page_title: Santa Barbara County, California
section_title: National protected areas
hierarchical_section_title: Santa Barbara County, California / Geography / National protected areas
caption_attribution_description: English: West main street and transition zone (back dunes), Guadalupe Dunes County Park on the right (also called Rancho Guadalupe Dunes).
context_page_description: Santa Barbara County, California, officially the County of Santa Barbara, is a county located in the southern region of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 423,895. The county seat is Santa Barbara, and the largest city is Santa Maria.
  Santa Barbara County comprises the Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area. Most of the county is part of the California Central Coast. Mainstays of the county's economy include engineering, resource extraction, winemaking, agriculture, and education. The software development and tourism industries are important employers in the southern part of the county.
  Southern Santa Barbara County is sometimes considered the northern cultural boundary of Southern California.
context_section_description: Channel Islands National Park (part)
  Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes National Wildlife Refuge (part)
  Los Padres National Forest (part)
  Burton Mesa Ecological Reserve
caption: Transition zone (back dunes) in Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes National Wildlife Refuge
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