The Central Sierra Field Research Stations is a regional group of UC Berkeley field research & education reserves located on both sides of the crest of California's Sierra-Nevada mountains, north of Lake Tahoe.

Several of the CSFRS reserves lie within the headwaters of the North Fork of the American River. On September 26, 2006, a consortium of land owners & managers including: the North Fork Association, Chickering Parnership, USDA Forest Service Tahoe National Forest, US Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station & Regents of the University of California signed a Conservation and Research Agreement (with introductory letter) addressing future cooperative management of the approximately 19,670 acres of public & private lands in this watershed.

CSFRS is under the faculty direction of Professor James Kirchner and is comprised of (click for an area map):

• Sagehen Creek Field Station:
  ... Resources
• Central Sierra Snow Lab
  ... Weather data
• Onion Creek Experimental Watershed
• North Fork Association Lands
• Chickering American River Reserve
  ... Flowering plant list -PDF(105K)  -Excel(50K)
  ... Petroglyphs

Sagehen Creek Field Station serves as the hub of this network, offering accessible accomodations, classrooms, support & resources unavailable at the other, sometimes remote reserves.

D.E.M.s & other GIS datasets for the CSFRS are available.

For information regarding access to the reserves, publications, theses, additional data, etc. please contact the individual Reserve Managers through their web-sites (where available), or use the link below to reach Jeff Brown, Station Manager at Sagehen Creek Field Station.