BIO - DIVERSE - CITY
Building Connections with the Southern California Research Learning Center
Southern California is a region unlike any other. From rugged, snow-capped mountains, to dry, arid deserts, to rich, gleaming coastlines – this Mediterranean biome encapsulates one of the most dynamic and ecologically diverse ecosystems on earth. Despite this, a wide array of vulnerabilities persist. Habitat loss, pollution, impacts from invasive species, climate change, and a host of other human-derived stressors, work both individually and in concert, to threaten the distinct flora and fauna that call this place home.
As the lines between the wildland-urban interface continue to blur across the region, perhaps one of the greatest threats to inhabitants is that of disconnection. Expanding in both complexity and density, the great metropolis of the southern California bio-diverse-cities encroach on natural areas and restrict movement corridors, further straining the elasticity of ecological resilience.
Nowhere is this more critical, than in some of the last strongholds of biodiversity and protected habitat – the national parks. Southern California is home to Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, Channel Islands National Park, and Cabrillo National Monument. All three parks are unique in their culture, history, and ecology, but united in their collective mandate to preserve, unimpaired, the natural resources and values of the national parks for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of current and future generations.
However, even these large, robust entities are not immune from the threat of division. Beyond their ecology, there can often be a lack of partnership across regional entities, scientists working in separated silos, and an overall disconnect between park science, public understanding, and education. To solve this issue not only in southern California but across the National Park Service (NPS), a unique network of regional hubs, known as Research Learning Centers, were formed.
There are 18 Research Learning Centers across the country, each responsible for an ecological subset of national parks. These centers strive to increase scientific activity in the national park system, to communicate research that supports stewardship, and to make science an integral part of the visitor experience.
The Southern California Research Learning Center (SCRLC) works with the three parks of the Mediterranean Network – Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, Channel Islands National Park, and Cabrillo National Monument. The primary guiding tenet of the SCRLC is connection – building connections across park scientists, collaborators, and the public in an effort to make and foster larger landscape-level connections that will preserve the biodiversity of the southern California region.
“Alongside our partners, we aim to support science-based decision making, increase science literacy, and promote a conservation ethic not only within the parks, but within the larger community. This work is impossible without the support and connection of the community to these places. The national parks are for everyone and will require everyone’s involvement if they are to flourish in the coming generations. We want the connection of both people and place to be the ethos that guides everything we do at the Southern California Research Learning Center.”
Dr. Keith Lomardo | Director, Southern California Research Learning Center
Over the past 10 years, the SCRLC has worked earnestly to carry out the charge of the National Park Service and the goals of the Research Learning Centers – through research, community engagement, and building strategic partnerships. Here are the stories of where the SCRLC has come so far in meeting these objectives and where it is headed into the future. The SCRLC is immensely grateful for the community of dedicated partners and practitioners who have helped build this vision for a more connected region and who work diligently everyday to protect our Bio-Diverse-City.
Without you, none of this would be possible.
Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area
The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (SMMNRA), located adjacent to the second largest urban area in the United States, protects a wide mosaic of over 153,000 acres of Mediterranean habitat. Characterized by dense chaparral, oak valleys, and grassy hillsides, the mountains hold tremendous ecological biodiversity including over 1,000 plant species, 400 bird species, 35 species of reptiles and amphibians, and prolific mammals such as bobcats, coyotes, and mountain lions. Over 50 species of plants and animals designated as threatened or endangered are protected within the boundaries of the park.
In the Santa Monica Mountains, fostering connection between nature and people has never been more important.
3 Parks 3 Stories
Research Highlights
Have you ever wondered how the National Park Service (NPS) keeps tabs on the status of everything that lives within the parks? In the early 1990s, the NPS developed a systematic approach to understanding the state of the ecosystems. The idea was that the parks could be grouped by region and ecological systems. The health of communities and certain target species would be representative of the health of the park as a whole. These targets came to be called “vital signs.”
The NPS Inventory & Monitoring Program (I&M) is tasked with monitoring all of these vital signs across the entire NPS system. When you look at data over many years, many times a story begins to emerge. And each vital sign tells its own story. Sometimes, the story is a warning. Other times, it’s a tale of hope and optimism. 3 Parks 3 Stories, a publication of the SCRLC, captures highlights from this work and what it means to manage and care for natural resources in southern California.
Nature Neighbors
Science in the Community
Greater Los Angeles is often characterized by extreme urban development and an ever expanding human population approaching 4 million people – leaving the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area significantly isolated from other natural areas in southern California. In addition, ongoing development throughout the mountains is subdividing the remaining landscape resulting in island-like patches of natural space. So what are the challenges and opportunities for wildlife living in a disconnected habitat and how are communities and National Park Service scientists working to understand and solve this problem?
Supported in part by the SCRLC, the goal of the Nature Neighbors Program is to help convey the answers to this question and support Santa Monica Mountain neighbors to live with wildlife, value natural habitats, and understand what challenges may occur when living near nature. The Project provides tips and tools to help neighbors protect their property, pets, and family. Additional information is conveyed on how to take action and reduce urban impacts on wildlife and habitat, so that everyone can fully enjoy the natural ecosystem.
To Preserve & Protect
Powerful Partnerships
For over one hundred years, the National Park Service has been entrusted with the mission of preserving and protecting America’s most beautiful places for the enjoyment of this and future generations. From the awe-inspiring geysers of Yellowstone to the giant kelp forests of the California Channel Islands, the charge of preserving these natural wonders, especially in the face of global environmental threats, is no small task.
Though these protected sites are visited by millions a year, there are but a few dedicated people who stand watch on the front lines of maintaining and restoring our National Parks for the benefit of all. To Preserve and Protect, a compilation of the SCRLC team, spotlights stories of restoration success across the southern California parks and more importantly, highlights those who have worked to make it possible.
Explore More
Interested in learning more about the work the Southern California Research Learning Center is supporting within the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area?
Check out these new and ongoing initiatives!
Channel Islands National Park
Lying just off the coast of Southern California, Channel Islands National Park spans over 149,000 water acres, encapsulates five of the California Channel Islands, and has been designated as a UNESCO International Biosphere Reserve and a State of California Area of Special Biological Significance. Isolated from the mainland for eons, distinct species and subspecies have evolved on the islands leading to rare combinations of vegetation and animals found nowhere else. While the islands' isolation makes them exceptionally unique, even within the Mediterranean ecosystem, it also makes them particularly susceptible to both local and global ecological threats.
The work the SCRLC is doing to ensure that scientists, partners, and the public are all working together, even on these disparate islands, helps safeguard their preservation now and in the future.
An Ocean on the Edge
Research Highlights
When carbon dioxide combines with water, a unique interaction occurs that results in an increasing concentration of hydrogen ions. As hydrogen levels increase, the pH or potential hydrogen, decreases resulting in a process known as ocean acidification.
Much of what is currently understood about ocean acidification comes from large, open ocean environments or simulated laboratory experiments. Relatively little is known about how pH will change in the highly unpredictable conditions of the intertidal zone. More importantly, scientists and resource managers aren’t sure what any changes might mean for the exceptionally diverse and sensitive marine organisms that reside there.
Supported by the SCRLC, in 2017 Channel Islands National Park joined efforts ongoing at Olympic National Park, Cabrillo National Monument, and Punta Mazo Nature Reserve in Baja California to monitor and recognize impacts of changing ocean acidity on marine intertidal communities.
Protect Your Park
Science in the Community
Over the last four decades, the National Park Service and its partners have invested over $20 million in protecting the native species of the Channel Islands through the removal of harmful, nonnative species, including rats, cats, ungulates, Argentine ants, and a variety of weed species.
Starting in 2014, Channel Islands National Park, The Nature Conservancy, and the U.S. Navy developed a joint biosecurity program to prevent, detect, and respond to non-native species introductions. Preventing the re-introduction and establishment of non-native species is vitally important to preserving the nearly 150 endemic plant and animal species of the islands. Visitors play a valuable role in helping to protect that biodiversity. The SCRLC sponsored the creation of Protect Your Park - an animated public service announcement focused on educating park visitors on biosecurity protocols prior to departing for their island trips.
Restoring the Great Cloud Forests of Santa Rosa Island
Powerful Partnerships
Santa Rosa Island, one of the five islands protected within the span of Channel Islands National Park, is one of the few places in the world where “cloud forests” can be found. Unfortunately, in the 1800s, several disturbances—from ranching to resource exploration—left the island denuded of critical shrubs and grasses. Without the presence of these foundational species, the land quickly eroded, which threatened the sensitive cloud forest ecosystem.
In the late 1980s, Channel Islands National Park gained stewardship of the island and worked tirelessly alongside the US Geological Survey (USGS), whose science informs management decisions, to eliminate introduced grazers from the island and restore its landscape. While much of the island flourished, recovery for the cloud forests remained stagnant. This is the story, published by the SCRLC team in Parks Stewardship Forum, of what has happened since the endeavor began to restore the Great Cloud Forests of Santa Rosa Island.
Explore More
Interested in learning more about the work the Southern California Research Learning Center is supporting within Channel Islands National Park?
Check out these new and ongoing initiatives!
Cabrillo National Monument
Traveling due south of Channel Islands National Park lies another island-like expanse, not all that different in ecological composition than the other two parks that make up the Southern California Research Learning Center. In 1913, the small sliver of coast at the tip of the Point Loma Peninsula was set aside and designated as Cabrillo National Monument - San Diego’s only National Park. While visitors to the park are often more familiar with its historical significance - the 160 acres within the park's boundary protect one of the most rare and biodiverse marine and coastal plant habitats in the world. Uniquely adapted stretches of Mediterranean coastal sage scrub and chaparral cover the bluffs and provide critical refuge to birds, reptiles, mammals, and more. And one of the last pristine strips of rocky intertidal ecosystem hugs the protected coast of the park.
Surrounded on three sides by water and the fourth by one of the largest cities in the United States – the ecosystem at Cabrillo is both isolated and fragile. The SCRLC has worked consistently to provide connection points to surrounding habitat and resources through both scientific and education partnership with local universities, military neighbors, and bi-national collaborators just south of the park in Baja California.
The Great Bee Quest
Research Highlights
In September 2020, Cabrillo National Monument participated in the 2020 Parks for Pollinators BioBlitz organized by the National Recreation and Park Association. Parks for Pollinators is a national campaign to raise awareness and community involvement in the pollinator crisis through local parks and recreation and like-minded organizations. The association organized events from coast to coast, with 25 states represented from Hawaii to New York. A total of 73 park and recreation agencies participated by promoting the importance of pollinators and habitat to their communities. These groups recorded nearly 23,000 observations, documenting thousands of species of both pollinators and pollinator-supporting plants. Nearly 3,000 people participated in the national BioBlitz to record these findings, and more than 3,000 experts helped identify the findings using the community science platform iNaturalist .
It was during this month-long, concentrated, species documentation effort that park naturalist, Patricia Simpson, made the original discovery of the red-and-black bee with which she was unfamiliar. This observation spurred a community-wide effort to locate and identify the elusive red bee.
The Great Bee Quest is an immersive story, compiled by the SCRLC, that allows the public to hear about the effort directly from some of its participants.
EcoLogik Project
Science in the Community
Started in 2017 at Cabrillo National Monument with the support of the SCRLC, the EcoLogik Project is a free and unique program that fuses ecology and technology and connects young, underrepresented female explorers and scientists (ages 9-16) to the natural resources and science of America’s National Parks. EcoLogik participants learn and incorporate technological advances and knowledge of the environment to collect natural resource data (community science), create 3D biomodels, learn basic coding and programming, and much more!
With this fully immersive program young girls are provided a platform for meaningful connection to their National Parks while simultaneously nurturing their love of STEM and, perhaps more powerfully, their belief in themselves. This program works to show them that they too can become scientists and engineers - if they see it, they know they can be it.
Shaw’s Agave: A Cross-Border Botanical Gem
Powerful Partnerships
Shaw’s agave (Agave shawii shawii) is a rare and unique succulent plant endemic to a narrow, 200 mile (325 km), stretch along the southwestern California and northern Baja California coastline. South of the border, it is commonly found along the undeveloped portions of the western coast of Baja California. North of the border, however, the species has been reduced to just two small and isolated populations, one of which consists of a single genetic individual.
Discover how an international team of conservation scientists is racing to better understand this iconic cross-border species and what can be done to protect it in the face of a series of growing threats in Shaw’s Agave: A Cross-Border Botanical Gem.
Explore More
Interested in learning more about the work the Southern California Research Learning Center is supporting within Cabrillo National Monument?
Check out these new and ongoing initiatives!
Connecting the Dots of Conservation
As our natural world faces threats unlike ever before, the importance of connected communities, both ecological and anthropogenic, can not be understated. A connected landscape is a resilient one. The Southern California Research Learning Center, and similar entities across the nation, are at the front lines of this undertaking.
By supporting the scientific and educational pursuits of the Mediterranean network parks, the SCRLC is working to build bridges of conservation between stakeholders and their natural spaces. Through these efforts our hope is that species like California Red-Legged frogs in Santa Monica Mountains, Shaw’s Agave at Cabrillo National Monument, and the Cloud Forests of Channel Islands National Park will remain and flourish in preserved ecosystems for generations to come.
But this work is not possible without the thousands of dedicated individuals and visitors who visit and look after our parks every year. Connectivity and conservation start with you. If you would like to learn more about this important work and how to get involved, we invite you to join us at: www.nps.gov/rlc/southerncal
