Report of the Angelo Coast Range Reserve NSF Planning Workshop

Report of the Angelo Coast Range Reserve NSF Planning Workshop

September 4-7, 2003

Bret Harvey (Chair), James Kirchner, Arthur Stewart, David Strayer, Mark Stromberg
With assistance from Mary Power, Peter Steel, and John Latto

• Summary
• Main Report
• Promising new research directions
• Critical Priorities for Facilities and Infrastructure
• References
• Appendices
• 1. Attendees
• 2. Workshop Agenda
• 3. Angelo publication list
• 4. Current Facilities of the Angelo Reserve
• 5. Current Information and Datebase Management Policies
• 6. Potential Augmentation and Matches for Gifts or Grants

Summary

The Angelo Coast Range Reserve is a component of the University of California Natural Reserve System (NRS), and is managed by UC Berkeley (UCB). The National Science Foundation sponsored a planning workshop for the Angelo Reserve, held on site, near Branscomb, California, on September 5-7, 2003. The participants included twelve scientists from outside the University of California, listed in Appendix 1. Of these, five were affiliated with universities outside of California, one was with a nonprofit ecological research institute (the Institute of Ecosystem Studies), four were affiliated with federal research agencies (USGS, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the USDA-USFS) and one scientist worked for a private environmental consulting firm. Also in attendance were the Director of the Hastings Natural History Reservation (also in the NRS), and seven faculty from three departments at UCB, one of whom was the campus Vice Chancellor for Research, and another the Director of the UC Systemwide NRS. Following a general orientation to the site, guided field trips demonstrating ongoing research projects, and a day and a half of discussion, the review committee reached several recommendations.

Future Research Directions

Workshop participants noted a number of assets at the Angelo Reserve that could support strong programs of future field research:

Inclusion of the whole watersheds of seven small streams, and of reaches of larger river channels, spanning catchment areas of < 1 to 260 km2.
Meteorological and stream runoff monitoring data, including a 36 year record from Elder Creek, as a USGS Benchmark Station.
Twenty-five years of research on biological, ecological, geomorphological, and human cultural aspects of the Angelo Reserve ecosystem.
A new partnership with Earth Scientists at the NSF STC, the National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics, and strong potential for partnerships and collaborations with scientists from the USGS and USFS currently engaged in other studies in the Pacific North Coast region.
A favorable location with relatively simple underlying geology and no major upwind sources of urban or agricultural pollution, facilitating the study of atmospheric inputs from the Pacific Ocean.
The committee recommended four new research directions building on past programs at the reserve, advantages of the natural setting, advances in new technologies, and the potential for heuristic comparisons with ongoing studies by other researchers in the region:

• Cross-habitat linkages between channel and terrestrial food webs and ecosystems.
• Use of remote and automated sensing devices to monitor ecologically-relevant environmental conditions and corresponding habitat use and movements of organisms.
• Salmonid population dynamics in fluctuating, heterogeneous environments.
• Feedback from organisms and climate to the physical and chemical forcers of landscape evolution.

Facilities and Infrastructure needed

To prepare the Angelo Reserve to support outstanding research for the 21st Century, workshop participants identified the following critical needs:

• Upgraded housing
• Improved communications, including satellite and wireless technology
• Storage, equipment and shop facilities for visitors
• Significant spatial augmentation of automated sampling and sensing devices for environmental and biological monitoring
• Essential scientific equipment for laboratories at the new Environmental Science center to support the program of research
• Augmentation of walkways and support cables providing access for instruments and investigators into the forest canopy and over rivers at high flow
• Support for data and information storage and dissemination

Report for the NSF Sponsored Planning Workshop:

Future directions for Interdisciplinary Research at the Angelo Coast Range Reserve:"Detecting, interpreting, and predicting change in river and watershed ecosystems of the California North Coast”

September 4-7, 2003
University of California, Berkeley and
Angelo Coast Range Reserve
42101 Wilderness Rd
Branscomb, CA 95417

The Angelo Coast Range Reserve is one of 34 sites in the University of California Natural Reserve System. The Reserve encompasses about 3000 hectares of steep, dissected landscape, one of the largest tracts of coastal Douglas fir-Coast Redwood forest remaining in the state of California, a 5 km reach of the South Fork of the Eel River, and the entire watersheds of three of its perennial tributaries. Research at the Reserve began under The Nature Conservancy of California in the 1970s, and has continued after administrative transfer to the University of California, Berkeley and the UCNRS in 1994.

A gift from the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund allowed the construction of a new Environmental Center, including a meeting room, simple laboratories, and a screened lathe house completed during the summer of 2002. In addition, a rudimentary canopy access facility was constructed along a river-to-ridge elevational gradient. These new facilities can support an expansion and deepening of the contribution of the Angelo Reserve to our understanding of the California North Coast region, as well as broad scientific questions about organismal, ecosystem and landscape change.

To help plan the next generation of research programs at the Angelo Reserve, an NSF-sponsored workshop was held. Among the goals for this workshop were the following:

• To demonstrate the new Angelo facilities to prospective new users, and illustrate the range of habitats available at the reserve
• To familiarize all participants with past, present and potential future ecological monitoring at the Angelo Reserve
• To discuss the potential for coordinated or collaborative interdisciplinary research among university and agency scientists interested in:
• regional monitoring for ecological forecasting
• sediment budgets, watershed management and salmonid populations along the California North Coast;
• effects of landscape position on species performances and interactions and ecosystem processes;
• use of isotopes to study interactions of biota, land use, and hydrologic and nutrient cycling over organismal to regional scales;
• canopy biology and ecophysiology.
• To gather specific recommendations about management and additional facilities, resources or efforts necessary needed to support such collaborative and innovative programs at the Angelo Reserve

Our review committee was given a draft management plan, and an oral presentation on past and present research at the Angelo Reserve from the 1970s until the present. The presentation emphasized the potential at the reserve to deepen research collaborations between ecologists and earth scientists through initiatives such as those supported by the new National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics (NCED), a Science and Technology Center funded in 2002 that will use the Angelo Reserve as one of its primary field laboratories. We were asked to provide perspectives on the future research directions proposed for the reserve and the facilities development needed to support such initiatives. Participants were asked to address the following questions in a general Group Discussion.

1. What new questions could or should be addressed at the Angelo Reserve that have not yet been addressed? What promising new research directions could be well-served by this Reserve?

2. What other research programs are studying environmental change in rivers and watersheds along the California North Coast? How might changes over the larger region influence the future of Angelo Reserve ecosystems? How might the Angelo Reserve participate in coordinated regional studies to expand the spatial extent of our knowledge of landscape-ecosystem-organism interactions?

3. Can one defend a long-term commitment to monitoring at the Angelo Reserve? What variables would be most valuable to monitor? What emerging technologies are available to support monitoring? Who might fund or support such efforts? What are successful models from other institutions or programs?

4. Informatics: How does data sharing and archiving work now, and how it should work in the future?

5. What other infrastructure (buildings, equipment, monitoring technology) is needed for the Angelo Reserve to fulfill its promise as a center for University and collaborative research, teaching, and outreach?

The first three question topics were merged during the lively day and a half discussion, and our report below combines participants’ thoughts on all three questions under each of the following four research directions that were highlighted as promising avenues for future collaborative research programs at the Angelo Reserve. Following this, we describe the facilities and other infrastructure needed to support these programs.

Promising new research directions for the Angelo Reserve

1. Feedback from organisms and climate to the physical and chemical forcers of landscape evolution.

Building on several decades of field ecology and organismal biology at the Reserve, as well as gemorphological studies of river incision and sediment transport through its rivers (Appendix 3), future investigators using the the Angelo Reserve have exceptional potential to link biology and geomorphology to biogeochemistry and hydrology (Grimm et al. 2003, Porporato & Rodriguez-Iturbe 2002). The last two subjects have not yet been extensively studied at the reserve. The site is remarkably well suited for this endeavor, for a number of reasons:

A long-term context for such research is provided by discharge, temperature and water quality records from the USGS gaging station on Elder Creek, continuously monitored from 1967 to the present. The Elder Creek station is a Benchmark Hydrological Station, one of 57 operated throughout the United States by the USGS. As such, participant Carol Kendall told us that it qualifies for support from the USGS Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical Budget, for example, water chemistry analyses of collected samples.
Gaging records from the USGS station on the South Fork Eel River at the south end of the Reserve are available from 1968 to 1996. With NSF research funding, the station was reactivated after 1990, and monitoring of standard meteorological variables was added.
Sampling sites are available within or near the reserve that range in catchment area from < 1 km2 to 260 km2, enabling study of downstream and basin related changes in physical, chemical, and biological variables linking landscapes and biota.
The relatively simple geology underlying the Reserve (sandstones and mudstones are the only two common rock types) facilitates basin-level comparisons of the influence of other drivers like slope, drainage area, aspect, and local micro-climate.
The regional setting of the Reserve in the North Pacific Coast positions it for studies potential impacts over the next decades of factors such as the anticipated change in atmospheric inputs from China. The Mediterranean climate and the lack of snow pack storage in the basin simplify studies linking climate, hydrology, and landscape and ecosystem dynamics. They also potentially make the site representative of landscapes anticipated to respond sensitively to climate and land use change. The only other site in the North Pacific Coast region with intensive biogeochemical studies is the H.J. Andrews Experimental forest in Oregon, much further inland than the Angelo Reserve.

2. Cross-habitat linkages between channel and terrestrial food webs and ecosystems.

A number of participants identified study of ecosystem and ecological interactions across habitat boundaries as a key area for future research (Polis et al. 2004, Turner 1989, Cadenasso et al. 2003, Lovett et al. 2004) with two boundaries identified as key foci for future research: the interface between river channels and terrestrial watersheds, and that between the forest canopy and the atmosphere. The Angelo Reserve offers exceptional opportunities to study ecological, biophysical, and biogeochemical processes that mediate fluxes across both boundaries. These fluxes combine to exert major control on forest and river ecosystems and landscape evolution.

Watershed – Channel interactions

Previous research at the Angelo Reserve (Sabo and Power 2002a,b, Power et al. 2004, Power and Rainey 2000) has addressed how upslope export of river production (of algae or emerging aquatic insects) influences a variety of terrestrial consumers in adjacent watersheds, from riparian zones upslope to drainage divides. The indirect food web and ecosystem consequences of these fluxes remain largely unknown. In addition, the reciprocal forest-to-river linkages are more poorly understood at the Reserve, particularly as these relate to hydrologic flow paths and their influence on sediment, nutrient and carbon budgets in the watershed. The representation on site of many sub-basins with different drainage areas greatly enhances the Reserve’s ability to support studies of how factors that change systematically down drainage networks (edge:area ratios; drainage area, slope dependent controls) affect these interactions. Several participants expressed keen support for, and interest in initiating hydrologic monitoring to begin to fill this gap in our understanding of Angelo watershed dynamics.

Atmosphere - Forest Canopy - Watershed interactions

Atmospheric inputs to the Reserve of precipitation and airborne chemicals are intercepted and altered by the extensive forest canopy over the Angelo Reserve in as yet unknown ways. The canopy walkway facility (the first and so far the only to be built in a forest with old growth redwoods) provides access for researchers to the fascinating and ecologically important habitat boundary between the atmosphere and the forest canopy. Participant Todd Dawson briefly described his research program on the interactions of redwoods and coastal fogs. This research documents mechanisms of atmosphere-canopy interactions that can strongly influence the health of redwood trees and forests. Prof. Dawson related the leap forward that his program has recently taken due to collaboration with Prof. David Cullar, Director of the Intel Laboratory at U.C. Berkeley, an expert in wireless networks of small sensors that are beginning to revolutionize our ability to detect micro-climatic and biological changes at scales relevant to organisms in nature (see discussion of Critical Needs for Infrastructure below). The Angelo Reserve would be an interesting site for Dawson’s program because it represents redwoods at an inland extreme of their range, where they are stressed by low fog inputs. Inputs of fog and other sources of moisture to the site are anticipated to change during long-term climate change. Monitoring of these variables and their effect on ground water and channel hydrology and chemistry would also be invaluable should fire or Sudden Oak Death cause large scale changes in forest cover of basins within the Angelo Reserve, as little is known about the impact of either event on these key ecosystem properties. In the absence of such a large scale disturbance, monitoring of these variables would still be very informative, as changes in the composition of the diverse forest stands at the Angelo Reserve, which include upslope mixed deciduous forests, would document the consequences of forest conversion to Douglas fir dominated assemblages under the current regime of fire suppression (Hunter and Barbour 2002). Needless to say, hypotheses about the effects of forest stand conversion (e.g. from deciduous to conifer species) on variables like ground and surface water chemistry would strongly motivate long term monitoring of key variables. Long term monitoring at the Angelo Reserve should become increasingly feasible as technology for remote sensing and automated monitoring improves, and becomes more affordable.

3. Use of remote and automated sensing devices to monitor ecologically-relevant environmental conditions and corresponding habitat use and movements of organisms.

Several participants who had studied landscape scales (including Drs. Strayer, Stewart, Kirchner, Kendall, Dietrich, Welter and Hastings Reserve Director Dr. Mark Stromberg) strongly suggested that remote sensing images (e.g. from AVHRR satellites) be used to supplement the airborne laser altimetry images (LIDAR) already provided to the Angelo Reserve by Prof. Dietrich at UCB. Periodically collected satellite and LIDAR images would greatly facilitate monitoring changes in forest composition, productivity, and health over the rugged terrain of the Reserve. In addition, several participants (Drs. Dawson, Lisle, Welter, Schade) related their own experiences with newly available ground-based sensor technology and automatic sample collection in their process studies and long-term environmental monitoring programs. They advocated the implementation of such technology to support research at the Angelo Reserve. The USFS Redwood Sciences Laboratory in Arcata CA has developed cutting edge technology for automatic sampling of suspended sediment, a variable of central importance in relating land use (forest practices, roads) to sediment loading, channel habitat condition, and ultimately, the capacity of these watersheds to sustain salmonid populations (Tom Lisle, personal communication). Drs. Lisle and Harvey, researchers in hydrology and aquatic ecology, respectively, at the USFS Redwood Sciences Laboratory, expressed strong interest in adding sites for their studies at the Angelo Reserve to generate heuristic comparisons with their ongoing studies in other regional watersheds. For example, sediment yields from watersheds representing a gradient of land use intensity could be compared using Angelo in combination with the Caspar Creek Experimental Watershed (on the west side of the Coast Range in Mendocino Co., CA), and Bull Creek, a heavily logged watershed in the South Fork Eel drainage of similar size to Elder Creek. Comparisons between the Angelo Reserve, on the landward east side of the Coast Range, and Caspar Creek, on the west side of the Coast Range, would allow us to examine the effect of oceanic influence on variables like fog inputs, through fall water chemistry and ground water and runoff isotopic signatures. These are variables that influence stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes that have been used at the Angelo Reserve to study the spatial scales of trophic interactions in river food webs that support salmonids (e.g. Finlay et al. 2002).