Weather

   Our winter temperatures have been mild, with no snow. Rainfall was well below average in January, February, and March but the very wet December (2002) and now our April ('03) rains brought us up to very near the long-term average. This figure was prepared on April 28, with the 1.93" from the CDF weather station for April. Finch Creek is running at a low level, and the first (and only) fingerling steelhead was seen on April 20th. Big Creek did not flow this winter, except in a few places, and only wet the entry lane crossings a couple of days in December.
    In mid-April, Lauryn Benedict watched two mountain lions cross Big Creek and then stop in Long Field at about marker 16. A larger one was aggressively chasing a smaller one. Both had long, hard looks at Lauryn, and then each walked away in opposite directions. Lauryn returned to gathering radio-tracking data from her towhees.

Conference Room
   In late 2002, I prepared a proposal for NSF’s program supporting Facilities at Field Station and Marine Labs. Hastings has no large room where we can gather a group, or have a small meeting. We proposed to dismantle two old sheds at Hastings Headquarters and replace them with a prefabricated conference room (30’ x 31’). This building would have a restroom in one corner, and is otherwise open. Counter tops with drawers and shelves below would come together in one corner where we would install a kitchen. The rest of the room will be open so we can place 8-10, six foot tables with folding chairs for a class of up to 25 people. An arm chair or tow, along with a couch could be placed in the remaining corner. It will have window coverings to allow slides to be shown to a group.
     The proposal was submitted to Vice Chancellor Beth Burnside, who provided both the UC match and the funds we would have been requesting from NSF ($76,000). In addition, the Arnold family, in honor of the many contributions Fanny Arnold has made, added $12,500 to the building fund. This will allow us to finish the building with nicer furniture and appliances, and maybe even let us choose the option of a pitched roof! In April, three contractors were asked to provide bids for the site preparation. We expect to have the conference room in place by mid-summer.

Website Re-Launched
    During 2002, I have been working closely with Kevin Browne (James Reserve) who is developing web-based information management systems for the Natural Reserve System. This includes a system for users to sign in, for reserve staff to review and approve applications, and to prepare annual reports on use statistics. Kevin is also working on a searchable bibliography for each reserve, and with others, on an online ability to search for descriptions of ecological data sets at each reserve.
On April 21, the new Hastings website (www.hastingreserve.org) replaced the older version. This new site integrates all the information management that has been under development by the NRS. It is also a far tighter presentation of academic purpose, use and information.

Resident Researchers
   Janis Dickinson and Walt Koenig have the full compliment of field assistants, graduate students and a postdoctoral fellow. Walt and Janis have new publications, and each are busy with their NSF-funded projects. For more information, see Resident Researchers.

Visiting Researchers
   All of the Hastings buildings have been occupied each week many times in 2002 and early 2003. For a list of all visiting researchers, link over to “Visiting Researchers” and click on each name for more details. Over 40 projects are active at Hastings in 2003. Check out the photo gallery for some research and teaching highlights.

Teaching
    Classes have occupied the Ranch House, and often the Bunk House and Hastings Cabin many times this spring. The Ranch House will host classes every weekend in April, May and the first part of June. We are hosting the Jepson Public Class series again this spring with the popular Pollination Ecology course taught by Gordon Frankie and others.
    I have been working with Dr. Steve Moore, CSUMB (see below) in developing a remote sensing capability that can be used to teach technology and to allow meaningful data acquisition that can be done from an undergraduate (or K-12) classroom. As Steve is looking for a place to bring his zoology classes (Hastings) I shared the architectural concept plans for the large group facility with Steve. Steve presented the concept drawings to his dean, and discussions might continue. I would be great to have a facility on Hastings that could be used by CSU students in the quiet of upper Carmel Valley, as well as UC students and the public. A team effort may be required in any case, with the economy such as it is these days.
    K-12
     Craig Hohenberger and Pat Stadille, science teachers at Carmel Middle School, asked me to install a webcam in an owl nest box in their 8ac. Biological Science Project area (BSP), adjacent to the school. I am also pleased to be working with them on the steering committee for the future of the BSP. They have raised over $600K from local sources to build raised beds, an amphitheater, restore 5 ac. of native grassland, install an extensive ( and now mature) native garden of about 2 ac, and much more. Dr. Steve Moore helped me to install a webcam in an owl nest box. Carmel Unified School District provided web access and we provided a radio link from the next to the web. We are taking nest temperature and presence/absence of a brooding owl every 15 minutes. As it turns out, no data have been published on how much time the eggs of Barn Owls are warmed by adults. A small “I-Button” sensor (from Walt Koenig) and a 22 day movie with frames taken every 5 minutes should provide some interesting data. Check out the nest at “Webcam in Wildlands” along with some of Steve Moore’s links.
     Explore California Biodiversity
       Dr. Rosie Gillespie, along with Donald Dahlsteen, David Lindbergh, Craig Moritz, and Mary Power have been funded by NSF ($1.4M for 3 years) to “Explore California Biodiversity”. With the West Contra Costa Unified School district, they will have 6-8 graduate students, 2-8 undergrads along with parents working with middle and high school students on three Berkeley Reserves: Angelo North Coast Reserve, Sagehen Field Station, and Hastings.
      The overall objective of the project is to inspire K-12 students in the study of biodiversity and give graduate fellows an understanding of issues in K-12 education. This project connects the museums and field stations at UC Berkeley with the local K-12 community. Early in the academic year, the graduate fellows take the K-12 students and their teachers on a field trip to one of the Berkeley Natural History Field Stations that allow access to diverse natural habitats in California. The students collect natural history items that form the kernel of subsequent classroom activities. Together with the graduate fellows, the school students curate and/or identify the specimens collected using additional information from the large BNHM collections. The K-12 students and teachers enter specimen data and associated information into a database, which is linked to the already established databases of the Bynames, and has a web interface. They then use interpretive tools to study their data. The students develop hypotheses, based on the information collected and analyses performed, and test these in the field. The data that the students generate and associated interpretations are shared among participating schools, and the information is made accessible to schools throughout the Bay Area. There are broad impacts from this project to a number of beneficiaries. The PIs and graduate fellows benefit from (i) the expanded database on spatial and temporal patterns of biodiversity, information that is critical to developing hypotheses as to historical processes responsible for biogeographic patterns, current factors affecting distributions, and future trajectories; and (ii) development of skills in communication and leadership. The K-12 teachers benefit from direct involvement in research and enrichment in the approach to, and understanding of, evolutionary biology, including a strong sense of participation in monitoring of biodiversity. The schools benefit from the enhanced access to technology, and development of their own natural history collections and associated databases coupled with interpretive tools.
     TltC Teaching Program
     And, we are involved with the UC Teaching, Learning and technology Center (TltC) Intercampus Collaborative Grants Program. ( http://www.uctltc.org/index.html ). With Susan Harrison (UC Davis- Mclaughlin Reserve) and Jim Reichman (UC Santa Barbara- Sedgwick Reserve), we were awarded a planning grant. We plan a working group meeting at the Sedgwick Reserve in early June.
      Our project aims to link the field and the campus in real time with a network of inexpensive Internet-linked wireless sensors such as stream gauges, weather stations and web cameras. This network will store and transmit images, data and parameters that describe the natural world at our three focal reserves: McLaughlin (UCD), Hastings (UCB), and Sedgwick (UCSB). These reserves were chosen because they anchor the north, central and southern Coast Ranges, respectively, and thus offer the opportunity for integrated study of environmental variation along a major geographic gradient. In addition, these three reserves are large, ecologically diverse, and contain adequate overnight and classroom facilities for our purposes. Our remote sensing network will allow students to study patterns of environmental variation at all three reserves before, during and after field visits. During field visits, students will have the opportunity to make their own observations, set up or alter monitoring equipment, and have full access to data sets on the campus, in labs and the California Digital Library. Thus, courses that visit the field sites for as little as one day or as long as an entire term will benefit equally from our network.
In our project planning phase, faculty from UC Berkeley, Davis and Santa Barbara and personnel from field stations (Hastings, McLaughlin and Sedgwick respectively) will cooperate to develop the required curricula, connectivity and technology. We will work with the new NSF Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) to develop appropriate sensor arrays (see http://cens.ucla.edu ). We will work with other faculty to develop teaching materials that can be used in existing courses, and to determine how best to develop new courses based on this technology.
     On the technological end we already have many of the pieces in place. Sensor technology is under development at two of our reserves based on similar work at CENS sites. The vision of CENS is a world where distributed sensor and actuator networks are routinely used as tools by researchers, students, industry, and government to observe, investigate, and understand complex and spatially distributed natural systems of value to society. Their strategy is to pursue fundamental science and engineering research needed to create scalable, robust, adaptive sensor networks. Monitoring habitats for biocomplexity studies is the specific concern of Mike Hamilton, a co-PI at CENS. Currently Dr. Hamilton has deployed an impressive array of digital monitoring at the NRS James Reserve (http://www.jamesreserve.edu). Mike has worked closely with Mark Stromberg to develop similar real-time monitoring capacity at the Hastings Reserve. On-line weather stations and video cameras present current weather conditions at each of these field sites, as well as archived data. Cameras can be set up by students for either short-term observations (eg., activity at a coyote den, bird nest), or long term observation (eg., time lapse measurements of plant growth, changes is soil). Other arrays can be deployed as MOTES, developed by UCB and sold by Crossbow Inc. (Mainwaring et al 2002). These on-line sensors can be deployed to measure wind speed, atmospheric CO2, soil moisture, pH, temperature, total dissolved solids, relative humidity, light, pressure, etc. The Internet connections capable of supporting these sensor networks are available at Sedgwick, but need to be upgraded at Hastings and installed at McLaughlin.
     On the curricular end we have more work to do to identify and engage those faculty who would use this new technology in their instruction. During the planning phase, we propose to hire an educator to coordinate a workshop that will attract appropriate faculty from Berkeley, Davis and Santa Barbara. Faculty participants will be responsible to engage appropriate teachers in the natural sciences from each campus that would participate in the workshop. At the workshop, the representative of CENS and reserve staff will explain the technology and solicit specific ways it can be used in existing courses, and the educator will explore with participating faculty the specific ways such technology might enhance new courses. Based on these efforts, detailed curricular and instrumentation plans will be developed for a full implementation proposal to TLtC.
    This project leverages several key resources: the three NRS reserves and their associated housing and classroom facilities, the technology being developed by CENS, and the engagement of key faculty members and reserve staff who are dedicated to increasing the quality and quantity of educational experiences available at the NRS reserves. Participating faculty in this proposal are leaders in teaching natural sciences at each campus. Most teach courses with a curriculum that would benefit from these new technological tools. All have close contacts with other faculty teaching in related courses that have similar objectives of education in zoology, botany, plant ecology, wildlife ecology, and soil science.

Facilities
     Other than the new conference room, we are still moving to install modern heat pumps in the offices. A contract has been prepared for Comfort Control of Salinas to install heat pump in the Davis Lab and the main office. These high-efficiency units will allow us to heat and cool the buildings for about 1/3 the current costs.
    Chris Reed, an experienced trail builder for the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District and others, has been hired and is surveying in a trail along Poison Oak Hill. Survey work got started in earnest in April and May 2003. Tom Gray, of the Santa Lucia Preserve, has donated the use of a SWECO trail bulldozer once the trail is surveyed. By June, the trail should be going in and by fall, it should open up about 1/3 of the land in the Hastings Reserve to research and teaching access.
    In late April, the USFWS Partners in Wildlife Program approved $5,000 to be matched in an effort to build several vernal pools along Big Creek. These will be filled by building a small diversion structure and pipeline at the highest part of Big Creek on Hastings. Matching funds were requested from the Carmel River Watershed Council, but may not be forthcoming. This project has been in a planning stage for several years. Additional funding is still required, but this may allow us to build at least one pond for long-term experiments and observations on our resident amphibians (newts, tiger salamanders).