SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. (KEYT) - The Dangermond Preserve consists of over 24,000 acres of relatively untouched coastal California land.
It includes eight miles of coastline from around Point Conception to Jalama State Beach, stretching out toward the Santa Ynez Mountains.
The Nature Conservatory bought the property in 2017 after a $165 million dollar donation from Jack and Laura Dangermond completed the purchase.
"Our primary mission is to protect and preserve this landscape and all the plants and animals that come along with it," said Kelly Easterday, Lead Conservation Technology Manager at the Dangermond Preserve.
The preserve is located just south of Vandenberg Space Force Base, and it is a lot of ground to cover.
"It's massive. We could never cover the whole landscape by foot," Easterday said. "So we need some tools to help us do that."
A partnership with the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab mapped the property using hyperspectral imagery taken from an airplane flying over the property.
"What's really great about this partnership with NASA and the Nature Conservancy is the TNC has really deep knowledge about what's happening on the ground," Easterday said.
A recent study showed that knowledge, when applied to the data collected with NASA JPL, helped identify invasive species, specifically ice plant, through machine learning.
"Through training the model in a variety of different samples and a variety of different days and lights and spectral signatures," said JPL Earth Scientist Dr. Kimberley Miner, "You start to help the machine be able to identify the spectral signatures on its own."
The Nature Conservancy's Kelly Easterday took us on a long drive across the property to an area in need of attention, where ice plant has taken over the landscape.
On the other side of the road where the invasive species has been removed you can see native plants are starting to come back.
Ice plant is native to South Africa and was originally planted by the railroad to stabilize hillsides. It's a common ground cover along the coast.
"We know now that it quickly invades," Easterday said. "It out-competes other native species. It becomes a real problem for native species to thrive because it changes the soil composition. It soaks up all the water, and it just rapidly spreads."
There's 1000 acres of ice plant on the Dangermond Preserve. The Coastal Commission has mandated at least 300 acres of it be removed.
"It's going to be a Herculean effort," Easterday said.
Volunteers are helping remove the ice plant. Remote sensing can help find it, and other invasive species before they become a bigger issue.
This is just one of many conservation and education projects happening at the Dangermond Preserve. Public access is restricted, but there are occasional guided walks and volunteer days that can be reserved on their website.
The study on applying machine learning to biodiversity management also identified native perennial grass patches at the UCSB Sedgwick Reserve in the Santa Ynez Valley. UCSB and Columbia University also participated in the research study.
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