Year: 2014

February 2014

Posted on | by MMPC
Wayne 2003
Wayne Ferren at the 2003 Symposium. Photo by Robert Bernstein.

Second Symposium
It is eleven years since the first More Mesa Symposium was held at UCSB in 2003. Because a lot has happened since that time, MMPC is planning a second symposium, to be held on 15 March 2014. We are very excited to report that Wayne Ferren has agreed to take time from his busy schedule to lead and coordinate the scientific aspects of the symposium. Wayne, an eminent national ecologist, managed the first Biological Resources Study of More Mesa and is well known for his special knowledge of wetlands, vernal pools and especially More Mesa. The morning session will feature technical papers given by knowledgeable experts on important aspects of More Mesa: Ecology, Birds, Development and Legal Issues. The morning will end with a Panel Discussion/Q&A session. We are indebted to the Bren School at UCSB for their gracious offer to host the symposium. Electronic invitations to the Symposium will be sent to all our supporters in the beginning of February. Look for these invitations and register on-line. Space is limited and first priority will be given to those on our More Mesa supporter list.

January 2014

Posted on | by MMPC

Website Update
As you can see, our MMPC website has been upgraded and completely revamped. We hope you find that the new formats, layouts and additions, make our award winning website (see April 2010 news) better than ever!

  • Existing pages: The pages created prior to 2014,  were transferred to the new site, and can now be searched using the search tool found at the end of the sidebar.
  • Publications: Access to these documents has been made clearer with graphic links. The pages with the graphic links can be easily found from either the menubar or the sitemap.
  • New Pages: The old photo pages for plants, birds and insects were completely changed to display the photos in easily edited and updated slideshows. The species are grouped into different slideshows with species names for each slide, and with multiple slideshows per page. The iNaturalist page was also changed to provide better access to photos and maps of species observations from More Mesa on that site. There are two information pages describing these changes and are useful to read for all visitors to the site:  [HTML1][HTML1]
    • About > Mobile
    • About > iNaturalist
  • Mobile Friendly: One of the most exciting changes, is that the MMPC website can now be read using mobile devices! This means you can read the monthly news … at a glance … from your cell phone. And, on a more scientific note, plants, animals and insects of More Mesa can be possibly identified in the field, if a photo of them exists in the pages below. This feature will be useful to those who file sightings reports, researchers, and those users of More Mesa who simply “want to know”. [HTML1][HTML1]
    • Birds > Bird Photos
    • Birds > Birds on iNaturalist
    • Insects > Insect Photos
    • Insects > Insects on iNaturalist
    • Plants > Plant Photos
    • Plants > Plants on iNaturalist

As in any large undertaking, there are bound to be errors. If you find any, and have the time to report them, or have any other comments or suggestions, that would be appreciated (see Contact page). A good deal of this text has been repeated in the About > Site page so that it can be easily found, in say, a year from now when this post is buried in the archives.

Many thanks and kudos go to Lynn Watson, our web site manager, for all the hours and hard work it took to bring about this transformation of our site.

Welcome to our new and exciting site and …

Happy New Year!

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Valerie Olson and the More Mesa Preservation Coalition

Happy New Year