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Ice plant was meant to stabilize coastal bluffs, but instead destabilized ecosystems. A mix of native planting and machine learning is helping Santa Barbara reclaim its coastline.
When you’re standing on the top of the cliffs at Campus Point and overlooking the coastline from UC Santa Barbara, it looks like paradise. The waves crash into the shore below, birds glide overhead, and a lush green carpet spreads across the sandy bluffs.
At first glance, that green carpet looks serene and almost magical. However, it hides a quiet battle that unfolds beneath our feet.
The unexpected villain is the ice plant (Carpobrotus edulis), a fleshy succulent with bright magenta flowers. Ice plant was imported from South Africa in the early 1900s with the goal of stabilizing California’s coastal bluffs from erosion. The understanding then was that this would be beneficial to nature and the broader environment.
Today, we know better. Left unchecked, ice plant creeps relentlessly across the landscape, all the while smothering native plants and quietly reshaping the food web that depends on them. It also makes large swaths of coast difficult to navigate, reducing public access to the beach.
“It’s capable of forming monocultures,” explains Dr. Lisa Stratton, director of ecosystem management at UCSB’s Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration. “When you lose plant diversity, you lose the insects, the birds, the entire food web.”
Though ice plant has attractive flowers that provide some nectar, it offers little for native pollinators or the insects that sustain birds and other wildlife. Underneath the plant, there is almost no biodiversity.
It’s exciting to see how technology can directly help conservation.
– Dr. Carmen Galaz García
Plus, ironically, instead of stabilizing the bluffs and preventing more coastal erosion, the plant’s shallow roots make the bluffs more vulnerable to it. When they get saturated with water, the dense mats grow so heavy that chunks of the bluff can break away entirely.
The Cheadle Center has spent more than a decade tackling ice plant on UCSB’s coastline through creative means. Instead of hauling out endless tons of the water-heavy plants, an exhausting and expensive process, they’ve turned to solarization.
What’s solarization? “We lay out these black plastic tarps, some as big as 20 feet by 100 feet,” Stratton explains. “Over time, the heat kills the ice plant, and we leave the dead material in place. It acts like a natural weed mat, so we can plant directly into it.”
You kill one patch completely, then replace it with native plants and let them take over. It’s slow, steady work, but it has been effective, Stratton says. “You have to take out entire chunks at a time,” she says.
If you take a walk past Campus Point today, you can already see the results: Areas that were once choked with thick mats of ice plant now bloom with coastal sage scrub and other native species, full of pollinators and alive with newfound biodiversity.
It’s better to plan ahead than to react to disaster. We’re asking: What parts of the coast should we prioritize protecting? How can we adapt trails, bike paths, and access roads without losing biodiversity? These decisions will shape our coastline for decades.
– Dr. Lisa Stratton, director of ecosystem management at UCSB’s Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration
The Cheadle Center isn’t fighting this battle alone. While Stratton's team wages war foot by foot on the ground, another group of UCSB researchers is taking a 30,000-foot view of the problem. Dr. Carmen Galaz García, co-principal investigator at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), leads a project alongside Dr. Ben Halpern and Dr. Zhe Wang that uses machine learning and satellite imagery to map ice plant across Santa Barbara County.
“In order to plan effective restoration, we first need to understand where the problem is,” García explains. “We’re tracking ice plant invasion at multiple scales, from the UCSB lagoon all the way to Point Conception.”
Her team is part of a larger research initiative called AI for the Planet. They develop tools that combine deep learning with ecology. Using both aerial images and training data collected by hand, their models have accurately detected where ice plants have spread and highlight priority areas for restoration.
In partnership with The Nature Conservancy, a non-profit focused on conservation, their work moves beyond simple mapping by turning the raw data into actionable strategies for protecting Santa Barbara’s coastal ecosystems.
“It’s exciting to see how technology can directly help conservation,” García says.
Even as these researchers work to restore what’s been lost due to this invasive species, they’re also looking ahead to the future. Sea level rise threatens to reshape UCSB’s coastline in ways we’re only beginning to understand, and Stratton’s team is studying how the lagoon’s hydrology might change as the ocean pushes inland, planning now so the campus can adapt later.
“It’s better to plan ahead than to react to disaster,” Stratton says. “We’re asking: What parts of the coast should we prioritize protecting? How can we adapt trails, bike paths, and access roads without losing biodiversity? These decisions will shape our coastline for decades.”
That planning won’t happen by itself. UCSB has been inviting visitors and members of the broader community to share what they value the most about the coastline, doing their best to ensure that everyone has a voice in shaping the future of Campus Point and the coast they share.
If there’s one thing both Stratton and García want people to understand, it’s that this fight is worth it. “We live in such a unique, biodiverse place,” Stratton says. “If we just settle for pretty green mats of ice plant because it looks ‘good enough,’ we risk losing so much without realizing it. Every little piece of biodiversity connects to something bigger. Pull out too many threads, and the whole web starts to unravel.”
This sense of urgency, however, is matched by a powerful optimism. “This is a hopeful story,” García says. “We’re combining science, technology, and community action. We’re not just reacting to an invasion, we’re actively shaping a better future for this coastline.”
What You Can Do
Volunteer with Cheadle Center restoration projects on a short-term or long-term basis, or sign up for the center’s Restoration Ecology Seminar Series, which features guest lectures by research scientists, land managers, policy analysts, and community leaders and tours of local restoration projects. The center also regularly hosts workshops and offers internships to UCSB students.
“Every plant pulled, every native replanted, every student who learns these skills, it all adds up,” Stratton says.
Sign up for the Cheadle Center Newsletter for updates on volunteer opportunities, workshops, the seminar series, and more.
