FORT ORD >> After this rainy winter, Machine Gun Lake in the Fort Ord National Monument is brimming with water. But, come summer, the lake will look like a grassy field.

Machine Gun Lake is the largest of approximately 45 vernal pools tucked between the rolling hills of Fort Ord National Monument. Vernal pools are seasonal wetlands: they fill with water every winter and dry up in summer.

“But they’re not just puddles,” said Nancy Emery, an ecologist from the University of Colorado, Boulder who does field work in Fort Ord’s vernal pools.

These placid pools are teeming with life, including endangered and threatened species like the Contra Costa goldfield flower and the California tiger salamander. Vernal pools are a rare sight, as 91 percent of California’s wetlands have been destroyed according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Plants and animals living in coastal wetlands like the same thing as commercial developers: large, flat spaces along the California coast. Some wetlands have been used for agriculture or paved over to build houses and strip malls. But not Fort Ord.

“It’s easy to take this place for granted, but Fort Ord National Monument is a wide open space for an ecosystem to thrive,” said Bruce Delgado, a botanist for the Bureau of Land Management. “This is a crown jewel.”

The land was used as a U.S. Army facility from 1917 to 1994, leaving much of the grassland hills and coastal wetlands undeveloped. In 2012, the area was designated as a National Monument under the Obama Administration.

The Bureau of Land Management possess about half of Fort Ord. The U.S. Department of Defense owns the other 7,400 acres, with plans to turn the land over to the Bureau of Land Management after clean up efforts are completed in 2019.

Because Fort Ord National Monument is one of the largest intact wetlands along the California coast, the area is crucial for scientists trying to figure out how to preserve coastal wetlands and the plants and animals that live there. They hope this information will help create man-made wetlands to replace the ones that have already been destroyed.

Emery is one of the scientists working on this problem. She studies Contra Costa goldfields, small yellow flowers that bloom in vernal pools when they dry up in the spring. When millions of the flowers bloom at once, it turns the vernal pool into a field of gold.

But those blooms are becoming few and far between. Only a few pockets of Contra Costa goldfields remain along the California coast. In Fort Ord National Monument, they grow in only four locations.

Emery and her team are trying to figure out if and how Contra Costa goldfields could grow in man-made vernal pools. She is looking at the flowers’ DNA, which she hopes will give her clues as to which seeds to plant and when and where to plant them.

“But it’s quite hard to build a habitat over a summer that, historically, took millions of years to develop,” said Emery.

Robert Cooper, a graduate student at UCLA, is studying another threatened species living in Fort Ord’s vernal pools: the California tiger salamander.

“Fort Ord National Monument is one of the best places to study because it has so many natural vernal pools. To me, that’s the gold standard,” said Cooper.

In the 1950s, dealers introduced barred tiger salamanders to the area from Texas, selling the lizards as fish bait. The Texas salamanders invaded the vernal pools of California’s coastal wetlands, eating most of the food and mating with the California tiger salamanders that were already living in the pools.

“The hybrid salamanders are bigger and badder. They’re eating everything,” said Cooper. Those hybrid salamanders are dominating vernal pool habitats, outcompeting the California tiger salamanders and disrupting the entire ecosystem.

To help the California tiger salamanders regain the upper hand, Cooper is trying to create man-made vernal pools in which the native California tiger salamanders have the advantage.

He dug 18 artificial pools, some deep and some shallow, to see if the pools’ depth affects how well the California tiger salamanders survive. His hypothesis is that the shallower pools may help California tiger salamanders restore their numbers and reclaim their habitat from the invasive hybrid salamanders.

Both Emery and Cooper’s research will inform efforts to build man-made coastal wetlands to replace some of the portion we’ve lost in California. It will also inform decisions of how to protect the remaining 9 percent – like the coastal wetlands of Fort Ord National Monument – and the species that live there.

The research done by scientists like Emery and Cooper is just one of many ways that people are working to preserve coastal wetlands in Fort Ord National Monument.

From 2006 to 2013, the Bureau of Land Management removed 110 wild pigs that were tearing up the vernal pools with their feet and snouts. They are also redirecting hiking paths away from several vernal pools to prevent hikers or mountain bikers from accidentally disturbing the pools.

Volunteers are also essential for conservation efforts. David and Jane Styer have volunteered at Fort Ord for over 15 years, helping to catalog the plants and animals that live there and monitor how those populations change from year to year. A group of CSUMB students is studying the impacts of approximately 2,000 goats that are currently grazing throughout Fort Ord.

With continued efforts, Delgado is hopeful for the future of coastal wetlands in Fort Ord. “Every decade, Fort Ord is getting healthier,” he said.