Curriculum Standards
Combined Photo Release and Waiver

Often used together, these two parklands in Santa Barbara allow exploration of highly varied eco – zones in a short time period. Restoration on the Douglas Family Reserve provides the opportunity to introduce the concept of re – wilding of land previously used for agriculture and residences. Native plantings in the riparian area are widely varied including many water loving plants including mulefat, juncus, arroyo willow and sycamore. On the mesa of the park are stands of imported palms, eucalypts and exotic we eds along with more recently restored native plants where contrast among plants and habitats are explored.

Views out over the Pacific and the Arroyo Burro beach with shore birds and sea life are often in view. On the Arroyo Burro beach, the geology of the coastline is readily in view all the way to the to p of the Santa Ynez Ridge. This allows for interpretation regarding erosion, sand movement, and sedimentation and the entire rock cycle. Weather patterns and the effects on the local habitat provide the possibility for discussions that focus on the interface between ocean and beach with the estuary at the edge. Plant and animal life from the ocean and the land are compared for their adaptation to their habitat.

Curriculum Standards

COAL OIL POINT RESERVE, UCSB
As guests of the UCSB reserve, we are invited to travel the trails and visit the beach area where the snowy plover nests forages on the beach. Since this is a “species of special concern,” students can observe but not enter the primary nesting area that is strictly protected. The plover conservation success story is an important point at this site. Snowy plovers are so well camouflaged you can be nearly on top of them before seeing them!

The reserve consists of the main estuary and a pond where migratory birds come and go throughout the year. Habitats vary from the unique flora of the coastal strip to the estuaries and dunes. Further inland, the habitat changes rapidly with coastal adapted trees and shrubs and the animals and birds that frequent them.

The reserve is connected along the inland border with the new North Campus Open Space rewilding project that extends the main estuary further inland and provides a planned buffer for sea-level rise and storm surge while increasing the habitat for traditional wetlands and vernal pools. From the reserve, we will see the Santa Ynez Range of east-west coursing mountains just a few miles away that are the northern boundary of the catchment for the watershed that feeds into this reserve.

While the reserve is close to densely human-populated areas, it represents an important wildlife resource. We will see shorebirds, waterfowl, and evidence of mammals thriving among the native plants. This site is an actively managed research reserve where students will see the efforts to maintain ecological diversity and provide protection to this important area. An opportunity to consider the role of ecological research at the nature reserve opens new insights into understanding nature. (If the nature center there is open to us: The interpretive displays and artifacts at the Nature Center are a unique opportunity for students to relate focused educational material to the natural setting they are visiting on site.)

Coal Oil is the name for this reserve, and the rich history of the geological reason can be explored with the frequent deposits on the beach. The people along this coastline have used this petroleum resource for thousands of years for things from boat building to asphalt for early roads in Goleta.

Coming Soon…

Curriculum Standards
Combined Photo Release and Waiver

Easily accessible to Goleta and Santa Barbara schools, Goleta Butterfly Grove is a delicate resource available for educational presentation of the Monarch butterfly migration and how it culminates with over-winter gathering in preparation for the spring breeding. Butterflies coursing hundreds of miles north for the warm months begin the inter-generational story that brings their third generation off-spring back each winter here at Elwood. While the larger mid-west to Mexico corridor of Monarchs is ever more threatened by pesticides and de-forestation, this western group provides comparisons in geographic forces bearing on one of the last great migrations on the planet.

Historical eucalyptus, local native plants and invasive plants provide lessons in habitat and preservation on land that overlays an important geological fault and a base for exploring the broad geological features of Santa Barbara County from the Channel Islands to the Santa Ynez Range. On the beach we are able to study tides, the coastal zone habitat and the geology of the Monterey formation in the cliffs as it relates to local oil industry and the basin and range visibly evident in this location.

Curriculum Standards

Gaviota State Park Beach offers excellent examples of the central coast’s geologic landscape. The east-west trend of these features — Santa Barbara Channel, sea cliffs, coastal mesas, and mountain ridges – records millions of years of tectonic compression that has lifted the Earth’s crust up, out of the water, and tilted its rock units south. The geology of Gaviota’s sea cliffs displays this tilted folding with fine exposures of the Monterey Formation, an organic marine mudstone called shale.

Beach walking up the coast to the west requires careful attention to the tides. If teachers wish to make the most of Gaviota State Park Beach, be sure to select a date and time with the lowest tide. During a zero or minus tide, the sea cliffs offer a fascinating variety of rock layers, including hard tan porcelanite, shale, and a tar-saturated black conglomerate with pieces of these rocks. The action of the surf has eroded shallow caves in the sea cliff, and wave-cut rocks allow tide-pooling at the lowest tides. Beautiful arch-shaped recesses in the cliff are fine examples of weathering of weaker rock layers that subsequently erode away.
Down the coast, to the east, the beach is broader and usually accessible to the east. The Monterey rocks of the sea cliffs show fine layers tilted south with many varieties of color, texture, and chemistry alterations. Careful exploration may also reveal fossilized ripple marks in the shale, sand injectites pushing up through the rock layers, and the fossil bones of a marine mammal encased in a rocky outcrop in the sand.
Several offshore oil rigs are visible from the beach, built in 1976-1989 to pump oil from its source in the organic shales of the Monterey Formation. These structures form a point of discussion about fossil fuels in our changing world and the importance of the Santa Barbara Channel, which provides a rich habitat for many marine species.

Curriculum Standards
Combined Photo Release and Waiver

Where the river flows through Solvang, long-standing pools are formed and riparian habitat supports unique flora and fauna in the system strikingly different from the surrounding valley and hills. Here we look at the geology of the watershed that extends 90 miles through the full catchment. The geology of erosion including material dispersion and local rock formation can be studied here. The steelhead restoration project is a part of the history of this river system that includes the story of the migratory oceangoing fish and the conservation efforts to maintain their habitat. We usually see migratory and residential birds. Short trails provide opportunities for discovering local plants including mule fat, Willow, coyote bush, and Cottonwood.

Coming Soon…

Curriculum Standards

Refugio is generally a calm beach where we can inspect the coastal strand habitat for plants and animals shared for hundreds of miles up and down the Pacific coast plus some that are more local. We can see local resident shorebirds and migrant birds that stop off on their long journeys as far north as the arctic circle and south down into South America.

Along the Gaviota Coast the weather is affected by the dramatic change to south facing seashore orientation at Point Conception and the very nearby Santa Ynez Mountain range. The coast here is also protected by the Channel Islands which limits the range of coastal waves. The massive California (ocean) Current mostly rounds the Channel Islands and a seasonally variable sea eddy is formed in the channel south of Regufio State Beach.

The watershed catchment is severely truncated by the short distance to the ridge tops that define its northern boundary. The resulting steeply sloping land comes nearly to the beach and pours rain runoff waters quickly back to the ocean where there was once a wetland area before “improvements” were made in the early 20th Century to make the beach more attractive to tourists with the many introduced palms that have matured over the past decades.

Refugio Beach is the site of the most recent oil spill, and that history is an important lesson on the damaging effects of oil on natural habitats including sea flora and fauna as well as that of the coastal strip. The marine ecology here includes giant kelp, a wide variety of fish and cetaceans such as California gray whales and dolphins sometimes seen from the beach. Tidepools include a variety of coastal flora and fauna where we can study the interaction of life at the edges of land and sea