General

How to Think Like a Watershed: Collect, Conserve, and Clean the Water in Santa Barbara

Saturday, 13 November 2004
All day

Organizer: Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

HORT 350: How to Think Like a Watershed: Collect, Conserve, and Clean the Water in Santa Barbara

Saturday, November 13, 9:00 a.m. Noon, and 1:00 4:00 p.m.
LIMIT 25 PLEASE SIGN UP BY NOV 1 TO MAKE SURE COURSE HAPPENS

This workshop explores the factors necessary to maintain regenerative cycles within our healthy watersheds. A series of plans and strategies, based on permaculture techniques utilizing soil-water-plant designs,illustrate successful projects that can be integrated into the community
environmental fabric.

A tour of the watershed beginning at the SB Botanic Garden, the Natural History Museum, Eseling Park and the Arroyo Beach Watershed Resource Center will round out a day of adventure finishing at the restaurant at Arroyo Beach and the Best Management Practices of its owner.
Efforts in ecological restoration and water
harvesting features improve our sense of stewardship and the biological integrity of the ecology of watersheds. Please bring a sack lunch.

Instructor: Dr. Bill Roley

Location: Blaksley Library (SB Botanic Gardens) and the South Coast Watershed Resource Center (Arroyo Burro)

On the South Coast, from Point Conception to Rincon Creek, there are approximately 50 short steep watersheds that start in Santa Ynez Mountains flow, through the foothills and coastal plain and ultimately empty into the Pacific Ocean. The Santa Ynez Mountains are unusual in California because of the east-west alignment. Once part of the ocean floor, they were formed of hard shale and sandstone that was uplifted, folded, faulted and eroded over time. Many of the creeks flowing from these mountains are dry for five or six months a year. When it rains however, large volumes of water move across these areas flushing pollutants and sometimes creating a flood control challenge due to the number of people living in the natural flood plain and their pattern of settlement.

Present day Santa Barbara and surrounding areas feature a vibrant culture with Latinos, European, Asian and Native American influence. The 200 census found that 201,000 people live on the South coast. Within 15 years, this number is expected to increase to 234,000. This growing population lives along a strip of coast 5 miles wide, 26 miles long, bordered on the North by Santa Ynez Mountains and on the South by the Pacific. As our population grows, more pollutants put an increase strain on our watershed system and jeopardize our health. We cannot continue in this way without harming our waterways.

Location:
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden 1212 Mission Canyon Rd
Santa Barbara CA 93105-2126 Blaksley Library

Cost: $40 members/$50 non-members/$25 students