UCSC Greenhouses offers opportunities for student to get directly involved in campus restoration. We grow thousands of plants annually and sponsor interns, independent study projects and volunteers for various conservation efforts on campus. We work with the Site Stewardship Program and their efforts to restore native habitat, campus gardeners using natives as a water conservation strategy, Physical Planning and Construction in their efforts to use local native plants in the landscape and with UC Reserves in their effort to restore coastal prairie on the the coastal bluff at UCSC Long Marine Lab. We put an emphasis on maintaining the genetic integrity of the UCSC campus ecosystem.
This program is supported by the Division of Physical and Biological Sciences, the Division of Social Sciences, UCSC Campus Grounds Services and UC Natural Reserves. If you are interested in doing work in this area, contact Jim Velzy at jhvelzy@ucsc.edu.
UC Reserves
Students working with the UC Natural Reserves at Younger Lagoon Reserve transplanting seedlings at the UCSC Greenhouses
The UCSC Natural Reserves offers internships in restoration throughout the year. Under the supervision of Reserve staff, student interns participate in a wide variety of tasks, including native seed collection, propagation, invasive plant removal, and re-vegetation of natural reserve lands with native plants. Much of the propagation work for this program takes place at the UCSC Greenhouses. Thousands of local native plants are grown at the UCSC Greenhouses each year through this program.
The four Natural Reserve sites that form the UC Santa Cruz unit are spread along 60 miles of the central coast: Año Nuevo Island Reserve (25 acres), Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve (4,200 acres), Fort Ord Natural Reserve (606 acres), and Younger Lagoon Reserve (73 acres). There is also a campus reserve, the UCSC Campus Natural Reserve (400 acres). Each reserve has unique research and teaching opportunities, including undergraduate internships in restoration.
More information is available at the database entries:
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Keywords: Site Stewardship Program; interns; volunteers; ecological restoration; habitat destruction; invasion of non-native species; and soil erosion; field work; ecological restoration; public outreach; interpretation; education; population monitoring; vegetative mapping; invasive plant removal; native seed collection; greenhouse; propagation, invasive plant removal |