99th ESA Annual Meeting (August 10 -- 15, 2014)

FT 9

Relictual Native Grass Stands and Automated Animal Tracking in the Inner Coast Range of California

: UC Davis’s 2000-acre Quail Ridge Reserve is located in the Inner Coast Range approximately 40 miles west of Sacramento. The reserve is representative of large areas of the California Coast Range and Sierra foothills with a mixture of closed canopy oak and pine forest, oak savanna, riparian woodland, and chaparral. Soils at the reserve derive from the sediments that underlie the Central Valley, which have been uplifted to nearly vertical by oceanic plate subduction just west of the reserve.

Nearly all of the California landscape has been converted from native perennial grass, with some mix of native annual and perennial forbs, to an annual Mediterranean grass flora. In contrast, Quail Ridge Reserve retains an unusually large component of relictual perennial grasses. The reserve is very steep, and aspect is a large determinant of vegetation type. We will hike through north-facing closed canopy forest of 5 native oak species and foothill pine, with scattered maples and native walnuts and an understory of common chaparral shrubs. We will lunch in Decker Canyon amid valley oak, redbud, and California wild grape and will then proceed up the south-facing slopes to mixed chaparral communities of chamise, ceanothus, and California bay laurel.

The reserve is host to an extensive wireless mesh network testbed and to a novel automated animal-tracking system. The tracking system, comprised of seven permanent receivers focused on Decker Canyon, is capable of tracking up to 30 animals simultaneously and overlaying their movement onto a map. We will have a demonstration of the animal-tracking system during lunch.

For more information on the Quail Ridge Reserve and the Automated Animal Tracking system see:

http://nrs.ucdavis.edu/Quail.html

http://qurinet.ucdavis.edu/

http://qraat.ucdavis.edu/