Past Events – Love Your Wetlands Day

Learn more about the past Love Your Wetlands Days

Love Your Wetlands Day 2025

Activities

Science Speakers

Photos

Community Booths

Maps

Love Your Wetlands Day 2025

Activities

Birding

Community Booths: Connected with local environmental organizations

Field Station Celebration: Celebrated the opening of UC San Diego’s Kendall-Frost Reserve Field Station and Community Learning Center with cake

Fish Seining: Explored the fish and invertebrates of Kendall-Frost Marsh Reserve with Dr. Drew Talley

Kayak Cleanup: Explored the marsh on a free guided cleanup tour with kayaks provided by Aqua Adventures

Marsh Cleanup Walks: Joined guided marsh cleanup efforts with trash sorting by Dr. Theresa Talley

Mural Painting

Nature Walks: Experienced our native plants with short hikes guided by members of UC San Diego’s Cleland lab

Plant Scavenger hunt: Through the Hear My Name interactive signage from partners at Tipey Joa Native Warriors and Climate Science Alliance, we heard the original names of these plants and learned about their connections to people, place, and a changing climate.

Ridgway’s rail raft building: Helped build floating nesting rafts to support the endangered light-footed Ridgway’s rail

Science Talks: Heard local wetland scientists share research findings

Song: A performance from Mariachi Internacional San Diego

Tule Boat Building: Learned to construct traditional Kumeyaay tule boats

Science Speakers and Their Talk Topics

Aiyana Reissman
- Flocking Together- A Journey to Save Species and Spaces
  - Exploring the multifaceted efforts contributing to the recovery of the endangered Light-footed Ridgway’s rail and the restoration of their critical wetland habitats. We will examine the integration of environmental education, animal care practices, and scientific research driving these efforts. The talk will highlight the collaborative approaches employed and present a framework that can serve as a model for effective ecological recovery initiatives.
Hiram Moreno (en Español)
- Conectando con los Humedales – Conservación Transfronteriza a través del Estudio de Aves en Peligro de Extinción
  - En esta charla, exploraremos cómo el estudio de el Light-footed Ridgway’s Rail y el California Black Rail ha revelado la continuidad ecológica entre ambos lados de la frontera, resaltando la importancia de proteger estos sistemas conectados.
  - Descubre los esfuerzos de monitoreo, los logros recientes en la i dentificación denuevas poblaciones y cómo la conservación de humedales fortalece la relación entre ciencia, comunidades y gestión transfronteriza
James Nieh
- Pesticides, Viruses, and Hope: How Communities Can Help Pollinators
  - Pollinators, like bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, are essential for healthy ecosystems and the food we eat. Yet, they are facing serious challenges, including pesticides and diseases. This talk will explore how UC San Diego became a Bee Campus USA and how the City of San Diego became a Bee City USA, both part of a national movement to protect pollinators. I will share why honey bees are important, the threats they face, and how these same threats—like pesticides and viruses—also harm native bees and other pollinators. By working together as a community, we can take simple but meaningful steps to support pollinator health and create a brighter future for both people and nature.
Jeffrey Crooks
- Hydromodification and San Diego’s Coastal Wetlands
  - Hydromodification refers to changing the natural flow patterns of water in a watershed due to human activities, and coastal San Diego has been heavily impacted by such alterations. In addition to dam building and river diversion, one of the primary impacts has been the import of much of San Diego’s water from outside the region, with some of it eventually spilling into coastal wetlands as “urban drool.” This addition of freshwater can have a variety of impacts, including changes to both plant and animal communities in coastal salt marshes.
Kathryn Baheshti
- History and status of San Dieguito Wetlands Restoration Project
  - The San Dieguito Wetlands Restoration project serves as out-of-kind mitigation for impacts to nearshore fish populations in the region caused by the operations of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. To assess mitigation project performance, UC Santa Barbara leads annual monitoring (2012 – ongoing) of the restored San Dieguito Wetlands and reference sites (Carpinteria Salt Marsh, Mugu Lagoon, Los Penasquitos Lagoon, Tijuana Estuary). This talk will provide a brief over of the history of the project and its performance.
Liliana Ortiz Serrato (en Español)
- Charrán Mínimo y Chorlo Nevado: más allá de las fronteras
  - El Charrán Mínimo y el Chorlo Nevado son dos especies de aves migratorias que comparten el territorio de ambos lados de la frontera. California y el noroeste de Baja California forman parte de una misma región, caracterizada por su vegetación, clima y, por supuesto, su fauna, incluyendo una rica diversidad de aves. Ambas especies, aunque diferentes en sus patrones migratorios, reflejan la interconexión de los ecosistemas que comparten, trascendiendo fronteras físicas en su búsqueda por sobrevivir y prosperar.
Michael Amoa-Bosompem
- Elucidating the Transmission Dynamics of West Nile Virus in San Diego using eDNA/eRNA.
  - Arboviruses are infectious viruses transmitted by arthropods, with mosquitoes and ticks the most important vectors. West Nile virus (WNV) is the most common mosquito-borne arbovirus in the United States, and present in all 58 counties in California – transmitted primarily by the Culex tarsalis mosquito. WNV is maintained in nature in the bird and Culex mosquito population, with Humans and horses as accidental hosts. Nonetheless, infection with WNV can cause mild to severe illness, and can be fatal – it is therefore of public health importance. Prevention and control of WNV is dependent on a deep understanding of the transmission dynamics in San Diego including, reservoir species, main amplifying host(s) and annual incidence. We have taken advantage of the natural interactions between species and their environment to design a non-invasive eDNA/eRNA approach to outline the transmission cycle of WNV, outlining the main species maintaining the transmission cycle of WNV in San Diego, and periods of peak WNV activity. The findings of this study will inform WNV prevention and control strategies.
Octavio Aburto (en Español)
- La función de los humedales en tiempos de cambio climático.
  - Para entender la importancia de restaurar y proteger los manglares y marismas, especialmente en años fríos cuando hay muchos incendios.
Pat Pannuto
- Smart Mud-Imagining Wetlands that Automatically Monitor Health and Detect Pollution
  - Wetlands are rich, complex ecosystems. At their heart are billions of tiny bacteria, some of whom are special bacteria that emit tiny electrical signals whenever they “breathe” (we call these “exoelectrogens”). Specially designed structures encourage a bunch of these bacteria to grow and work together and form a “Microbial Fuel Cell”, which acts like a bacteria-powered battery. When wetlands are healthy and nutrient-rich, these bacteria are extra productive. When pollutants such as heavy metals arrive, the bacteria slow down and change their behavior. Scientists at UC San Diego are exploring how we can build sensors that measure this “bio-battery” output to estimate wetland health in real-time and to provide early-warning systems when new pollutants enter the ecosystem.
Rachel Smith
- Using science to meet the goals of the San Dieguito Wetland Restoration Project
  - Science can help us meet the goals of the San Dieguito Wetland Restoration Project. In this talk, we provide examples of how we use long-term monitoring and experiments to increase vegetation cover, understand underperformance of fish and invertebrates, and assess mechanisms of habitat transition at the restored wetland. Together, these approaches support adaptive management of the San Dieguito Wetland Restoration Project.
Ryan Hechinger
- Parasites–the marvelous dark matter of our estuary food webs
- Every animal and plant species that you can think about in our estuaries is fed on by one or more parasite species. But these parasitic “consumers” are typically ignored in ecological work in our estuaries. Our goal is to parasites into the picture, alongside the other animals and plants in estuary food webs. We find that parasites compose a substantial part of the species diversity and play a massive role in the flow of energy in estuary food webs. We can’t understand how estuary ecosystems work without factoring in parasites. And let’s not forget that parasites are just plain fascinating!
Xavius Boone
- Understanding How Fish and Humans Interact With Our San Diego Estuaries
  - When we think of ecosystem management we oftentimes think of protecting and enhancing an area to benefit animal species. A common strategy to protect habitat is to restrict human access to the area. However, many times a goal of management is also to protect and enhance the recreation opportunities for our human communities as well. How do we balance these sometimes opposing goals?