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Pepperwood Preserve is a 3,117-acre plot of land owned by the Pepperwood Foundation, located in the Mayacamas Mountains in the coast ranges of California near the towns of Santa Rosa and Healdsburg in Sonoma County. The preserve includes the headwaters of Mark West Creek, Franz Creek, and Brooks Creek all of which feed into the Russian River. The highest point on the preserve is 1,560 feet (480 m).
The California Academy of Science sold the preserve in 2005 to Healdsburg residents Herb and Jane Dwight, who sit on the five-member Pepperwood Foundation board of directors and have donated over $20 million for land and facilities at the preserve. Herb Dwight is the former CEO of Optical Coating Laboratory in Santa Rosa. The facilities include a $9 million, 9,400-square-foot, solar-powered center for environmental research and education. The preserve has an agreement with Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State University to use the site for field studies. Lisa Micheli, with a Ph.D. in geomorphology, was hired as executive director in 2009. [1]
Pacific Gas and Electric installed a microgrid at the site to allow it to remove above-ground power lines. [2]
Pepperwood has a Mediterranean climate that includes cool wet winters (November–April) and hot dry summers (May–October). Streams are intermittent. During the wet winter, standing water can be found in numerous small ponds.
Pepperwood's geology is complex with exposures of Glen Ellen sediments, Sonoma volcanics and Franciscan metamorphics. There are several areas with serpentine soils.
Pepperwood includes redwood and Douglas-fir forests on mesic sites and grassland, woodland, and chaparral on xeric sites. Wetlands are composed of riparian forests, springs, marshes, ponds, and vernal pools.
Sonoma County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, its population was 488,863. Its seat of government and largest city is Santa Rosa.
Healdsburg is a city located in Sonoma County, California, United States. At the 2010 census, the city had a population of 11,254.
Santa Rosa is a city in and the county seat of Sonoma County, in the North Bay region of the Bay Area in California. Its population as of the 2020 census was 178,127. It is the largest city in California's Wine Country and Redwood Coast. It is the fifth most populous city in the Bay Area after San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont; and the 25th-most populous city in California.
Windsor is an incorporated town in Sonoma County, California, United States. The town is 9 miles north of Santa Rosa and 63 miles north of San Francisco. The population was 26,344 as of the 2020 census.
Wine Country is a region of California, in the northern San Francisco Bay Area, known worldwide as a premier wine-growing region. The region is famed for its wineries, its cuisine, Michelin star restaurants, boutique hotels, luxury resorts, historic architecture, and culture. Viticulture and wine-making have been practiced in the region since the Spanish missionaries from Mission San Francisco Solano established the first vineyards in 1812.
Sonoma State University is a public university in Sonoma County, California, that is one of the smallest members of the California State University (CSU) system. Sonoma State offers 92 bachelor's degree programs, 19 master's degree programs, and 11 teaching credentials. The university is a Hispanic-serving institution.
Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC) is a public community college in Santa Rosa, California with an additional campus in Petaluma and centers in surrounding Sonoma County. Santa Rosa Junior College was modeled as a feeder school for the University of California system. SRJC is governed by the Sonoma County Junior College District (SCJCD).
Trione-Annadel State Park is a state park of California in the United States. It is situated at the northern edge of Sonoma Valley and is adjacent to Spring Lake Regional Park in Santa Rosa. It offers many recreational activities within its 5,092-acre (2,061 ha) property.
Area codes 707 and 369 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for the northwestern part of the U.S. state of California. The area codes serve part of the northern San Francisco Bay Area, as well as the North Coast. Major cities in the area codes include Napa, Sebastopol, Vallejo, Benicia, Fairfield, Santa Rosa, Windsor, Healdsburg, Rohnert Park, Petaluma, Fort Bragg, Rio Vista, Crescent City, Eureka, Clearlake, Vacaville, Dixon, and Ukiah. 707 was created by a split of area code 415 on March 1, 1959. Area code 369 was added to the numbering plan area (NPA) on February 1, 2023, to form an overlay numbering plan in the service area.
The Santa Rosa Plateau is an upland plateau and southeastern extension of the Santa Ana Mountains in Riverside County, southern California. It is bounded by the rapidly urbanizing Inland Empire cities of Murrieta and Temecula to the northeast and southeast, respectively.
Limnanthes vinculans, the Sebastopol meadowfoam, is an endangered species of meadowfoam found only in the Laguna de Santa Rosa in Sonoma County, California, United States and an area slightly to the south in the Americano Creek and Washoe Creek watersheds. The name vinculans derives from the Latin root vinculum, meaning "a bond, a cord." The specific epithet vinculans means linking or bonding, in reference to the sharing of some characters of L. vinculans with L. douglasii (R.Br) and L. bakeri.
The Russian River is a southward-flowing river that drains 1,485 sq mi (3,850 km2) of Sonoma and Mendocino counties in Northern California. With an annual average discharge of approximately 1,600,000 acre feet (2.0 km3), it is the second-largest river flowing through the nine-county Greater San Francisco Bay Area, with a mainstem 115 mi (185 km) long.
The Fairfield Osborn Preserve is a 450-acre nature reserve situated on the northwest flank of Sonoma Mountain in Sonoma County, California. There are eight plant communities within the property, oak woodland being the dominant type. Other communities include chaparral, Douglas fir woodland, native Bunch grass, freshwater marsh, vernal pool, pond and riparian woodland. The flora is extremely diverse including many native trees, shrubs, wildflowers, grasses, lichens and mosses. A diverse fauna inhabits this area including black-tailed deer, coyote, bobcat and an occasional mountain lion; moreover, there are abundant avifauna, amphibians, reptiles and insects.
The Laguna de Santa Rosa is a 22-mile-long (35 km) wetland complex that drains a 254-square-mile (660 km2) watershed encompassing most of the Santa Rosa Plain in Sonoma County, California, United States.
Audubon Canyon Ranch (ACR) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit environmental conservation and education organization headquartered in Stinson Beach, Marin County, California, on the eastern shore of Bolinas Lagoon. The lands upon which ACR operates are within the ancestral territories of the Coast Miwok, Southern Pomo and Wappo peoples. ACR recognizes that Indigenous communities are very much alive today and striving to protect and maintain relationships with cultural and natural resources on ACR lands; they acknowledge that Indigenous lands are occupied by them and others.
Windsor Creek is an 8.8-mile-long (14.2 km) southward-flowing stream in Sonoma County, California, United States, which rises near Healdsburg, California, and feeds into Mark West Creek west of the Sonoma County Airport. Its waters reach the Pacific Ocean by way of the Russian River.
The Snow Mountain Wilderness is a 60,076-acre (243.12 km2) federally designated wilderness area located 65 miles (105 km) north of Santa Rosa, California, USA in the Mendocino National Forest. The U.S. Congress passed the California Wilderness Act of 1984 which created 23 new wilderness areas including Snow Mountain. It lies within the North Coast Range of mountains.
The Galbreath Wildlands Preserve is a 3,670-acre (14.9 km2) nature reserve in Mendocino County, California, United States, established in 2004 in honor of Fred Burckhalter Galbreath (1901-2000). The preserve, a former sheep ranch, is located in the Outer Coast Range 17 miles (27 km) from the coast, near Yorkville. The Preserve features woodland, forest and grassland communities that lie at the edge of coastal fog influence. Lands are in the upper Rancheria sub-basin of the Navarro Watershed and contain 1st - 5th order streams. The Preserve's forests are primarily second-growth coniferous forest and hardwood.
The 40-acre Los Guillicos Preserve lies in the Valley of the Moon at the foot of Hood Mountain in the Mayacamas Mountain Range. Oak woodlands of the Preserve are within the Sonoma Creek Watershed. This land was included in the 1837 Rancho Los Guilicos Mexican Land Grant. Since 2011, the Preserve has been managed by Sonoma State University's Center for Environmental Inquiry.
LandPaths or Land Partners through stewardship is an organization formed in 1996 to foster a love of the land in Sonoma County, California. The organization owns open space preserves throughout Sonoma County, and encourages outdoor experiences where people can learn to understand and appreciate natural environments.