Saturday, April 30: UC Santa Cruz Campus and Younger Lagoon Reserve Bioblitz

A bioblitz is an intensive one-day study of biodiversity in a specific location, bringing scientists and volunteer citizen-scientists together. Together, we’ll look for snails, birds, mammals, frogs, butterflies, other insects, spiders, trees, worms, flowers, and everything else we can find! People of all ages and skill levels are welcome!

Encouraging your students to participate in bioblitzes with their families and friends is a great way to help them connect to your classroom units on ecosystems, biodiversity, and conservation. Or, round up some chaperons and bring your entire class on a bioblitz field trip.

Join staff from the UCSC Natural Reserves, Ken Norris Center for Natural History, the California Academy of Sciences, legions of enthusiastic UCSC students & alumni, and members of the Santa Cruz community as we come together for a full day exploring and documenting the UCSC campus's incredible biodiversity.

Choose from one of two shifts---morning (9 am-1 pm) or afternoon (2 pm- 6 pm)---or attend both!

• 9 am-1 pm: Meet at UCSC Arboretum Horticulture 2 classroom building -Parking will be free for participants, though somewhat limited. If you're able to arrive on foot, by bike, or bus, that will be helpful. -Directions: http://arboretum.ucsc.edu/visit/directions/index.html
   
• 2 pm-6 pm: Meet at the Ken Norris Center for Natural History in Natural Sciences 2 room 239 -Directions: http://norriscenter.ucsc.edu/about/directions.html

We'll be using iNaturalist, a citizen science website and app, to photograph and geographically pinpoint our findings and will come back together at the end of each shift to upload our records, share stories, and help each other with identifications. We hope to grow our campus's species lists, but most importantly celebrate our fellow creatures and each other! Refreshments will be served at the end of each shift when we gather back together. Smartphones or tablets with the free iNaturalist app installed aren't required, but certainly bring them along if you have them.

Join staff from the UCSC Natural Reserves, Ken Norris Center for Natural History, the California Academy of Sciences, legions of enthusiastic UCSC students & alumni, and members of the Santa Cruz community as we come together for a morning exploring and documenting Younger Lagoon Reserve's incredible biodiversity.

Younger Lagoon Reserve's wide variety of habitats and unique geophysical setting have resulted in a great number of species that call the reserve home. We'll be bioblitzing in the morning from 9 am-1 pm. We'll be using iNaturalist, a citizen science website and app, to photograph and geographically pinpoint our findings and will come back together at the end of the shift to upload our records, share stories, and help each other with identifications. We hope to grow our reserve's species lists, but most importantly celebrate our fellow creatures and each other! Refreshments will be served at the end of each shift when we gather back together. Smartphones or tablets with the free iNaturalist app installed aren't required, but certainly bring them along if you have them.