On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the UC Natural Reserve System (NRS), in 1985, Professor and NRS co-founder Kenneth S. Norris foresaw that

the specific educational value of the NRS will always be unpredictable. Experience teaches us that scholars of many kinds will use the reserves. There will be botanists, geologists, entomologists, naturalists, and scientists from many other disciplines as well. Writers, photographers, and poets should also feel free to apply.

These people are going to uncover new stories of the animals and plants and the geology and soils of natural systems. We can't know now what scientific questions might arise, but we can make sure that resources to answer those questions are available. What we are doing is opening the doors and providing the opportunities for those who will follow in our footsteps. (Natural Reserve System / The First Twenty Years. Regents of the University of California, 1985, p. 24.)

In this publication, we present an account of the use of NRS sites by University of California courses. Instructional use of the NRS is remarkably faithful to the Norris vision. Appendices to this report offer courses titles (and descriptions), tabulated by campus (Appendix A) and by reserve (Appendix B). More detailed accounts of the experiences offered to students in ten such courses, representing a broad range of disciplines, comprise the middle section of this report.

Distribution of Courses by Discipline

In 2003-04, the most recent year for which near-complete instructional data were available, 131 University of California courses (including one UC extension course) utilized NRS reserves. The extensive instructional use of NRS reserves by many other academic institutions is not documented here. We have classified UC courses into five categories: biology, physical sciences, environmental management, social sciences/art, and education. Below are listed the disciplines or subjects included within each of these broad categories. Where a course included material appropriate to classification within more than one category, it was placed on the basis of the area of primary emphasis in the course description. The distribution of courses among the five categories is shown in Figure 1 opposite.

The biology category encompasses courses in ecology, entomology, general biology, herpetology, horticulture, marine biology, parasitology, physiology, plant biology, restoration biology, taxonomy, toxicology, and zoology.

The physical sciences category includes courses in astrobiology, astronomy, climate studies, geology, geomorphology, introduction to physical sciences, landscape ecology, petrology, and diving instruction.

The environmental management category includes analysis of environmental data, atmospheric chemistry, dynamics of global environmental change, human effects on the global environment, and shoreline preservation.

The social sciences/art category is particularly broad and includes anthropology, archaeology, nature and culture, environmental ethics, geography, global sustainability, history, drawing and painting, and photography.

The education category was represented by two courses in science education for teachers.