Natural Reserve System Natural Reserve System UNIVERSITY OF

1111 Franklin St., 6th Floor Oakland, CA 94607-5200 The UC Natural Reserve System provides a nrs.ucop.edu library of ecosystems throughout California. Reserves offer outdoor laboratories to field scientists, classrooms without walls for students, and nature’s inspiration to all.

Founded in 1965 to provide a network of wildland sites available for scientific study, the NRS has grown to include more than 40 locations encompassing more than 756,000 acres across the state.

The NRS is the world’s largest university- Reserves are listed by administering campus operated system of natural reserves; no Berkeley Los Angeles San Diego other network of field sites can match its 1 Angelo Coast Range Reserve 15 Stunt Ranch Santa Monica 25 Dawson Los Monos LOBSANG WANGDU size, scope, and ecological diversity. 2 Mountains Reserve Canyon Reserve 3 Chickering American River Reserve 16 White Mountain Research Center 26 Elliott Chaparral Reserve 4 Hastings Natural History Merced 27 Kendall-Frost Mission Bay Reservation Marsh Reserve Sierra Nevada Research Stations: 5 Jenny Pygmy Forest Reserve 28 17 Merced Vernal Pools and 6 Sagehen Creek Field Station Grassland Reserve Santa Barbara 29 Carpinteria Salt Marsh Reserve Davis 18 Yosemite Field Station 30 Coal Oil Point Natural Reserve 7 Riverside 31 Kenneth S. Norris Rancho 8 Jepson Prairie Reserve 19 Box Springs Reserve Marino Reserve 9 McLaughlin Natural Reserve 20 Boyd Deep Canyon 32 Reserve 10 Desert Research Center 33 11 Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve 21 Emerson Oaks Reserve Valentine Eastern Sierra Reserves: Irvine 22 James San Jacinto 34 Sierra Nevada Aquatic Mountains Reserve 12 Burns Piñon Ridge Reserve Research Laboratory 23 13 San Joaquin Marsh Reserve 35 Valentine Camp 24 Sweeney Granite Mountains Santa Cruz 14 Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center Desert Research Center 36 Año Nuevo Island Reserve 37 Natural Reserve PEGGY L. FIEDLER M. WONG KATHLEEN 38 Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve 39 Natural Reserve System UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

UC Davis Reserves McLaughlin Natural Reserve Located at a former gold mine, McLaughlin Natural Reserve protects unusual serpentine habitats. Oak woodlands are interspersed Bodega Marine Reserve with serpentine and non- serpentine chaparral in a Tidepools give way to mosaic that includes pristine • UC Davis beaches, active dunes, •• habitats, rangelands, and marsh, and coastal prairie • • reclaimed mining areas.

at Bodega Marine Reserve. ELLA SAMUEL Harbor seals, shorebirds, and a wide array of marine invertebrates live here year round. A stretch of the San Andreas Fault and the facilities of UC’s Jepson Prairie Reserve Bodega Marine Laboratory An island of remnant Central Valley help make the reserve a prairie amid a sea of farmland, magnet for scientists of Jepson Prairie Reserve comes alive CHRISTOPHER WOODCOCK many disciplines. with winter rains. Natural clay-lined vernal pools fill, drawing breeding Quail Ridge Reserve California tiger salamanders and rousing tadpole and fairy shrimp to The waters of hatch. Native wildflowers bloom in

surround the peninsula of ADAM G. CLAUSE rainbow rings around drying pools Quail Ridge Reserve. Rare through spring. native grasses and diverse oak woodlands cloak its Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve steep slopes. Isolation has kept out many weeds, giving Stebbins Cold Canyon is nestled stands of native purple within the dry ridges of the needlegrass, junegrass, northern Coast Range. A riparian and California oniongrass woodland lines the banks of room to flourish. Precipitous its intermittent stream, while terrain plus freedom from the canyon rises on either side electromagnetic noise makes through habitats that include the reserve an ideal site to chaparral, blue oak woodland, test environmental sensor and and grasslands. wirelss mesh networks. LOBSANG WANGDU LEE KARNEY