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In response to accelerating climate change and increasing human impacts on California’s landscapes, Cal Poly Humboldt and the U.S. Geological Survey California Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit are leading a major expansion of a statewide biodiversity monitoring effort.
The initiative, supported with $2.5 million in funding from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), will bring together 17 California State University (CSU) campuses to strengthen and grow the Sentinel Sites for Nature (SSN), the state’s coordinated system of long-term biodiversity monitoring sites.
As climate change accelerates and human-driven land-use changes reshape California’s landscapes, ecosystems are experiencing mounting pressure from drought, megafires, and habitat alteration. Yet understanding how these stressors affect species and ecosystems over time remains difficult without coordinated, long-term data collection across regions.
The SSN addresses that need. The CDFW has established 39 Sentinel Sites on CDFW-owned properties. The University of California Natural Reserve System is developing 37 more on UCNRS reserves. The addition of CSU sites on land owned by city, county, state, federal, and private entities (including non-governmental organisations) will bring the total number of sentinel sites to over 110.
This collaborative monitoring programme is aimed at protecting California’s important biodiversity and helping guide science-based conservation, supporting California’s goal of conserving 30% of California’s coastal waters and lands by 2030, an initiative formally known as 30×30.
Additional sites at CSU campuses and affiliated properties will significantly broaden the scope of diverse ecoregions across the state: the coastal redwood forests in the north and deserts in the south; urban areas of Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area; and working landscapes of the Central Valley and the Central Coast. Participating campuses include: Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo; Cal State LA; CSU Bakersfield; CSU Channel Islands; CSU Dominguez Hills; Fresno State; Cal State Fullerton; Cal State Monterey Bay; Cal State Northridge; Sacramento State; Cal State San Bernardino; San Diego State; San Jose State; Cal State San Marcos; Sonoma State; and Stanislaus State.
”It’s so exciting to join the statewide biodiversity monitoring effort,” says Micaela Gunther, a Cal Poly Humboldt Wildlife professor and a lead researcher for the project. “The CSUs will make a unique contribution to the initiative by including workforce training as a critical element of the sentinel site deployment and data collection methods. We’re also bringing in a diversity of habitats not previously included as part of the SSN, especially by including two locations right here on the North Coast in Humboldt County.”
Each site is equipped with non-invasive monitoring technologies including: camera traps that detect both small and large mammals, birds, and herpetofauna, bird and bat acoustic recorders, time-lapse cameras that monitor seasonal changes in vegetation and water levels, and at some sites, a Motus tower to study animal movement and migration, and a weather station that tracks climate conditions in real time. Importantly, data collected through the network will be shared among participating institutions, supporting collaborative analyses, cross-campus research, and coordinated conservation action.
The initiative also provides opportunities for students to gain hands-on experience on deployment, maintenance, and data retrieval techniques; while generating useful and relevant data they can use to complete research projects beneficial to their professional development.
“For so long, ecological research has taken place at only a few sites over the course of one or two field seasons,” says Associate Professor Tim Bean of Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.
“By joining this huge collaboration, data we collect will contribute to state-wide, long-term research and management. Students will learn how to work with big datasets and collaborate across campuses and with future employers. Through the SSN, California is blazing a trail for this new way of doing ecological research. So many other states and countries are trying to figure out how to develop and coordinate these kinds of monitoring networks, and I’m thrilled that the CSUs will be strengthening this effort,” adds Bean.
