The Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve located in the southern region of Big Sur, California is owned by the

University of California Natural Reserve System The University of California Natural Reserve System (UCNRS) is a system of protected areas throughout California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents acros ...

. It is located off State Route 1 in south of

Monterey Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under bot ...

and adjacent to the

Big Creek State Marine Reserve and Big Creek State Marine Conservation Area Big Creek State Marine Reserve (SMR) and Big Creek State Marine Conservation Area (SMCA) are two adjoining marine protected areas that lie offshore of Big Sur on California's central coast. The combined area of these marine protected areas is . ...

. It is open to the general public one day a year.

Mission statement

“The guiding principle of the Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve is to contribute to the understanding of ecological processes as they occur in intact, protected natural systems through on-site research and education, and to provide a benchmark for interpreting long-term environmental change.”

History

The Big Creek Ranch was originally owned by a small cooperative of families. The original owners donated a section of the land in order to ensure conservation of this unique ecological habitat. The land was transferred to the University of California where it would become part of the

. In 1978 the reserve's name was formally changed to Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve and a faculty member from the

University of California Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...

(UCSC) was given the position of managing the day-to-day affairs. A committee of UCSC faculty, a representative each from The Nature Conservancy, Save the Redwoods League, and the former owners was formed to advise on decisions related to the use of the land. It was designated part of the

California Coast Ranges The Coast Ranges of California span from Del Norte or Humboldt County, California, south to Santa Barbara County. The other three coastal California mountain ranges are the Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges and the Klamath Mountains. P ...

International Biosphere Reserve Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) is an intergovernmental scientific program, launched in 1971 by UNESCO, that aims to establish a scientific basis for the improvement of relationships between people and their environments. MAB's work engag ...

in 1983. Today the Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve is used by students, teachers and researchers. The reserve is set aside as an undisturbed sanctuary for education and research.

Topography

Running through the Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve are the

Santa Lucia Mountains The Santa Lucia Mountains (sæntə luˈsiːə) or Santa Lucia Range is a rugged mountain range in coastal central California, running from Carmel southeast for to the Cuyama River in San Luis Obispo County. The range is never more than from ...

. This mountain range is predominantly made up of

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...

and

metamorphic rock Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock to new types of rock in a process called metamorphism. The original rock ( protolith) is subjected to temperatures greater than and, often, elevated pressure of or more, caus ...

which provide for steeply sloping cliff faces, and rough ridges throughout the area.

Geology

The geology of the Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve is unique. There are depositions of sea floor deposits from the

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

age, as well as

Franciscan Complex The Franciscan Complex or Franciscan Assemblage is a geologic term for a late Mesozoic terrane of heterogeneous rocks found throughout the California Coast Ranges, and particularly on the San Francisco Peninsula. It was named by geologist Andrew ...

, a medley of rock scraped off the oceanic crust as the Pacific Plate subducts beneath the

North American Plate The North American Plate is a tectonic plate covering most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores. With an area of , it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacif ...

. In the midst of this, there is also a

Granitoid A granitoid is a generic term for a diverse category of coarse-grained igneous rocks that consist predominantly of quartz, plagioclase, and alkali feldspar. Granitoids range from plagioclase-rich tonalites to alkali-rich syenites and from quartz- ...

Salinia. This Salinia is thought to have originated in the Southern Sierra Nevada range some 100 million years ago, and then was displaced to its present position by a series of thrust and strike-slip faults. The geology of this region has proved vastly important in determining the geologic history of California, and the nature of the contact between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates.

Landscapes and habitats

Habitats at the reserve include coastal strand; coastal bluff scrub;

coastal scrub Coastal sage scrub, also known as coastal scrub, CSS, or soft chaparral, is a low scrubland plant community of the California coastal sage and chaparral subecoregion, found in coastal California and northwestern coastal Baja California. It is ...

; ceanothus shrub; sage scrub; rocky scrubland; chamise chaparral; coast range and streambank woodland; stream-mouth woodland;

sycamore Sycamore is a name which has been applied to several types of trees, but with somewhat similar leaf forms. The name derives from the ancient Greek ' (''sūkomoros'') meaning "fig-mulberry". Species of trees known as sycamore: * ''Acer pseudoplata ...

-draw woodland;

coast live oak ''Quercus agrifolia'', the California live oak, or coast live oak, is a highly variable, often evergreen oak tree, a type of live oak, native to the California Floristic Province. It may be shrubby, depending on age and growing location, but is ...

forest; mixed hardwood-coast live oak forest; mixed hardwood-canyon live oak forest;

Ponderosa pine ''Pinus ponderosa'', commonly known as the ponderosa pine, bull pine, blackjack pine, western yellow-pine, or filipinus pine is a very large pine tree species of variable habitat native to mountainous regions of western North America. It is the ...

-Hoover's manzanita woodland; Ponderosa pine-mixed hardwood-coast live oak forest; Ponderosa pine-mixed hardwood-canyon live oak forest; Ponderosa pine-coast live oak forest;

coulter pine The Coulter pine or big-cone pine, ''Pinus coulteri'', is a native of the coastal mountains of Southern California in the United States and northern Baja California in Mexico. Isolated groves are found as far north as Clearlake, California on the ...

forest; Santa Lucia-fir woodland; redwood streamside forest; redwood-mixed hardwood forest; pure redwood forest; and aquatic (both freshwater and marine) habitats. This diverse landscape provides a thriving habitat for a wide variety of wildlife. Wildlife includes vascular plants, insects, amphibians, reptiles, and terrestrial vertebrates ranging from small mammals, like shrews and rats, to

apex predator An apex predator, also known as a top predator, is a predator at the top of a food chain, without natural predators of its own. Apex predators are usually defined in terms of trophic dynamics, meaning that they occupy the highest trophic lev ...

s such as mountain lions.Bickle, A. 1985. Amphibians of the Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve, Monterey County, California Environmental Field Program, University of California, Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA

Sources

References

External links

{{Protected areas of California, UCNRS University of California Natural Reserve System Protected areas of Monterey County, California University of California, Santa Cruz Big Sur