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SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. — The Santa Barbara County Fire Department, in conjunction with UCSB’s Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration (CCBER), has tentatively scheduled a one-day Prescribed Burn at UCSB Lagoon near Campus Point with a targeted burn window of the week of September 12. This one-day burn is part of an ongoing management effort to control non-native grasses and establish native bluff scrub vegetation. Building on successful past burns, this treatment will be conducted on a day within the burn window with the least amount of fog to generate enough heat to reduce the viability of the non-native seed bank, and on a day with the best conditions for dispersion.
Approximately 0.5 acres will be burned. As conditions permit, the burn is scheduled to begin in the late morning or early afternoon and conclude by 4 p.m. on a permissive burn day; the actual burn is likely to last less than an hour. Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District (APCD) staff have reviewed the Smoke Management Plan and provided conditions to minimize smoke impacts in Santa Barbara County. The burn will be conducted when the meteorological conditions are highly favorable to direct smoke away from population centers.