SANTA CRUZ >> Scientists chose the largest university-administered reserve system in the world to host the $1.9 million UC-wide climate change research effort announced Dec. 10. The UC Natural Reserve System includes four areas managed by UC Santa Cruz.

The research aims to provide information to the public about the impacts of climate change on California plants, animals and other resources, said Barry Sinervo, the UC Santa Cruz ecologist who will lead the effort.

“The UC Natural Reserve System is key to the scientific importance of this study and was a major reason the project was funded by UC President Janet Napolitano,” Kathleen Wong, publications coordinator for the system, said by email.

The reserves provide favorable conditions for the study. Some are close to students and teachers. Others offer ideal sites for weather stations. Combined they allow large scale information gathering, and individually they represent a wide range of California ecosystems. Those managed through UC Santa Cruz embody all these qualities, said ecologist Gage Dayton.

Dayton directs the management of four reserves: Año Nuevo along the Central Coast 21 miles north of Santa Cruz, Younger Lagoon along the Santa Cruz coast, Fort Ord 40 miles south of Santa Cruz and Landels-Hill Big Creek along the Big Sur coast.

“You often think about a building when you think of a classroom.” Dayton said. “These reserves are living laboratories and outside classrooms.”

Younger Lagoon hosts K-12 and university students for class projects. Working with plants and animals can be a transformative experience, and the students collect information that is useful for science, Dayton said.

Scientists plan to install long-term weather stations at two or three of the reserves that Dayton directs, and apply the measurements they record to understand similar habitats in other California locations. The reserves protect the sensitive weather instruments. Dayton said.

Large sets of information about weather, plants and animals from widespread sources enable scientists to answer large scale questions. But it’s difficult to combine information from multiple studies unless it has all been gathered using the same guidelines. Researchers throughout UC will use standard guidelines to collect information from the diverse reserves. Then UC information specialists will store the data in a way that is easy to access and use, Dayton said.

The four reserves nearby encompass distinctive ecosystems. A large breeding colony of elephant seals raise their young at Año Nuevo. One of few relatively undisturbed wetlands along the Central Coast is secured at Younger Lagoon. Eleven kinds of plants and six kinds of animals that are endangered or threatened inhabit Fort Ord. And a home for steelhead trout is found at Landels-Hill Big Creek.

The UC Natural Reserve System will enable Dayton and other scientists to fulfill their mission. “We want to better understand the impacts of climate change on plants and animals throughout California,” Dayton said.

Acres of reserve

The UC Natural Reserve System, a network of 39 wildland sites, covers more than 756,000 acres in California. The reserves protect almost every major state ecosystem, including rocky shorelines, maritime chaparral, alpine mountaintops, deserts, oak savannas, vernal pools, freshwater wetlands and conifer forests.