruc­tion wrought by mod­ern human activity.

“We can really recon­struct what life was like going back through time, and we don’t have to be ham­pered with devel­op­ment,” she said.

Mean­while, Hank Pitcher, artist and alum­nus from the UCSB Col­lege of Cre­ative Stud­ies, has used the reserves as inspi­ra­tion, cap­tur­ing Coal Oil Point and Sedg­wick reserves on can­vas through sev­eral decades, often in antic­i­pa­tion of devel­op­ment that would change the landscape.

“I tend to paint the same view over and over again, so when some­body asks me how long does it take to make a paint­ing, I can say it took my whole life,” he quipped.

Eliz­a­beth Hiroy­asu is a grad stu­dent who was lured to the life of an envi­ron­men­tal sci­en­tist by the reserves. Now study­ing at the Bren School, her ear­li­est years were formed by many field trips to SNARL. Her love for the play­ground of her child­hood trans­lated into a deeper under­stand­ing and sup­port for the reserve, and all the UC nat­ural reserves in general.

“I think they’re hugely impor­tant to the UC sys­tem –– not just for research, but also for their K-12 edu­ca­tion,” she said, com­ment­ing on the NRS effort to bring nature edu­ca­tion to school­child­ren. “It’s amazing.”

by Sonia Fer­nan­dez, UC Santa Bar­bara Pub­lic Affairs.