Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern (Couldn't the Bureaucrats Just Call it a Preserve?): Spring Update

Welcome to one of the most unique ecosystems and habitats in California's wealth of incredible places. It was ignored initially by miners in the region because it had no gold (the Mother Lode is a scant two miles away).  It was more recently ignored because it had no grass for grazing and poor soils incapable of growing anything "useful". The Bureau of Land Management, tasked in its early days of giving away land by way of the Homestead Act couldn't give the free acreage away at all. All but ignored by federal government, the absentee owner, it became an unofficial garbage dump, unauthorized shooting range, and unsanctioned off-road vehicle route. 

Why were the soils so poor in nutrients and toxic to plant growth? It was the underlying rocks: the serpentine and other ultramafic rocks associated with the Melones Fault in the Sierra Nevada Mother Lode. The soils developed on these rocks were severely deficient in important macronutrients, and contaminated (so-to-speak) by toxic metals. Most plants, including most grasses, cannot survive in these soils. Some select species tolerate the soils, and a few rare ones thrive. It is literally a different world, and as you can see in the picture above, the change is abrupt, as the prairie grasses and oak woodland suddenly give way to ceanothus or buckbrush and gray pine.

By the late 1980s the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency in charge of the Red Hills area, belatedly recognized (with the encouragement and assistance of community and environmental activists) the unique nature of the ecosystem here, and declared it an "Area of Critical Environmental Concern", the kind of a designation that only a bureaucrat could love. It turned out that this landscape contained a large variety of endemic species found almost nowhere else, including a unique fish species, the Red Hills Roach (Lavinia symmetricus). Clean-ups were organized, and minimal tourists facilities (trails, parking areas, vault toilets, and a nature trail) were constructed. 

Bitter root (Lewisia rediviva)

For much of the year, especially in the hot dry summer, there is little to recommend about the Red Hills. Most of the plants are dead and gone to seed. But for a few months during the cooler wetter spring season, the hills come alive. It turned out that many of the plants adapted to living in these soils produce a vivid display of color when they bloom.

California Goldfields (Lasthenia californica) and scattered poppies

We took a bit longer to make our way up to the Red Hills this year, in large part because there hasn't been more than a spatter of rain since December. We are in the midst of another year of lingering drought. But in the end we decided to have a look, and although it came nowhere near the pyrotechnics of color of past years, there was more than enough to make for a satisfying excursion.

Poppy, a flower that seems able to grow in just about any environment California can fling at it.

Enjoy a little bit of color!

Monkeyflower (Erythranthe sp.)

Blue Dicks (Brodiaea)

The parking area and trailhead at Red Hills ACEC

Poppy sp. and Blue Dick (Brodiaea)

Serpentine

The Red Hills got their name from the red soils that develop on the ultramafic rocks, including serpentine. The rocks are rich in iron, thus the red color, but fresh surfaces of the rocks are generally shades of green, as can be seen above.

Paintbrush sp.

Lupine sp.

Lupine sp.

The Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern is in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Chinese Camp off of Highway 120. If you want to learn more, or pay a visit, information about the Red Hills can be found on this BLM website, and the trail and road map can be found here.
 

California's Rarest Ecosystems: The Serpentine Soils of the Red Hills (Part Two of a Two-part Miniseries)

 

Imagine a world turned upside down and inside out. A place where the underworld realm is exposed to view, where all is out of equilibrium. It sounds like the introduction to a dystopian horror movie, but in this case, it is a description of one of the truly rare and unique ecosystems in California: the serpentine soils. 

This is the long-delayed second part of my two-part miniseries on rare ecosystems. Part one on the prairies and vernal pools was published back in April.

The Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern is a rather clumsy name for one of the most unique places in all of California. It comes by the name righteously, as can be seen in the Google Earth image above. The soils have a distinct red-brown color, even though the serpentine-rich rocks they come from are generally green or black in color. And these are truly alien rocks. They are not part of the surface realm; they are the materials of the earth's depths, far below the crust that we live on. The earth's mantle lies at depths of 15 to 40 miles beneath the surface and is composed of iron and magnesium-rich minerals like olivine and pyroxene. These minerals may be stable deep within the earth's interior, but if they are exposed at the earth they are out of chemical equilibrium and subject to rapid reactions with oxygen, water, carbon dioxide, and acids in soils. The iron quite literally rusts during oxidation.

The thing about soils rich in iron and magnesium is that they are poor in macronutrients like potassium and calcite, and include some toxins like selenium or nickel. The vast majority of plants cannot tolerate these chemical conditions. But there are a few.

At the west end of Red Hills the oak woodland gives way to a gray pine-ceanothus scrubland

The change is stark. Driving up Red Hills Road from the west, one passes through typical foothills oak woodlands, with a thick covering of grass. And then just like that the grass disappears along with the oaks. One enters an area dominated by Buckbrush with the occasional Foothills Pine (Gray Pine). In many areas, barely any vegetation covers the rocks at all.

The region was long seen as having no particular value. The ultramafic (mantle-derived rocks) were related to the gold-bearing lodes, but rarely had any valuable ores in and of themselves. Despite the Homestead Act in the late 1800s that sought to give citizens free land in the west, there were no takers in the Red Hills. No useful crops could be grown on the soils, which was a requirement for owning the property. For many decades the Red Hills were used as a de facto garbage dump and shooting range.

By the late 1980s the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency in charge of the Red Hills area, belatedly recognized the unique nature of the ecosystem here, and declared it an "area of critical environmental concern". Clean-ups were organized, and minimal tourists facilities (trails, parking areas, vault toilets, and a nature trail) were constructed. Today the park (why not just call it a park, after all?) is a local favorite for wildflower enthusiasts, birdwatchers, and hikers, especially in the spring.

So what is the geologic story of this strange and wonderful landscape?

The Mother Lode is famous as the source of the ores during the Gold Rush in 1848-53, and many people know of the association of quartz veins with the gold. What is less known is that the Mother Lode consists mostly of metamorphic rocks like slate, greenstone, and marble, not the granite that is found in the higher parts of the Sierra Nevada. These metamorphic rocks are the twisted and baked remains of sea floor muds and silts, lime from tropical reefs and shelves, and volcanic rock from the oceanic crust. These collections of crustal rocks (called "exotic terranes") were transported across the Pacific Ocean and slammed (in the geologic sense; they moved at maybe 2 inches a year) into the western edge of the North American continent, mostly in the late Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras (the Mesozoic era, from around 251 to 65 million years ago, is best known as the "age of the dinosaurs"). The different terranes are separated from one another by major fault systems.

California Goldfields (Lasthenia californica)

The rocks of the Red Hills were part of the huge fault systems and included slices of the earth's mantle, consisting of the dunite and peridotite mentioned above. The original mantle rocks were mostly metamorphosed into serpentine on their upward journey along the fault systems.

Blue Dicks (Brodiaea) and Poppies

Serpentine (or more properly serpentinite) was declared the California State Rock in the 1960s, in part for its association with asbestos, which is a fibrous crystal form of serpentine. Asbestos was a "wonder mineral" from at least Roman times, as it was fireproof, and could be woven into a fabric. As fire insulation it no doubt saved many lives, but there was a cost. Those who were constantly exposed to asbestos were far more likely to contract a deadly disease called mesothelioma. It is now a cottage industry for people in the business of removing asbestos from older buildings.

There was a political brouhaha in 2010 when some groups tried to change the state rock to something else, but geologists objected on the grounds that it was an appropriate symbol of the state due to the research value of having mantle rocks at the surface, and the value as an ore for other important metals such as chromite (used in armor and stainless steel), and mercury (used original to separate gold from its host ore). The proposed bill was never voted on.

The Red Hills are semiarid with only a few creeks that dry up quickly as the summer progresses. But a few small springs and pools persist through the year and in those pools is an endemic fish, the Red Hills Roach, a distinct subspecies of the California Roach. It is found nowhere else in the world. We saw some of them a few weeks ago during our visit, but the video below is from an earlier, wetter year.

The rest of the photos are some of the flowers we saw this year, some old friends, and one or two new discoveries.

Poppies

Five Spot (Nemophila maculata)

Monkeyflower (Erythranthe sp.)

Bitter root (Lewisia rediviva)

The last flower was one we've not noticed before. It seems to be a Fort Millers Clarkia, but I am open to correction!

Fort Miller Clarkia (?) (Clarkia williamsonii)

There are just a few flowers left in the Red Hills as of last Friday, but to see the spectacular show you'll need to wait until next spring. But...the rocks are always there!

The Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern is in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Chinese Camp off of Highway 120. If you want to learn more, or pay a visit, information about the Red Hills can be found on this BLM website, and the trail and road map can be found here.

Tales from the Semi-Super-Bloom Tour, Part 4: Into the Realm of Demons, the Red Hills

Human mythology finds bigger meanings in everyday stories, i.e. vast battles fought in the heavens, on earth, and in the depths below pitting light against darkness, fire against ice, and good against evil. In many ways, the myths reflect the seasons, with the richness of spring and summer contrasted with the dying and death of fall and winter. That's what I was thinking about when we made a trip this week up to the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The trip was another stage in our Semi-Super-Bloom Tour, our effort to visit some of the less heralded places in California where the "Super-Bloom" was not quite as spectacular (and therefore less crowded).

We had been here some weeks back, but the spring wildflowers were only just beginning to show up. And when we arrived this week, most of the flowers were already dying back and going to seed. But there was still color hanging on here and there, especially where water was still providing the gift of continued life. It reminded me of mythical legends of latter ages when the glories of the past were still remembered, but the power and majesty of said civilizations was waning, and facing climactic battles against the forces of darkness that threatened to overwhelm all.

Really...wilting flowers make me think that way...

I imagine that it is really stretching metaphors and symbolism, but these fragile flowers are truly facing a horrific test of their ability to survive. The Red Hills take their name from the serpentine soils that weather reddish brown. The soils are poor in necessary nutrients, and rich in metals and other chemicals that are toxic to most plants. Even the name of the host rock, serpentinite, recalls ghastly mythical animals like giant snakes and dragons.

And there is an additional curse: the climate. Rain falls only in the winter and spring (most years anyway), and when the rainstorms stop, they stop entirely, for six months or more. The land bakes in 90-100 degree temperatures throughout the summer and into the fall. Life struggles to exist in this harsh environment.

And yet life does persist. The flowers rush to maturity, doing everything they can to reach maturity and produce seeds before the dryness takes life away once again. And during those short weeks, the slopes are wild with beautifully colored wildflowers. The darkness and fire for a brief moment are forgotten.

The rocks themselves that make up the bedrock of the Red Hills are truly from the realms of demons and devils. The serpentine and other ultramafic (extremely rich in iron and magnesium) rocks originated deep in the underworld that exists beneath the Earth's crust, at depths of 20 miles or more (a layer called the mantle). The rocks were carried towards the surface along huge fault systems and subjected to the reactions of extremely hot chemical-rich water and intense pressure. The rocks have been sheared and twisted to the point of being unrecognizable. Although the rocks rarely contained gold, they are closely associated with the gold-bearing ores found nearby.

The Red Hills were once reviled as was befitting of an infertile barren landscape, a landscape blasted by heat and drought. Off-road vehicle trails scarred the landscape, and some locals used the area as a dumping ground or as a shooting gallery. The land was owned, but ignored, by an agency of the federal government, the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM grew out of the efforts to give lands away under the auspices of the Homestead Act in the late 1800s. The problem was that no one wanted the lands held in many areas, so the BLM eventually became the custodian of something like 250 million acres, mostly across the western United States.

As attitudes evolved regarding land-use and ecosystems, many BLM-managed lands came to be appreciated for their biological and geological values. More and more of these "abandoned" lands were transformed into more than 200 wilderness areas and nearly 30 became national monuments. The Red Hills properties were not roadless enough to be considered as wilderness, and neither the president nor Congress ever considered it for national monument status (although I don't think it would be a bad idea). Instead, when local communities began to advocate for protection of the Red Hills for their scientific and recreational values, the BLM responded by designating 7,000 or so acres as the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern. Despite the clumsy title, the designation protects the hills from off-road vehicle use, dumping, and shooting. And during the late winter and spring, tens of thousands of people will visit the site. There are minimal developments, a pit toilet, a parking area, and a series of roads and trails that provide access to much of the "park".

The explosion of vegetation in the spring attracts insects and animals. During our trip, we saw a number of birds, including California Quail and Bullock's Orioles. They added an additional splash of color to this fascinating landscape. It was an interesting day in the realm of the devils and demons of the underworld.

In the Red HIlls Area of Critical Environmental Concern, a Promise of Spring (and a rare fish)

We saw exactly two poppies blooming. In a few weeks there will be thousands.

It has a clumsy name that only a bureaucrat could love, but the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern is a fascinating place in the Sierra Nevada Mother Lode. It was for decades a sullied hidden treasure, used for dumping and target shooting. But as biologists and geologists started to study the region, they found a unique biological island in the normally oak-studded woodlands of the Mother Lode.

The uniqueness of the area was tied to the underlying soil, developed on the serpentine and ultramafic rocks of the Foothills Terrane, slices of the ocean crust and rocks from deep in the Earth's mantle that had been added to the western edge of North America some 200 million years ago. Serpentine soils lack many of the nutrients required by "normal" plants like grass and oak, but are loaded with metals that are actually poisonous to plants as well. Plants that survive in this strange other-worldly land have to be tolerant of this harsh chemical environment.  Some of them are very rare, and a few are endemic, found nowhere else in the world. Because of the prevalence of iron, the soils are usually a deep reddish brown, giving the hills their name.

This was the single Monkey-flower we found. There will be many more!

The delineation is sharp. When one turns off of LaGrange Road onto Red Hills Road one sees oak woodlands and open fields thick with grass. But only about a mile in, the oak and grass suddenly give way to Ceanothus shrubs and Gray Pine. Grass is almost nonexistent, with various flower species making up the ground cover. Much of the year the ground cover is dead and dry, but for a few weeks in the spring, the hills burst into color, and there is a spectacular show of wildflowers, dominated by Monkey-flowers and Poppies.

February was an incredibly dry month, no doubt delaying the onset of the spring flower show, but the heavy rains of March have left the soils wet, and sprouts are popping up everywhere. We were there today to look things over, and we could see that land is about to burst forth in another week or two.

I wandered over to the creek to see if the fish were around. The Red Hills host a rare and endangered subspecies of the California Roach, the Red Hills Roach (Lavinia symmetricus). The fish were for a short time thought to be extinct when the extended drought dried up the intermittent creeks that they called home. But a few spring-fed pools persisted during the driest times, and the fish are doing okay.

They were in a frenzy of feeding or breeding, or just doing some heavy partying when I found them. I caught some video below. All in all, life is returning in the foothills during these brief weeks before the hot dry times come again all too soon.

Happy Easter, all!

A Living Kaleidoscope in the Red Hills of the Sierra Nevada Foothills

I always thought that kaleidoscopes were named after someone named Kaleid, but the authoritative source (Wikipedia, of course) indicates that the name is a mixture of Latin terms that translates to "observation of beautiful forms." Today I was observing just that at the Red Hills Area of Critical Environmental Concern. I was also there less than a week ago, and in the manner of a kaleidoscope, it is changing colors. 

The Red Hills host a unique ecosystem quite unlike the oak woodlands of the adjacent Sierra Nevada and Great Valley. The underlying rocks are composed of serpentine and other ultramafic rocks, and the soils are poor in many necessary nutrients, and rich in a number of toxic metals. Few "normal" plants, most notably the grasses and oak trees, can live or grow on these soils. Some plants merely tolerate the soils, and can grow elsewhere (like the Poppies), but others are adapted to living on the soils and nowhere else. 

The foothills are semi-arid, and the seasonal lack of water is another factor in the survival of plant species in the area. But when the water comes, the hills explode with life. We've been in the grips of a horrific drought for the last four years, but this year has brought normal, even above-normal precipitation. In these few weeks of spring we are getting the best wildflower show in years.

We've made three trips to the Red Hills in the last few weeks, and it has changed dramatically with each visit. The first visit was early, and there were just a few splashes of yellow here and there around the main parking area. By the second trip, the yellow flowers had expanded rapidly, with widespread areas covered by Goldfields and Monkey-flowers.

Our trip today revealed a vast expansion of the blue and purple flowers, primarily Blue Dicks (Brodiaea) and Bird's-eye Gilia. They provided a nice contrast to the red and brown rocks (rich in iron).  You can literally think of the iron-rich rocks as rusting; they are actually green to black on fresh surfaces.

The rocks that are ultimately responsible for this wonderful scenery were once important for a different color: gold. The ultramafic rocks were closely associated with the Melones and related fault zones that were the conduits for highly mineralized fluids that worked their way towards the surface around 140 million years ago. As the chemical-rich water approached the surface, minerals precipitated out as quartz veins that hosted the gold that was so eagerly sought by miners. These rocks didn't have the gold, but it was near by. When the ores gave out, this landscape was abandoned and left behind for a century. It was the realm of garbage piles, shot-up abandoned automobiles, and off-road vehicle trackways.

It wasn't until the 1990s that people began to recognize the true value of this unique ecosystem. Volunteers cleaned up the messes, and the Bureau of Land Management reclassified the landscape as an "area of critical environmental concern", which is effectively a park designation. The "goldfields" today are the Goldfields flowers that appear after the rain falls. And all of the other wonderful colors that come just a few weeks later.