CCBER - Other Projects & Activities

North Campus Open Space (NCOS): The Cheadle Center has been a key player in the planning, grant writing and implementation of the 136-acre North Campus Open Space Restoration project. The $15 million-dollar 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.   Restoration construction began in April 2017 and planting began in September 2017. Bridge and Trail construction was completed in June 2018. The Marsh Trail, adjacent to the wetlands opened to the public in October 2018 and includes ADA accessible boardwalks and bridges for public access and passive recreation.

 

This restoration project supports teaching, research, and community outreach. To date more than 740 preschool to 12th grade students have participated in outdoor educational activities on the site, including CCBER’s award winning Kids in Nature program. More than 20 public tours have been given, a monthly newsletter on the project has seen subscriptions increase from April 2017 of 250 recipients to 620 subscribers in July 2019. In addition, monthly community volunteer events have been consistently well attended by a mix of UCSB students and local residents. Weekly greenhouse volunteer events are attended by a number of regular community members. Multiple UCSB classes take advantage of the open space for tours, field trips and independent projects. In addition, between 30 and 60 UCSB students have been employed as field technicians each quarter since January 2018 and have participated in planting the 250,000 plants that have been planted so far.  More than 30 students have participated in a variety of monitoring and research projects that include soil carbon sequestration, water quality, hydrology, plant growth and performance, wildlife observations, human use surveys and invertebrate sampling and studies. Monitoring results so far put the project on schedule and successfully achieving some of the key goals: reducing flood elevations by 2 feet, improving water quality, providing public access and educational opportunities, supporting rare species (plants and animals), being adaptive to sea level rise and sequestering carbon.

 

As of June 30, 2019, 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 Wildlife Conservation Board, 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. A recent grant from California State Parks was awarded in June 2018 and will be implemented in Fall 2019 for public serving amenities that include an interpretive visitor’s plaza and overlooks with benches. 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.

 

CCBER’s current fundraising efforts for NCOS are focused on raising an endowment to support the long-term management of the site and to support student research, training mentorship programs and Kids in Nature outreach to K-12 classrooms on the site. To date approximately one million in endowment funds have been raised with 5 of the 12 naming opportunities taken. An additional grant to support the public-facing aspects of the project has been submitted to the California Natural Resources Agency Green Infrastructure grant program. As part of the 2004 North Campus Housing approvals, Campus committed to funding the long-term management of the 68-acre South Parcel which makes up half of the project site, this commitment, in addition to the goal of raising at least $6 million in endowment funds, will support the full vision of NCOS as both a restored natural area and a site for innovative research and learning at all levels.

 

Research Highlight: The Nipomo Lupine Project 

 

The 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 expertise growing native plants for campus restoration projects. In 2019 CCBER was awarded a grant of $120,000 from USFWS to continue to conduct experiments and outplanting work of this rare coastal species. In addition, Lisa Stratton, was invited to be on the recovery team for this species. The above grant builds on work conducted between 2012 and 2018 that included pollinator studies, seed bulking efforts, and experimental outplanting in Nipomo as well as site evaluations. 

 

Research Highlight: Capturing California’s Flowers (https://www.capturingcaliforniasflowers.org)

 

Dr. Susan Mazer (EEMB) and Dr. Katja Seltmann (CCBER) at UCSB have received National Science Foundation funding to digitize UCSB’s preserved plant collection, providing detailed images of flowering plants and the timing of their flowering – all to be publicly available for climate change research.  This resource is part of a California-wide collaboration to provide on-line images and ecological data representing >900,000 wild plants collected since the 19th century, enabling unprecedented research to detect the effects of climate change on flowering time in the wild.  The National Science Foundation has awarded $1.8 million for this project, called Capturing California’s Flowers, in which 22 California herbaria are participating. 

 

The project will produce nearly 1 million digital images of the plant specimens preserved in herbaria, which are carefully curated collections of irreplaceable plant specimens housed at universities and public museums.  Each image is associated with a record of when and where the plant specimen was collected, all of which enable researchers to detect not only how current climatic conditions influence the seasonal timing of flowering, but also how flowering time has changed over the past two centuries.  One of the project’s most important goals is to facilitate novel research to forecast plant responses to upcoming climate change. In addition, project collaborators are designing new software that will facilitate research with these specimens by investigators anywhere in the world, and are educating and guiding undergraduates and on-line volunteers to participate in their own research projects.

 

Education and Outreach Highlights

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

 

The UCSB Natural History Collections at CCBER are focused on research in museum bioinformatics and collections-based fauna and floristic research in systematics, biodiversity data science and conservation. Every year, the UCSB Natural History Collections at CCBER develops training opportunities and workshops for our many stakeholders. They are attended by faculty, staff, students, consultants, and natural history museum managers, curators and researchers. 

 

This year CCBER staff taught and organized a Software Carpentry workshop January 25-26, 2019 along with UCSB Library Collaboratory Staff and Carpentries group (Jon Jablonski, Ian Lessing, Greg Janee, Sharon Solis, Mary Donovan, Katja Seltmann, Yuan Wu). The 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.

 

California Native Bees workshop (September 12–14, 2018). This three-day workshop at the Cheadle Center was conducted by Jamie Pawelek, UC Berkeley Bee Lab and focused on identification of our regional bee species. California is home to over 2,000 species of bee and their identification if vital to pollinator research and education.

Manzanitas of California workshop (October 20–21, 2018). This two-day workshop was taught by V. Thomas Parker, Ph.D. and Michael C. Vasey, Ph.D. from San Francisco State University. Dr. Parker and Dr. Vasey have spent the last 25 years studying the taxonomy, ecology, and evolution of manzanitas.

 

California Seaweeds workshop (April 12–14, 2019 at the Rancho Marino UC Natural Reserve and Camp Ocean Pines in Cambria, CA). This three-day workshop was conducted by Dr. Kathy Ann Miller, Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley and students learned to identify and prepare the common seaweeds of the Santa Barbara Coast.

 

Grasses of Central California workshop (May 4–5, 2019). This two-day workshop was conducted by J. Travis Columbus, Ph.D., Research Scientist at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and Professor of Botany at Claremont Graduate University. His research has focused on the systematics of the Grass Family, especially the Chloridoideae, composed of ca. 1,400 species worldwide.

 

May 2019. Workshop on the grasses of Central California in the CCBER classroom. CCBER seminars and workshops are held throughout the year. For more information see ccber.ucsb.edu

 

The 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 are 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 2018: Chaparral Ecology and Conservation

 

October 1. Lisa Stratton: Introduction to key Chaparral Species and Seminar series

Read: Chaparral Chapter

 

Oct.  8th: Greg Wahlert – Chaparral Ecology: Diversity, Function, & Conservation History

 

Oct. 16th. Steve Davis (Pepperdine University) – Physiological Mechanisms of Drought-induced Mortality in Chaparral  

 

Oct. 22nd. Jon Keeley, USGS Ecologist, Chaparral – Fire, Climate Change and Human Development Issues  

 

Oct. 29th.  Bryant Baker. Los Padres ForestWatch:  An Exploration of Management Issues Facing Our Local Chaparral Landscape 

 

Nov. 5, Anna Jacobson – CSU Bakersfield – A global context for chaparral ecology and conservation: Shared Mediterranean-type ecosystem patterns and processes

 

Nov. 12th – Veterans Day – Holiday

 

Nov. 19th – Carla D’Antonio – Professor, UCSB. Chaparral vulnerability to loss and the complexities of restoration. 

 

Nov.  26th – Denise Knapp – Santa Barbara Botanic Garden – Diversity, Threats and Recovery in the Zaca and Jesusita Fire chaparral 

 

 

Winter 2019: Vernal Pool Ecology and Conservation

 

January 14th - Conservation of Santa Barbara Vernal Pools - A Retrospective - Wayne Ferren, Jr. Botanist & Consultant

 

January 28th – The Vernal Pools of Baja California, Mexico: Doing Biodiversity Science and Conservation on a Shoestring; Matt Guilliams – Santa Barbara Botanic Garden Curator; also Kristen Hasenstab-Lehman (Santa Barbara Botanic Garden) José Delgadillo  (Universidad Autonoma de BC, Ensenada) Cesar García Valderrama (CNPS  Baja  California Chapter) Jim Riley (Jardín Botanico de San Quintín)

 

February 4th – Whole-Landscape Restoration of a Leveled California Vernal Pool Terrain; Eric Smith, Vollmar Consultants

 

February 11th – Restoration and Management of Vernal Pools in Southern California with a Case Study: The City of San Diego Vernal Pool Habitat Conservation Plan– Scott McMillan, AECOM

 

February 25th – Vernal Pool Aquatic Invertebrates: Their life cycles and strategies for survival in a seasonal wetland.  Scott Cooper, UCSB, EEMB Professor

 

March 4th – Mapping Vernal Pools in the Central Valley – methods and results over several decades of mapping. Robert F. Holland

 

 

Spring 2019: Restoring Native Perennial Grasslands

 

April 8th: Robert Freese (Irvine Ranch Conservancy): Management Challenges in Restoring Native California Grasslands

 

April 15th: Mark Horney (CalPoly, Animal Sciences):   What are the ‘best’ rangeland management practices and can they benefit native perennial grasslands?

 

April 22nd: Elihu Gevirtz (Channel Islands Restoration): Restoration of Native Grasslands & Bird Populations Using Sheep Grazing on the San Marcos Foothills Preserve in Santa Barbara, CA.

 

April 29th: Wayne Chapman (CCBER): Fire: A Brief History of Chumash Vegetation Management and Implications for Conserving Local Plant Diversity 

 

May 6th: Loralee Larios (UC Riverside): A demographic approach to managing native grasslands

 

May 13th: JP Marie (Putah Creek Reserve Director, UC Davis): Large scale native grassland restoration strategies

 

May 20th: Karen Holl (UC Santa Cruz):  Native grassland restoration: Results from Research and Experimentation