Research Highlights

Since the early 2000s, ecologists who monitor rocky intertidal ecosystems each year have noted declines in a key intertidal seaweed commonly called rockweed. Rockweed is considered a foundational species, meaning that its presence is so important that without it the entire ecosystem would change radically. At Channel Islands National Park, marine ecologists are working with local scientists to understand the best methods to restore rockweed.

Large swaths of bright, olive-green clumps sit atop the rocks between swirling pools in the mid tidal zone. Silvetia compressa, or rockweed as it is more commonly referred, is a dark, leathery seaweed with long, branched fronds. Though they don’t look like much at first glance, these marine plants are what a research team has come to Santa Cruz Island to find.

Over the past 10 years, the Southern California Research Learning Center has worked earnestly to foster landscape-level connections that will preserve the biodiversity of the southern California region – through research, community engagement, and building strategic partnerships. Here are the stories of where the SCRLC has come so far in meeting these objectives and where it is headed into the future.

Once thought to be extirpated from the Santa Monica Mountains, a single population of California red-legged frogs was discovered in protected habitat nearby. Years of careful monitoring led biologists to believe that the population was healthy enough to supply other nearby streams with adults and eggs, which would form the building blocks of new frog populations. To ensure long-term success, biologists needed to maximize genetic diversity across the frog’s populations.

The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is currently under construction and expected to be completed by late 2025. This crossing is expected to provide mountain lions—and many other animals—a safe passage over the busy 101 freeway. Most importantly, it will allow many species of wildlife in the Santa Monica Mountains to mix with populations from other open spaces, strengthening their genetic diversity.

Since the middle of the 20th century, development of the California coastline has exploded and these areas are now home to millions of people. Prior to this era, the coastlines were dominated by a different species, black abalone. Ask anyone who grew up in coastal California in the mid-20th century and they will tell you that during any visit to the rocky shores, you’d encounter black abalone…and a lot of them!

Botanists have been collecting and pressing samples of plants they find in the wild for nearly 200 years. Around the world, there are numerous institutions with vast herbarium collections of plant pressings that are more valuable today than when they were collected! Plant specimens collected in the past are of great value because they can tell modern-day scientists a lot about past environments and conditions.

When we travel to our national parks it can be easy to see some of our favorite wildlife roaming the landscape. But what we don’t see are the species who may not be there yet. As our climate continues to change in ways we have never seen before, protected open spaces are increasingly serving as critical refuge for species needing to find new homes.

Like you, we love our National Parks and all of the wonderful flora and fauna that live within them. Our mission is to protect and preserve these natural resources for this and future generations. That’s a big task! Have you ever wondered how we at the National Park Service keep tabs on the status of everything that lives within the park?

In September 2020, Cabrillo National Monument—San Diego’s only national park—participated in the 2020 Parks for Pollinators BioBlitz organized by the National Recreation and Park Association. It was during this month-long, concentrated, species documentation effort that park naturalist Patricia Simpson made the original discovery of a red-and-black bee with which she was unfamiliar. This observation spurred a community-wide effort to locate and identify the elusive red bee.