| Founded at | Escondido, Southern California |
|---|---|
| Type | non-profit organization |
The California Chaparral Institute is a non-profit organization for the research and conservation of chaparral habitats in California. It is based in Escondido, Southern California. [1]
It is composed of naturalists, scientists, wildland firefighters, and educators who value the chaparral as both a valuable resource and a place to enjoy the wilderness. It was founded in 2004 by Richard W. Halsey and aims to protect the California chaparral ecosystem through public education [2] and legal action. [3]
In particular, based on fire ecology, the research group is known for opposing the clearance of chaparral habitat from natural areas, and to require an environmental review of any such habitat destruction proposals before their implementation.
In June 2010 the group filed suit against an "emergency" habitat clearance project by San Diego County, [4] and a San Diego Superior Court judge agreed that the county should conduct an environmental review first. [5]
The group has also objected to similar plans by the U.S. Forest Service to clear native habitat in the Cleveland National Forest [6] and the Los Padres National Forest. [7] They argue that removing chaparral, through clearance or prescribed burns, promotes the invasive growth of non-native weeds and grasses which are even more of a fire hazard. [8] They have expressed concern that the combination of habitat clearance and massive wildfires, especially as the climate dries due to human-caused climate change, could eliminate much of the chaparral in southern California within a century. [9]
In April 2010 they came to the defense of Joseph Diliberti, a Vietnam veteran, who eventually lost his home over his refusal to pay a $27,552 charge by a private contractor (Fire Prevention Services, Inc.) that cleared about a half acre of native habitat from his property under direction of the San Diego Rural Fire Protection District. [10] As Diliberti continued to refuse to pay, San Diego County assumed the contractor's forced weed abatement lien. Between fees and interest, the bill grew to more than $72,000. The County of San Diego sold the property during public auction in March 2014.
The California Chaparral Institute has also proposed that residential communities should not be built in the most fire-prone areas. [11]
The Institute began the Chaparral Naturalist Certification program in 2015 to help fill the void in the public's knowledge of the chaparral plant community. It has also published a number of publications on chaparral ecology, fire behavior, and nature education philosophy.
The California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion is in the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome. It is one of the biome's only five Mediterranean chaparral ecoregions in the world.
Chaparral is a shrubland plant community found primarily in California, in southern Oregon and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranean climate and infrequent, high-intensity crown fires.
The Global 200 is the list of ecoregions identified by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the global conservation organization, as priorities for conservation. According to WWF, an ecoregion is defined as a "relatively large unit of land or water containing a characteristic set of natural communities that share a large majority of their species dynamics, and environmental conditions". For example, based on their levels of endemism, Madagascar gets multiple listings, ancient Lake Baikal gets one, and the North American Great Lakes get none.
The California chaparral and woodlands is a terrestrial ecoregion of southwestern Oregon, northern, central, and southern California and northwestern Baja California (Mexico), located on the west coast of North America. It is an ecoregion of the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome, and part of the Nearctic realm.
The ecology of California can be understood by dividing the state into a number of ecoregions, which contain distinct ecological communities of plants and animals in a contiguous region. The ecoregions of California can be grouped into four major groups: desert ecoregions, Mediterranean ecoregions, forested mountains, and coastal forests.
The San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located in the rolling hills of El Chorro Regional Park, between San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay in San Luis Obispo County, within the Central Coast of California region. Its grounds, when completed, will be a 150-acre (61 ha) collection of gardens displaying the diverse plant life of the five Mediterranean climate zones of the world; the Mediterranean Basin, and regions of California, Chile, Australia, and South Africa.
The Northern California coastal forests are a temperate coniferous forests ecoregion of coastal Northern California and southwestern Oregon.
Shrubland, scrubland, scrub, brush, or bush is a plant community characterized by vegetation dominated by shrubs, often also including grasses, herbs, and geophytes. Shrubland may either occur naturally or be the result of human activity. It may be the mature vegetation type in a particular region and remain stable over time, or a transitional community that occurs temporarily as the result of a disturbance, such as fire. A stable state may be maintained by regular natural disturbance such as fire or browsing. Shrubland may be unsuitable for human habitation because of the danger of fire. The term was coined in 1903.
Garrigue or garigue, also known as phrygana, is a type of low scrubland ecoregion and plant community in the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome.
Coastal sage scrub, also known as coastal scrub, CSS, or soft chaparral, is a low scrubland plant community of the California coastal sage and chaparral subecoregion, found in coastal California and northwestern coastal Baja California. It is within the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion, of the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome.
The Coast Ranges of California span 400 miles (644 km) from Del Norte or Humboldt County, California, south to Santa Barbara County. The other three coastal California mountain ranges are the Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges and the Klamath Mountains.
Tetracoccus dioicus, known by the common names red shrubby-spurge and Parry's tetracoccus, is a species of flowering plant.
Lepechinia ganderi is a rare species of perennial shrub in the mint family known by the common name San Diego pitcher sage or Gander's pitcher sage. An aromatic plant with white to lavender flowers, this species is only known from southern San Diego County in California and a small portion of Baja California, occurring on chaparral or coastal sage scrub in metavolcanic soils. Because of its limited range, it is under threat from growing urbanization and increased fire frequency.
The San Ysidro Mountains are a mountain range in southern San Diego County, California and Baja California, Mexico. The mountains are a rugged coastal foothill range of the Peninsular Ranges system. Major peaks include the highest summit of the range, Otay Mountain, and the Cerro San Isidro which forms the southern extrusion of the range on the Mexican side of the border. The majority of the range is within the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, in the United States.
The Blue Oak Ranch Reserve, a unit of the University of California Natural Reserve System, is an ecological reserve and biological field station in Santa Clara County, California. It is located on 3,260 acres (13.2 km2) in the Diablo Range, northwest of Mount Hamilton, at 1,500 ft (460 m) elevation.
The California coastal sage and chaparral is a Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub ecoregion, defined by the World Wildlife Fund, located in southwestern California and northwestern Baja California (Mexico). It is part of the larger California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion. The ecoregion corresponds to the USDA Southern California ecoregion section 261B, and to the EPA Southern California/Northern Baja Coast ecoregion 8.
The California montane chaparral and woodlands is an ecoregion defined by the World Wildlife Fund, spanning 7,900 square miles (20,000 km2) of mountains in the Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, and Coast Ranges of southern and central California. The ecoregion is part of the larger California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion, and belongs to the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome.
The California interior chaparral and woodlands ecoregion covers 24,900 square miles (64,000 km2) in an elliptical ring around the California Central Valley. It occurs on hills and mountains ranging from 300 feet (91 m) to 3,000 feet (910 m). It is part of the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome, with cool, wet winters and hot, dry summers. Temperatures within the coast can range from 53° to 65 °F and 32° to 60 °F within the mountains. Many plant and animal species in this ecoregion are adapted to periodic fire.
Mediterranean forests, woodlands and scrub is a biome defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. The biome is generally characterized by dry summers and rainy winters, although in some areas rainfall may be uniform. Summers are typically hot in low-lying inland locations but can be cool near colder seas. Winters are typically mild to cool in low-lying locations but can be cold in inland and higher locations. All these ecoregions are highly distinctive, collectively harboring 10% of the Earth's plant species.
Monardella viminea is a species of flowering plant in the mint family known by the common name willowy monardella.
Mediterranean California is a Level I ecoregion of North America designated by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) in its North American Environmental Atlas. The region is present only in California and Baja California.