CCBER - Other Projects & Activities

CCBER Workshops and Symposia

 

The Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration hosts a number of workshops, symposia and speakers throughout the year related to our mission of conservation, ecological restoration and natural history collections.

 

Our Conservation and Restoration Ecology Seminar is a course for students in EEMB/ES departments and a topical seminar series open to anyone interested in these topics. The course and series is curated and taught by Lisa Stratton, the CCBER Director of Ecosystem Management. Dr. Stratton has over 20 years of experience in regional conservation and restoration programs, and runs an internship program at CCBER that incorporates over 75 undergraduate students every year. Each academic quarter she curates a series of speakers around a certain topic. Last year those were:

 

Fall 2016 - Carbon Sequestration and Natural and Restored Ecosystems:

Policy, financing, ecology, mechanisms

·       October 3 – Josh Schimel (EEMB/ES)– Soil microbial processes

·       October 10 – Jennifer King (Geography) – Gas Exchange Processes and Ecosystem Carbon Balance

·       October 17 – Anne Coates (Cachuma Resource District) – Grassland sequestration opportunities and methodologies

·       October 24 – Simone Pulver (ES) – The development of carbon markets

·       October 31 – Steve Deverel _(Hydrofocus, Inc.) – GHG monitoring methodology for wetlands.

·       November 7 – Lisa Stratton – North Campus Open Space – Carbon Sequestration Opportunities and methodologies

·       November 14 –  Craig Carlson: The Role of the Ocean in the Carbon Cycle

·       November 21 –  Carla D’Antonio (ES/EEMB): Comparison of carbon pools and processes in forested and burned forest areas.

 

Winter 2017 - Citizen Science: scientific work undertaken by members of the general public, often in collaboration with or under the direction of professional scientists and scientific institutions.

·       January 23 – Libby Ellwood – Citizen Science – Making the best use of this tool.

·       January 30 – David Bonter – Cornell Feeder Watch Program– via Webinar – Making Citizen Science Data Valuable and interfacing with participants to support this goal.

·       February 6 – Claire Runge – NCEAS – Using ebird data to draw conservation conclusions.

 

Spring 2017 - Santa Clara River System: Restoration in a complex system

·       April 3 – Lynn Rodriguez – Manager of the Watersheds Coalition of Ventura County:  Santa Clara River Water and Watershed Management Program history and issues.

·       April 10 – Laura Riege- The Nature Conservancy: Integrating Santa Clara river restoration and conservation with agriculture and other land and water use demands.

·       April 17 – Bruce Orr – Stillwater:  Using land use history and hydrology studies to inform river and rare bird habitat restoration through modeling and maping.

·       April 24th – Matt Stoecker – Steelhead Expert: Steelhead Trout biology and the restoration potential in the Santa Clara River System.

·       May 1 – Catherine McCalvin- United Water Conservation District:  Challenges and Opportunities for Conservation of Species and Water Supply. Please review website ahead of time: https://www.unitedwater.org/

·       May 8 – John Krist – Ventura Farm Bureau:  Can Agriculture and River Conservation find common ground in the Santa Clara River System? 

·       May 15th - Tom Dudley- River Ecologist, UCSB: Assessing the impacts and controlling key invasive plant species in the Santa Clara River, e.g.  Arundo, Tamarisk and Lepidium.

·       May 22nd – Adam Lambert- Restoration Ecologist the RIVR Lab, UCSB: Santa Clara River Restoration in progress: monitoring, actions and key strategies.

·       June 5th – Alexandria Pivovaroff – Post-Doc LaKretz Ctr for Conservation Science, UCLA: Native and Non-native riparian species water use strategies and Restoration implications.

 

Other CCBER Activities

 

North Campus Open Space (NCOS):  CCBER has been a key player in both the planning and the efforts to raise funds for the implementation of the 136-acre North Campus Open Space Restoration project. The NCOS project provides our community with access to an expanse of coastal open space that extends 2.25 miles along the Ellwood-Devereux coast. The site connects several existing preserved properties, including UCSB’s South Parcel, Coal Oil Point Reserve, as well as the City of Goleta’s Sperling Preserve at Ellwood Mesa.  After restoration, the NCOS site will feature natural open space, trails, and boardwalks for public access and passive recreation.

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This property will allow for teaching, research, and community outreach. Restoration and preservation of wetlands and other habitat along Devereux Creek will also be a primary focus for the property. The CCBER Director for Ecosystem Management, Lisa Stratton, has been involved in preliminary research that was used in the preparation of a restoration plan for the land in order to provide guidance in such things as local plants, soil types, and habitat creation.  Additionally, Dr. Stratton has led extensive grant writing activities and raised approximately $15M towards the planning and implementation tasks, baseline ecological studies, and restoration.  Campus partners involved in the comprehensive planning include the North Campus Open Space Science Advisory Committee composed of faculty from ERI, EEMB, Earth Science and Bren; Facilities Management Design and Construction Services, Office of Research, and Budget and Planning.  CCBER has involved a multitude of students and staff in the project to date.  Groundbreaking was held on April 26, 2017. Construction grading began in April and bridge and trail construction will be completed by April 2018 or sooner.

 

As of June 30, 2017, our funding partners include the State Coastal Conservancy and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to plan for the restoration of the former Ocean Meadows golf course to its natural state. Additional funding for the restoration has been secured from our partners, the California Natural Resources Agency and the Department of Water Resources, through their granting programs (Urban Greening and Urban Streams, respectively), and from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for Greenhouse Gas Sequestration using Cap and Trade funds and Proposition 1 funds. Additional Proposition 1 grants have been awarded by the State Coastal Conservancy and the Ocean Protection Council. CalTrans has provided funding for restoration through the Environmental Enhancement and Mitigation Program and for public access through the Alternative Transportation Program. Additional funders include the City of Santa Barbara, The County of Santa Barbara (Flood Control Division and the County Resource Enhancement Fund), Goleta West Sanitary District, Wetlands Recovery Project and several private donors.  The Trust for Public Land purchased 64 acres of the now-closed Goleta course with $7 million of grant funding from several federal, state, and local agencies. The organization subsequently gifted the property to The Regents of the University of California, which will serve as the long-term steward of the open space.

 

Software Carpentry, GIS for Natural History Collection and Insect Identification Workshops

The UCSB Natural History Collections at CCBER are focused on research in museum bioinformatics and collections based fauna and floristic research focused on systematics and conservation. Every year, the UCSB Natural History Collections at CCBER develops training opportunities and workshops for our many stakeholders. They are attended by staff, students and other natural history museum managers, curators and researchers. These events are created in collaboration with EEMB and the National Science Foundation supported, Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio) project.

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Insect identification workshop at CCBER

 

This year CCBER staff taught a Software Carpentry workshop April 22-23, 2017 along with EEMB graduate students Mark Wilber and Umi Hoshijima. Software Carpentry are hands-on workshops that cover the core skills needed to be a good researcher. This workshop focused on an Introduction to R, databases, and how to version code and data (https://goo.gl/4J5KVE).

 

The second workshop, Georeferencing for Research Use, was at held October 4 – 7 at National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). The course was co-taught by iDigBio, CCBER researchers, and Sara Lafia, a graduate student in the Department of Geography. This short course, with a focus on research use of natural history collections data, was attended by students and researchers from universities all over the United States (https://goo.gl/34kiXw).

 

CCBER also developed a series of intensive insect and arthropod identification workshops open to UCSB students, staff and community members. These workshops were developed to address a need for training in the skill of insect and arthropod identification for ecological research and restoration monitoring. The courses were organized by CCBER’s Katja Seltmann, who is an insect taxonomist. Special guests also contributed to the teaching of the workshops, including Matthew Gimmel, Curator of Entomology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.

 

 

Endangered Species Research – The Nipomo Lupine Project

 

Lupine.pngThe Nipomo Mesa Lupine (Lupinus nipomensis) is a federally endangered annual species of lupine endemic to California. This species lives in our coastal dune habitats and it has been pushed out by habitat loss and invasive plant species. CCBER is a natural partner to work on the conservation of endangered California plants because of our experience and expertiese growing native plants for campus restoration projects. Our restoration sites contain several species that are listed as special concern, including the Coulter's saltbush (Atriplex coulteri) and Southern tarplant (Centromadia parryi ssp. australis). Thoughout the year, we conducted several research projects that included outplanting of the species to new locations, and pollinator and herbivore studies. We grew the plants at the CCBER greenhouse in order to bulk up the supply of their seeds. Seed bulking is done to preserve the plants by generating enough seed for outplanting, or for emergency storage, just in case the present populations are extirpated. The hope is that through understanding what the Nipomo lupine needs to survive, the plant can successfully be grown in other locations besides the few populations where it now lives. This work has been accomplished with a contract from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the project has involved many UCSB students in the research. Find out more about the Nipomo Lupine project and other plant conservation research at CCBER (https://www.ccber.ucsb.edu/research-areas).

 

CCBER Restoration TeamCCBER Restoration Team

 

Wearing North Campus Open Space Restoration Team shirts funded by a generous donation from Carol Geer, the CCBER Team is ready to bring back our region's natural heritage and make it available for research, education and enjoyment.

Credit: Rachel Behm