Donald and Sylvia McLaughlin Natural Reserve

06/30/2023

We've all been dreaming about a real beach vacation but today we are content surfing on a sea of weeds having just finished removing invasive barbed goatgrass from 300 acres of serpentine meadows.

03/07/2023

Pollinators in winter? Pollination occurs almost year-round at McLaughlin. Common manzanita (Arctostaphylos manzanita) begins flowering in January, and is the primary resource that sustains a diverse assembly of pollen and nectar feeding animals into early spring. Some of these pollinators, such as the solitary bee Andrena principalis, feed mostly or exclusively on manzanita. Others, such as the Anna's hummingbird, European honeybee, and yellow-faced bumblebee, happily visit different flower species as they become available.

Follow our project "McLaughlin Reserve Pollinators" on iNaturalist for the most recent observations of who is pollinating what.

09/29/2022

Staff at the McLaughlin Reserve and the entire UC Davis Natural Reserve System are grateful to the Tribal EcoRestoration Alliance for the opportunity to participate in this week's basic wildland firefighter training. This unique training puts wildland firefighting skills in the context of returning cultural burning and beneficial fire to the land. With our new skills, we look forward to participating in prescribed burns on tribal and other lands across Lake County.

07/02/2022

Another season weeding invasive barbed goatgrass has come to an end. Now it’s time to rest!

04/24/2022

Here we are, the left half of us in Napa County, the right half in Lake and the photographer in Yolo, for Saturday’s Three Counties Hike with the Napa Land Trust. The white leaf manzanita grove surrounding the rock pile that marks the intersection of the 3 counties burned in the 2020 LNU Fire. We saw some great wildflowers including serpentine collomia, large-flowered star tulip, western larkspur, and Jepson’s milk vetch.

02/23/2022

The successful restoration we have achieved at the McLaughlin Reserve has inspired the formation of a student group dedicated to helping us maintain and expand our restoration efforts. Their group, "Hands on the Land", is raising funds to cover the costs for students that come to McLaughlin to work with us. It takes person-power to restore and care for natural lands, and these dynamic and enthusiastic students are committing to working alongside us to learning how to implement and sustain ecosystem restoration. We are so amazed that these young people are willing to set aside time from their busy lives to learn how to be land stewards. Please share widely their request for support, which will directly benefit the McLaughlin Reserve!

Help UC Davis raise $2,500 for the project: Hands on the Land. Your gift will make a difference!

02/04/2022

Yesterday we were introduced to the Americorps National Civilian Community Corps when this team showed up to help us restore areas impacted by past wildfire supression activities. These guys rocked! We had a main site, a second site (in case we finished the first), and a backup project in case of high winds. They did all three. Here at the main site we are restoring natural drainage patterns in serpentine chaparral where a fire containment line cut through a population of the rare tripod buckwheat (Eriogonum tripodum). Lake County is fortunate to have this team in the area through March.

02/16/2021

Hi Friends of the McLaughlin Reserve! The Kids into Discovering Science program brings Lake County 5th Graders to the McLaughlin Reserve to learn local ecology and the scientific method from U.C. Davis graduate students. We have been putting on the program since 2011 with support from various sponsors. This year we are asking for your help. Our fundraising goal of $5000 will help support U.C. Davis graduate student Martha Zillig, who coordinates the program, and will pay for student transportation. Please visit https://crowdfund.ucdavis.edu/project/24386 and donate!

09/23/2020

On July 3, 2020 we made a botanical survey through serpentine chaparral and Sargent cypress woodland in the Quarry Valley area of the upper Hunting Creek Watershed. On August 19, much of this area burned in the LNU Lightning Complex. Today, we retraced our survey route to document the fire effects. In these representative before/after photos you can see that much of the area had already burned five years prior in the Rocky Fire. Interestingly we found patches of vegetation that did not burn in either fire, patches that burned in only one of the two fires, and patches that burned twice. For anyone who is interested, here is a great opportunity to study how variation in fire frequency and intensity affects spatial patterns of biological diversity across the landscape.

09/14/2020

The LNU Lightning Complex has been extinguished in our region for nearly three weeks. This map shows the area burned (red) by the fire at its northwest boundary where it impacted the reserve (green hatched area). The fire burned 3507 of the reserve's 7078 acres. Our best estimate is that there were two lightning strikes (indicated on the map by red and yellow bolts) on August 17 that ignited the fires in this region. On August 18 and 19, when the fire advanced most rapidly, winds were from the northwest so most of the fire movement was to the south and east.

09/10/2020

Even on a sunny day, the serpentine landscape can look extraterrestrial, and indeed serpentine rock is found on Mars. Yesterday’s smoky orange sky surely added to the effect.

09/01/2020

After controlling the LNU Lightning Complex in areas where it was more threatening to life and property, a large contingent of firefighters arrived at McLaughlin to provide “containment” to our front of the fire which has been extinguished for about 10 days. Many of the firefighters are not from this area and they seem to be enjoying our unique landscape. The sight of their trucks had us, on the other hand, dreaming of a beach vacation.