News

Two years ago, we at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve began conversations with our stakeholders to assess how the preserve could most effectively contribute to our university, our broader community, and the world. The result is the strategic plan we’re delighted to unveil today, Achieving the Vision. The process included faculty, staff, students, thought leaders in surrounding communities, alumni, Jasper Ridge... more

View of smoky skies at Jasper Ridge on November 15, 2018, taken from one of our live-video fire-lookout stations. The smoke is from a fire burning 205 miles to the north in Butte County, the most devastating California wildfire on record. The recent tragic wildfires in California highlight the need for increased vigilance in preventing fire outbreaks in our area... more

The Jasper Ridge Global Change Experiment (JRGCE), a longterm ecosystem study and landmark at Jasper Ridge, is being dismantled, 21 years after the experiment was set up. Conceived and led by professor Christopher Field, the initial goals were conceptually straightforward—to understand whether the effects of global change that is realistically multi-factor could be predicted by summing the effects of individual... more

Researchers David Koweek, Clara Garcia-Sanchez, and Ken Caldeira, from the Carnegie Institution for Science and Stanford University, are using Searsville Reservoir as a model system to test a new method for reversing hypoxia, or low dissolved oxygen, in aquatic ecosystems. Hypoxia occurs naturally when decomposition of organic matter consumes oxygen in bottom waters and there is insufficient mixing with well-oxygenated... more

Tony Barnosky is a coauthor on a study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that examines how Earth’s climate may stabilize given different scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions. The study, which was reported widely in the media throughout the world, considers ten natural processes which can result in “tipping points” that would markedly influence... more

It might seem an unlikely place to find a native plant that is new to Jasper Ridge, but the former Searsville beach is where docent Diane Renshaw discovered a species of suncup that was previously unreported at Jasper Ridge or anywhere in San Mateo County. Identified as Camissoniopsis intermedia (“intermediate suncup”) by Renshaw and docent John Rawlings, this member of... more

As part of a new experiment aimed at reducing fire fuels and controlling invasive species, goats temporarily will be filling the ecological niche of grazing megafauna at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve at the old Boething nursery site located in the northeastern edge of the preserve. This is part of a larger Stanford University effort to reduce fire-fuels in the area,... more

Thanks to quick action by JRBP staff and the fire crews from Woodside, Menlo Park, Redwood City, and CAL FIRE, what could have been a major wildfire just across the border of Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve was quickly brought under control on a windy Monday morning. The fire broke out just across the northeastern boundary of the preserve due to... more

The June 7th JRBP picnic marked the end of the 2017-18 academic year at Jasper Ridge and the graduation of the 2018 docents who were cheered by an enthusiastic crowd as they kazooed Pomp and Circumstance and received their Jasper Ridge hats! The ceremony was the culmination of the two-quarter course Ecology and Natural History of Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve... more

A central goal of ecology is understanding the factors that sustain and control biodiversity, and in particular, determining what prevents one species from outcompeting another. In a new publication , postdocs Andrew Letten and Manpreet Dhami, doctoral student Po-Ju Ke, and professor Tad Fukami dissect the roles of two mechanisms that maintain coexistence in two pairs of yeast species found... more