# Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve **Domain:** Institution / Field Ecology / Stanford **Doc Type:** Canonical Research-Site Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition **Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve**, now the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve and 'Ootchamin 'Ooyakma, is a Stanford field station and preserve supporting long-term ecological and environmental research. ## Evolutionary Nexus Its serpentine grasslands supported decades of Bay checkerspot research by Paul Ehrlich and collaborators. The population's eventual local extinction made Jasper Ridge both a model of population dynamics and a warning that observation does not ensure conservation. [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] places the preserve inside the physical and intellectual geography of Silicon Valley: a field laboratory of constraint, extinction and recolonization close to the institutions building machine-learning systems. ## Continuity Context Long-term field stations are continuity infrastructure. They preserve repeated measurements, sites, methods and institutional memory so that change can be distinguished from noise. ## Sources / Provenance - Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve: https://jrbp.stanford.edu/ - Bay checkerspot long-term studies: https://jrbp.stanford.edu/longterm-studies-bay-checkerspot-butterfly-and-feasibility-reintroduction ## See Also [[wiki/Bay Checkerspot Butterfly|Bay Checkerspot Butterfly]], [[wiki/Serpentine Ecology|Serpentine Ecology]], [[wiki/Metapopulation|Metapopulation]], [[wiki/Stanford University|Stanford University]]