Spring brought life and color onto the Reserve. Dry vernal pools were filled with pockets of beautiful wildflowers. Burrowing bees escaped the depths of their burrows to pollinate the blooms of Goldfields, Downingia, and Meadowfoam. The warm breezes and blooming flora set the breeding season into full throttle. After a short winter, Cliff Swallows returned from the tropics to their optimal breeding site in the Reserve.
American Kestrels populations are declining in many areas across North America. Habitat loss, lack of prey, and lack of nest sites are all reasons cited for this decline. At UC Merced we're trying to help kestrels by erecting nesting boxes along fence rows in the Reserve.
Written by Kathleen Wong.
Rolling grasslands that harbor rare vernal pool ecosystems next door to UC Merced have joined the UC Natural Reserve System. The 6,561-acre Merced Vernal Pools Grassland Reserve will enable students and faculty to study fairy shrimp, endemic plants, and some of North America’s oldest soils just minutes from campus. Most of California’s original vernal pool habitats have been destroyed, making the new reserve a critical refuge for rare and endangered plants and animals.
(Oct. 26, 2013) About once a week since the dead heat of summer, I’ve been heading out to the Vernal Pool and Grassland Reserve with Chris Swarth and my research assistant David Araiza. In July and August, as temperatures soared to over 100°F, we started out at 7 am when the landscape was still cool. Our mission was to collect dried grasses for residual dry matter (RDM) measurements, which entailed scissors and a balance for weighing the samples back in the Lab. As a new faculty member with a laboratory barely getting off the ground, we had the “technology” for RDM measurements.
By Chris Swarth
August 15, 2013
Vernal pools are shallow, intermittently or seasonally flooded wetlands. Wetland ecologists refer to them as "seasonally astatic and episodic."
On March 20, while exploring the reserve east of the old barn, several of us were startled to see a new face on the landscape.
There was no doubt about the animal we were viewing - it was an American badger. The distinctive black-and-white-striped face stared intently at us as we looked at it through our binoculars at a distance of about 100 meters.
