DonateUnderstanding Biodiversity
Observing Nature
There Is Still So Much To Learn
Effective plant, lichen, and ecosystem conservation starts with the basics: biodiversity exploration, documentation, and study. At Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, our botanists and lichenologist endeavor to better understand California’s rich flora through the application of a wide variety of techniques, from field study to taxonomy to phylogenomics. All our work contributes to and benefits from our natural history collections, which include the Clifton Smith Herbarium, the Lichenarium, and the Fungarium.
Biodiversity’s Impact
Research, development, and creation of the book “A Flora of Santa Catalina Island,” 2014–2022
Capturing California’s flowers — using digital images to investigate phenological change in a biodiversity hot spot, 2018–2022
San Nicolas Island meta-barcoding for island fox diet analysis, 2019–2022. (Photo: Chien C. Lee)
Epiphytes on coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), since 2015 (ongoing)
Lichen epiphytes on epiphytes of Coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), since 2020 (ongoing) (Photo: Tonatiuh Trejo-Cantwell)
San Clemente Island terrestrial invertebrate biodiversity and rare plant–pollinator networks study, 2019–2022
Searching for spatial, temporal, and taxonomic gaps in a comprehensive array of Channel Islands biological specimens to guide future research and management, 2020–2021