Smithsonian Citizen Science Week
April 5 – 10, 2009

People in partnership with scientist, to study the planet, its plants and animals

All About Wildflowers First Sundays Program

Come to the museum for this family fun day all about wildflowers. Learn what makes a wildflower a wildflower, make your own pressed flowers, and find out about designing a children’s meadow and other lawn alternative landscapes that use less water.

Riverside Metropolitan Museum 3580 Mission Inn Avenue Riverside, CA 92501 (951) 826-5273

Day Field Trip and Wildflower Walk with Rusty Russell and Tracy Albrecht

Santa Rosa - San Jacinto Mountains National Monument Visitor Center 51-500 Highway 74 Palm Desert, CA 92260 Event Information /RSVP: Riverside Metropolitan Museum (951) 826 – 5273 Visitor Center: (760) 862-9984. About Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument

Directions: From the 10 East Exit Monterey Avenue (exit 131) Right on Monterey Avenue Becomes Pines to Palms Highway CA-74 W

Participants should meet at the Visitor Center and bring sun protection, closed-toe shoes, and drinking water.  Trip consists of driving and easy to moderate walking.

Smithsonian botanist Rusty Russell and naturalist Tracy Albrecht of the Santa Rosa -San Jacinto Mountains National Monument will lead a road tour and series of short hikes -  beginning at the Monument visitor center in Palm Desert – to explore the floral transition from desert wash to mountain meadow.   The Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains rise abruptly from the desert floor, reaching an elevation of 10,834 feet at the summit of Mount San Jacinto. Providing a picturesque backdrop to local communities, the National Monument significantly contributes to the Coachella Valley's lure as a popular resort and retirement community. It is also a desirable backcountry destination that can be accessed via trails from both the valley floor and the alpine village of Idyllwild.

California’s Fading Wildflowers Lecture and Book signing by Richard Minnich , PhD

Richard A. Minnich is Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of California, Riverside. He is also the author of The Biogeography of Fire in the San Bernadino Mountains of California: A Historical Survey and Land of Chamise and Pines: Historical Descrip­tions of Northern Baja California (both from UC Press).

Dr. Minnich will discuss his research into changes in California’s landscape over the past 300 years, and how large areas of the state’s original plant cover have been replaced by introduced “weeds”.  Following his lecture, he will be signing copies of California’s Fading Wildflowers: Lost Legacy and Biological Invasions. 2008 University of California Press.

Early Spanish explorers in the late eighteenth century found springtime California covered with spectacular carpets of wildflowers from San Francisco to San Diego. Yet today, invading plant species have devastated this nearly forgotten botanical heritage. In this lively, vividly detailed work, Minnich synthesizes a unique and wide-ranging array of sources—from the historic accounts of those early explorers to the writings of early American botanists in the nineteenth century, newspaper accounts in the twentieth century, and modern ecological theory—to give the most comprehensive historical analysis available of the dramatic transformation of California’s wildflower prairies. At the same time, his groundbreaking book challenges much current thinking on the subject, critically evaluating the hypothesis that perennial bunchgrasses were once a dominant feature of California’s landscape and instead arguing that wildflowers filled this role. As he examines the changes in the state’s landscape over the past three centuries, Minnich brings new perspectives to topics including restoration ecology, conservation, and fire management in a book that will change our of view of native California.

Book Order/Purchase Information
Day of Event Book Sales Available. Cash, Check, Visa, and MasterCard Accepted. To order online: www.ucpress.edu Toll-free phone (800) 777-4726 • fax (800) 999-1958 Source Code: 08D9834 (When ordering online, please enter this code in the special instructions box.)

Citizen Science Day

A day of activities and programs for families with emphases on regional botany; observing, recording, and caring for nature around you; a botany lab  including demonstrations of how plants are collected, preserved, identified & the results of field collecting analyzed.

Presentations/booths by collaborators –

• Riverside-Corona Resource Conservation District
• California Native Plant Society
• San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society
• Riverside Land Conservancy
• Riverside County Multi Species Habitat Conservation program
• Sierra Club
• UCR Cooperative Extension & Conservation Biology program
• UCR Herbarium
• City of Riverside Parks & Recreation
• ESRI
• Cal Alive! Exploring Biodiversity is a resource for educators in California and combines interactive computer technology and key science concepts in a new approach to teaching science and natural history in middle school. Cal Alive! supports many educational standards by teaching science through interactive multimedia and field activities. Science becomes meaningful to students and teachers by focusing on the unique habitats of California. Students use the Cal Alive! materials to examine the underlying scientific concepts leading to the biological, geological and climatic diversity in California. The exhibits will have hands-on activities available.

Workshop: The Record of Southern California Biodiversity, and a Role for Citizen Science

A day of presentations and roundtable discussions, bringing together professionals and citizen-based programs, educators, and science students.  This workshop will gather together scientists and project managers who are studying historic changes to the biodiversity of Southern California, with a primary aim of developing a dialogue centered on ways to collaborate among these projects in a mutually beneficial, and more efficient, way.  The agenda will include a focus on citizen science as an educational process and as a resource to ongoing scientific studies.

Smithsonian Citizen Science Week	California’s Fading Wildflowers” Lecture and Book signing by Richard Minnich , PhD
Flyer	Flyer and Book Order Form

Citizen Science Week Goals

•  to increase citizen awareness and appreciation of the region’s environments
• show how everyone can play a vital role in the preservation and conservation of our natural resources
• demonstrate how everyone can enjoy “science” 
• provide a forum for the community to meet and gather information directly from noted scholars from the Smithsonian and other institutions

Meet the Scientist in Residence: Rusty Russell, Collections Manager, US National Herbarium   Botany, MRC-166    National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution  

“The Smithsonian Institution/National Museum of Natural History's 125 million specimens document the biological and physical changes that have affected the earth over time, and our reputation as a world-class institution makes it possible for us to elevate local issues to the national stage. As Collections Manager of the U.S. National Herbarium, I have spent more than 20 years developing programs that take advantage of the rich store of historical data that attends the almost 5 million plant specimens that comprise our collection. And in networking our resources with those of other regional or local plant collections, such as UC-Riverside or Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, we are attempting to address significant community issues that are scalable to the national or even international level. The Santa Rosa-San Jacinto Mountains National Monument area presents us with both a challenge and an opportunity to demonstrate the enormous value of historical collection data in assisting and informing land management decisions, educating and involving the local community, and creating tools to more quickly collect and integrate data into future planning.”