Elmer’s blue eyes and tinker’s penny: Lassen’s diversity is a scientist’s playground

For two weeks last July, UC Davis students roamed the meadows and forests of Lassen Volcanic National Park in far northeastern California. As they listened to the calls of flickers and watched for rare snowshoe hares, the students picked up wildflowers such as marsh marigold, grasses such as southern beaked sedge and edible plants such as miner’s lettuce.

For class credit, the students wandered among whitebark pines, explored the park’s extensive meadows, gazed at its unique geological features, identified plants and collected many plant species. They were benefiting from the university’s relationships linking the campus, the United States National Park Service and the University of California Natural Reserve System. The arrangement provides experiential learning like this field course for students and research opportunities for scientists to study the park’s unique flora and fauna. Park visitors reap the highlights of that research, park planners use it to guide their work, and folks in the surrounding communities get involved in local resource management.

Andrew Latimer, a professor in the Department of Plant Sciences, coordinates the academic research at the park. The arrangement “gives us access to some facilities at the park that we can reserve out to researchers and classes,” Latimer explained. “In exchange, they get more research and education done at the park. We provide a link from that remote corner of the state to the UC system.”

For students, “there are so many opportunities,” said UC Davis’ Gary Bucciarelli, administrative director of the Lassen Field Station, located within the park, and five more preserves within the larger UC Natural Reserve System. The Lassen area, he said, “is a completely understudied system. There are some of the state’s most understudied, rare, threatened and endangered species here.”

The field course here is co-taught by Dan Potter, a botanist and chair of the department. Joining him in teaching and co-creating the course is Steven Buckley, also a botanist and the liaison for the California Invasive Plant Management Team of NPS; he was formerly the park’s staff ecologist and project manager. The depth of their combined knowledge of the area’s natural history is “a gift” to those taking the course, Bucciarelli said.

Field botany course “a gift” to students

Lassen’s volcanoes rise at the juncture of three major geological formations: The northern end of the Sierra Nevada, the southern end of the Cascade Mountains and the western edge of the Great Basin. Four watersheds flow from the slopes that rise from 5,000 to above 10,000 feet high. In addition to majestic views, this geologic variety has produced wet and dry areas at a range of elevations. 

That, in turn, has produced rich habitats with startling diversity. In the 27,000 years since Mt. Lassen pushed up from the Earth, six types of forests and more than 700 species of wildflowers have evolved.

“Students in the class inventory the biodiversity and think about what’s there,” Bucciarelli added. “They benefit our long-term understanding of what we have in California and how to value that.”

They also collect and prepare specimens for the UC Davis Center for Plant Diversity Herbarium, a kind of pressed-plant library used by researchers around the world. Last summer, students in the field course contributed 268 specimens.

“Most importantly, they overwhelmingly expressed how much they valued the opportunity for experiential, field-based learning,” Potter wrote of the experience.

Partnerships, benefits & synergies

The Lassen Field Station was established at Lassen Volcanic National Park in 2019. It’s the sixth station in the system that is administered by UC Davis. The larger UC Natural Reserve System embraces 42 natural reserves that managers liken to “a library of ecosystems throughout California.”

The summer field course illustrates “the extraordinary suitability of Lassen Volcanic National Park as a location to illustrate the complexity and diversity of California flora and its history, as well as the value of teaching this material in the field,” Potter wrote.

The collaboration also includes UC Davis Ph.D. student Will McMahan, whom Potter noted “served brilliantly as the TA for the course” last summer. Also participating is Grace “GP” Payne, who had been working for the Sierra Institute to assist the park with plant restoration efforts; the institute has donated Payne’s time for the course. In addition, the course has “received outstanding support throughout the planning and implementation stages from Nancy Nordenstein, chief of resources for LAVO,” Potter said. He further credited Bucciarelli for his excellent support.

• Read more about the Lassen Field Station.
• Read more about Lassen Volcanic National Park and its flora.

Register for the classes

Students interested in the summer course must first enroll in PLS 127, offered in spring quarter; students learn the basics of identifying plants and collecting them for later study. The field course, PLS 148, is offered in the summer, and space is limited. 

An informational event describing PLS 127 will be held at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 29, in PES 3001. Pizza will be served. Details here.

• PLS 127*, Systematics of Vascular Plants, is offered in spring quarter. It is a prerequisite for PLS 148, the summer field course described above.
• PLS 148, Field Course: Flora of Northern California’s Mountains, is offered in summer, and space is limited.
• Registration for both courses opens Feb. 3. 
• PLS 127* is cross-listed as PLB/EVE 127 and will count toward all of those majors. It may also count as an elective for the biological sciences major and perhaps others. PLEASE contact your advisor to make sure! 
  • GEs: SE, VL
  • Prerequisites: BIS 002C or PLS 002; or consent of instructor.

*PLS 127 replaces the former courses PLS/PLB 102, California Floristics, and EVE/PLB 108, Systematics and Evolution of Angiosperms.