UC Natural Reserve Biodiversity Resurvey

The UC Natural Reserve Biodiversity Resurvey is an exciting new collaboration between the UC Natural Reserve System and the Norris Center. 

In an age when even protected areas are changing due to human influence, understanding what species are found in those protected areas is crucially important. Many UC Natural Reserves do not have publicly accessible data or specimens describing the full array of biodiversity found on the Reserves. For some taxa - like insects and mosses - there are little or no data at all. The UC Natural Reserve Biodiversity Resurvey will help build and expand the ongoing collaboration between the Norris Center and the UC Natural Reserves by providing an unparalelled experience for students to explore nature, learn scientific sampling tecniques, and become better naturalists.

The Norris Center is partnering with the UC Natural Reserves to help catalog its biodiversity. Dozens of undergraduates, graduate students, professors and community members will help. We will first amass the records of the species previously known from the Reserves. From there, we will launch targeted surveys to document species either undocumented or likely to occur on the Reserves. Finally, students and volunteers will help add the specimens, field notes, photographs and all other associated data to the Norris Center's collections database. The data will be publicly available so that they may be used by scientists and students to study how the reserves are changing in the future. To effectively study how the Reserves are changing, we first need to know what is there.

The UC Natural Reserve Biodiversity Resurvey will help unite the Reserves with natural history museums. 

True to both our missions, we will be teaching students about natural history, scientific collections, and museum curation. In addition, the Norris Center will employ student artists and writers to help document and publicize the survey's findings. We will be training the next generation of museum scientists, natural historians, nature illustrators, and conservationists.

This project is part of the Norris Center & Natural Reserves Art-Science Initiative. You can help us make this project a reality by making a donation to the Norris Center Natural History Learning Current Use Fund.