QUEST Community Science Blog Author: Ann Dickinson

All Posts by Ann:

What makes a shark a shark?

October 2nd, 2008 by Ann Dickinson

Mary Collins School teacher Blythe Shelley touching
a leopard shark at the Aquarium of the BayThat was the question put to a group of Bay Area teachers-all participants in Watershed Week, The Bay Institute's annual back-to-school teacher-training institute, facilitated by our Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed (STRAW) Project. At the Aquarium of the Bay, these teachers-turned-students got to see, touch, and learn about some of the creatures that live under that Bay-including the Bay's sharks. They also learned about the Aquarium's shark tagging program, which aims to help us better understand these amazing and elusive animals.

So, how do the Bay's leopard sharks, soupfin sharks, sevengill sharks, spiny dogfish, and other shark species differ from "non-shark" fishes? Here are a few key distinctions:

#1. You could say that sharks don't have a bad bone in their bodies. In fact, sharks don't have any bones in their bodies. Sharks-along with their relatives skates, rays, and ratfish-belong to a diverse class of fish that have cartilaginous skeletons, unlike the bony skeletons of other fish.

#2. Body shape. If you look at most fish head on, they have a generally oval shape. Sharks, in contrast, tend to be more triangular with a wide, flat under-surface. Their broad pectoral fins give them lift as they move through the water, not unlike the wings of an airplane. This hydrodynamic shape is key to keeping sharks afloat (you'll see why as we move on to difference #3).

#3. Besides bones, sharks lack the air-filled swim bladders that most fish use for buoyancy (If sharks are airplanes, does that mean bony fish are hot air balloons?) Instead, sharks keep afloat with the help of a large, low-density liver, their unique body designs, and the physics of forward motion. If a shark stops swimming it won't necessarily drown-only some sharks need to swim to breath-but it will sink!

#4. While most fish have gills tucked behind a bony flap called an operculum, sharks exhale water through gill slits located behind their head. Five gill slits are typical, but some sharks -like the sevengill shark found in the Bay-have more. Most sharks use ram ventilation to breath, swimming constantly with their mouths open to keep water flowing over their gills. Bottom dwelling sharks, whose mouths may be buried in the sand, inhale water through an opening on the top of their head called a spiracle and pump water past their gills.

#5. A shark's skin is covered with tiny dermal denticles that differ from scales on most fish. As their name indicates, they bear a physiological similarity to teeth. Their unique structure helps reduce drag as the shark moves through the water-in fact, sharkskin helped inspire the high-tech swimsuits we saw at the Summer Olympics.

#6. Most fish spawn by releasing large numbers of unfertilized eggs and sperm into the water. Sharks, in contrast, reproduce via internal fertilization. Depending on the species, they then lay a much smaller number of fertilized eggs, or carry the eggs inside until they hatch, giving birth to live pups.

Old Adobe Elementary teacher Juliet James examining shark teethSadly, these unique creatures are declining all over the world due to overfishing, pollution, loss of habitat from coastal development, and climate change. And that's bad news not just for sharks but also for their ecosystems. Like lions and wolves, most sharks sit atop the food chain as apex predators; thus their disappearance can trigger a cascade of disruption up and down the chain.

All the more reason for us to study up.




38.1048, -122.561




Posted in Biology, Education, Partners | Please Comment

6 MORE Simple Things You Can Do to Help the Bay: Conservation Edition

August 7th, 2008 by Ann Dickinson

I hadn't been working at The Bay Institute long when our then Executive Director dropped a packet of information on my desk and asked me to draft a letter. The topic? Urinals.

An hour later, I'd written (if I may say) an eloquent letter in support of updating California's plumbing code to ease the way for water- saving fixtures in men's restrooms.

Just another day in the life of working at a water organization–and another reminder of how our home and office plumbing impacts the "plumbing" of our larger watershed: By saving water, we're also helping to save the ecosystems at the other end of our taps.

Be a leak detective

Leaking irrigation systems and running toilets are big water wasters. That innocuous little drip you haven't gotten around to fixing? Check out the WaterWiser Drip Calculator to see how those little drips add up. Learn how to monitor your household water use so you can find and repair leaks. One method: Turn off all taps inside and out. Record your meter reading, then check back an hour or two later. If the reading has changed, you may have a leak.

Fix your fixtures

Replace old toilets and clothes washers-the biggest water users in your home-with new water efficient versions. Install low flow showerheads and aerators on faucets, and top your hose with an automatic shut-off nozzle. Check with your water district: They may offer rebates-or even free supplies-to help you make these changes.

Go native!

Replace conventional lawns and other thirsty plants with native species, which are more drought tolerant, resist pests, and provide great habitat. Use mulch to keep moisture in and weeds down. Water in the early morning or in the evening, when less is lost to evaporation, and avoid overwatering. If you use an automated irrigation system, install a rain shutoff device or soil moisture sensor.

Get creative

Rinse vegetables in a bowl of water rather than under a running tap, then reuse the rinse water for watering houseplants. Keep a pitcher in the refrigerator rather than waiting for tap water to get cold enough to drink. Hold a jug under the faucet while waiting for your shower to warm up, or even bring a bucket in the shower with you to capture some of the water for watering plants. And don't forget the easy and obvious: turn off the tap when brushing teeth, shaving, or washing dishes; run the dish- and clothes- washers only when full; trim a few minutes from your shower.

Speak up!

You don't need to write your legislator about urinals (though feel free), but do speak up in favor of conservation and environmental protection and restoration. Call or write your elected officials to let them know what's important to you, or pen a letter to the editor of the newspaper you read. When a water-saving couple in Sacramento was cited for letting their lawn die, there was a public outcry. In response, the city not only changed its mind about fining the couple, but also acknowledged city codes may need a drought-friendly update. You can also make your voice heard at the ballot box: Check out www.ecovote.org.

Befriend your watershed

Just as it can be hard to make the link between the neatly packaged food at the grocery and the farms it came from, we don't normally connect the dots between the water that magically comes out of our taps and the watersheds we live in. Millions of Bay Area residents rely on water not just from their local watersheds but also from the Delta and Sierra Nevada. Know where your water comes from and help protect those sources. And don't forget to get out and get to know the Bay and its tributaries: walking our river banks and shorelines, helping clean up your local creek, kayaking, rafting, sailing, birding, and swimming are just a few ways to interact with your watershed and can be great ways to teach kids the value of protecting our natural resources.

For more water saving ideas, visit www.watersavinghero.com, www.h2ouse.org, and www.bay.org/SimpleThingsYouCanDo.pdf — or share your ideas below. Also don't miss my earlier post on what you can do to help the bay.




38.1048, -122.561




Posted in Environment, KQED, Partners | 2 Comments

A fishy odyssey through the delta

July 7th, 2008 by Ann Dickinson

Talk about a wild ride.

Every year, millions of fish make a strange and harrowing detour through the Skinner Fish Facility, part of the State Water Project's facilities in the Delta.

In my last post, I wrote about my visit to the Banks Pumping Plant, whose giant pumps slurp water from the Delta to help quench California's thirst. As the volumes of water are sucked up, both resident and migrating fish come along for the ride. The Skinner Facility, in operation since 1968, was built to protect fish from being killed at the pumps–an effort that sadly is not as successful as one would hope (more on that below).

I was amazed to learn there is a whole art and science to fish screens, which range from physical barriers–called positive barriers–like perforated plates or wire mesh, to behavioral barriers like sound, light, or other stimuli aimed at keeping fish away. Well-designed screens minimize both entrainment (fish being pulled into the pump or diversion) and impingement (fish being trapped or injured against the screen itself due to water velocity).

Both physical and behavioral barriers are used at the Skinner Facility. Fish being pulled toward the pumps first encounter a trash rack that diverts many bigger fish, along with floating debris. Next, fish encounter a large, v-shaped array of metal louvers. The louvers create turbulence that functions as a behavioral signal, encouraging the fish to swim away into bypass pipes that function, as our tour guide put it, like "a big vacuum system."

From the bypass pipes fish travel to another set of louvers and pipes, concentrating them into a smaller volume of water, and then into holding tanks in a nearby warehouse. Giant, suspended cone-shaped buckets are used to periodically sample the fish, which are identified, counted, and measured. Some 90 species turn up in the facility, including Chinook salmon, steelhead, white sturgeon, and delta smelt. (I asked our guide if delta smelt really do smell like cucumbers. He confirmed it. In fact, when a school of smelt comes through–an event that has become rare–the warehouse smells "like a salad.") When enough fish have been collected, they are loaded into trucks and driven back to the Delta.

Here's the rub. Many fish caught in the pull of the pumps are lost to predation before even reaching the screening facility. Then, the facility does not effectively screen fish smaller than about 1.5 inches, meaning that littler, less powerful species and juveniles are still vulnerable to the pumps. For the fish that make it to the holding tanks, the process is such a trauma–with big and little fish squashed together in the tanks, buckets, and trucks–it's no surprise there are casualties; in fact, the delicate delta smelt often do not survive. And even for fish that make it through the entire process and out the other end, there's a final, fatal hurdle: the trunks routinely dump salvaged fish at the same locations, where more predators have learned to cluster for a free lunch.

Scientists agree that the loss of fish at the huge state pumps–and other pumps and intake pipes throughout the Delta–is a major contributor to plummeting populations. How much water we use makes a difference: The higher the export rates, the more fish are entrained. There also is broad consensus that more state-of-the-art fish screening facilities are needed. That could come with a hefty price tag. But with our fish disappearing, can we afford not to invest in their survival?




37.825718, -121.596422




Posted in Biology, Environment, KQED, Partners | 2 Comments

Where Water Runs Uphill

June 5th, 2008 by Ann Dickinson

Harvey O. Banks Pumping PlantI'm standing in the Harvey O. Banks Pumping Plant, part of the State Water Project (SWP), looking at a set of huge pumps that slurp water from the Delta and hoist it 244 feet to the mouth of the California Aqueduct. The sensation is a little akin to the how I felt when, not long after college, I rode a sailboat through the Panama Canal: a kind of jaw-dropping wonder (dismay?) at the scale of this engineering feat. When we humans set our minds to re-arranging the landscape, we don't kid around.

In my last post I wrote about visiting a treatment plant to see where our water goes after we've washed the dishes. Now, on this tour of the Banks plant, I'm getting a glimpse "upstream" of the kitchen tap and learning more about where our water comes from.

The scale of the SWP is mind-boggling: More than two in three Californians rely on it for at least part of their drinking water. It is the largest publicly built and operated water project in the country, encompassing 17 pumping plants, more than 30 storage facilities, and over 660 miles of canals and pipelines. At the south end of the San Joaquin Valley at the Tehachapi Mountains, the huge Edmonston Pumping Plant raises the water 1,926 feet-the highest single lift in the world. (If you're driving to Southern California, check it out on the right side of I-5 just before the Grapevine). Moving all that water around and hoisting it over mountains doesn't come easy (water is heavy, after all): The SWP is the largest single user of electricity in the state.

The Banks plant is named for Harvey O. Banks, Director of Water Resources when voters approved funding for the SWP in 1960. The project was ostensibly conceived as a solution to the problem that most of California's water is north of the Delta, while most of its people are to the south and west. Big agricultural interests in the southern San Joaquin Valley also benefited-hugely-from "surplus" water shipped south. (And lest we Northern Californians start feeling smug, keep in mind we receive a greater percentage of our total water supply from the Delta than does Southern California.)

The Banks plant draws water from the Delta through intake gates into Clifton Court Forebay. From there, the water is pulled up a channel to the Skinner Fish Facility, where delta smelt, Chinook salmon, and some 90 other species of fish are, theoretically, screened out so they won't get sucked into the pumps (More on fish screening in my next post). But getting squashed in the pumps is not a fish's only worry: The pumping actually alters the habitat by impacting salinity and flow, disrupting natural rhythms that serve as vital cues for migration and spawning. The old joke that in California water flows uphill toward power and money is not far off the mark: The pull of the pumps is so powerful it causes rivers to flow backwards-literally uphill.

Crashing fish populations, poor water quality, the vulnerability of Delta levees and our water supply to earthquakes or other disasters-all have added to the growing realization that we can't keep quenching California's thirst through big straws stuck in the Delta. Obviously the SWP is not going to stop pumping anytime soon. But we do need to find ways to reduce our reliance on the Delta-through conservation, water recycling, and increased regional self-sufficiency-and to restore the functioning of an ecosystem so devastated by our radical retooling of our waterways.




37.800833, -121.620833




Posted in Engineering, Environment, KQED, Partners | 4 Comments

Have sewage, will travel

May 6th, 2008 by Ann Dickinson

Unless our sewage happens to end up in the Bay and in the headlines, most of us probably never give a second thought to where our wastewater is headed each time we run the tap or flush the toilet.

To learn more about the travels of sewage, I took a tour of the Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District treatment plant led by Plant Manager Matt Pierce. The plant has been in operation for about 50 years and serves over 30,000 residents in north San Rafael.

After leaving sinks and showers throughout the District, wastewater travels through a network of pipes and pump stations. Once the sewage arrives at Las Gallinas, it passes through an inlet screen and a grit chamber, which together remove much of the dense, inorganic material-"like diamond rings," Matt jokes.

A lot of what happens at the plant is not that different from what happens in your compost pile: "It's basically bacteria at work," Matt points out. (The much bigger challenge for sanitation districts these days are all the unnatural things we're putting down the drain: household chemicals, personal care products, pharmaceuticals.)

From the grit chamber the sewage heads into a series of clarifiers, where gravity causes the organic solids to settle out. The biosolids pass through a thickener and then an anaerobic digester-the most, ahem, aromatic stop on our tour. After further thickening in storage ponds, the sludge is injected into a disposal field.

Meanwhile, the liquid from the clarifiers travels through two biofilters, where rotating arms spray the water over rock beds. The organic matter in the wastewater is a feast for microbial slime living on the rocks. In the nitrification tower, more microorganisms break down the ammonia in the water. In the final stages of treatment, the wastewater is chlorinated to kill any remaining bacteria, then dechlorinated since the chlorine is toxic to many aquatic species. Finally, the treated water is sprayed onto District fields or discharged into Miller Creek where it flows to San Pablo Bay.

The District has done a lot to minimize the environmental impacts of its operations. The plant is powered by a field of solar panels. The methane released in the sludge treatment process is captured and used to generate power and heat the digester. Some of the treated wastewater supports acres of fresh and saltwater wetlands-in fact the District's land is a favorite local gem for walkers and birders. And in a partnership with the Marin Municipal Water District, more than a million gallons of treated wastewater are recycled daily for landscape irrigation and other projects.

There are plans to make even fuller use of the reclaimed water. The Bay Institute-in partnership with the Sonoma County Water Agency, Las Gallinas, and three other North Bay sanitation agencies-has developed a plan to use recycled water for wetland and creek restoration and for agricultural irrigation. Legislation sponsored by Congressman Mike Thompson to establish the program passed the House late last year; Senator Dianne Feinstein has introduced similar legislation that we are hopeful will pass this year.

With California's growing demands for water, such creative means to conserve and recycle are critical to helping prevent this precious resource from just going "down the drain."


Ann Dickinson is Communications Manager for The Bay Institute (www.bay.org), a nonprofit research, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay and its watershed, "from the Sierra to the sea."




38.1048, -122.561




Posted in Biology, Environment, Health, Partners | 1 Comment

Sticking up for the little guy: the California freshwater shrimp

April 7th, 2008 by Ann Dickinson

This year the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) will celebrate its 35th anniversary. Under the ESA over 1,350 species are listed in the United States as threatened or endangered, including over 300 in California. This includes a number of "celebrities" of the conservation world such as the humpback whale and California condor, but also dozens of much more low profile species. Around our offices, we have a particular soft spot for the California freshwater shrimp (Syncaris pacifica), the impetus for our Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed (STRAW) Project).

The California freshwater shrimp is 10-legged crustacean in the family Atyidae.

Found only in a handful of Bay Area creeks, the shrimp is a detritus feeder that prefers glides (calm, slow-flowing sections of streams) with undercut banks, exposed roots, and overhanging vegetation. Adult females produce relatively few eggs-about 50-120-that stick to the mother's pleopods during winter incubation. The young measure about 6 millimeters and are released in late spring or early summer. They grow rapidly, reaching up to 2.5 inches as adults and ranging in color from translucent to rusty red.

The species' closest cousin, the Pasadena freshwater shrimp (Syncaris pasadenae), went extinct in the 1930s, leaving the California freshwater shrimp as the only representative of its genus. The California freshwater shrimp was listed under the ESA in 1988. Recently the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service issued its 5-year review of the shrimp's status. The report concludes that the species is not ready for delisting, as it still faces many of the same threats as 20 years ago: loss of habit due to agricultural activities and development, water pollution, water diversions-even the construction of recreational summer dams for swimming and fishing.

But there is also good news in the report. At the time it was listed, the shrimp was known from 17 streams; it now has been found in 23. In one of these, the number of shrimp surveyed increased from 1,878 in 1991 to 4,407 in 2000. Many of the streams in which the shrimp is found have watershed management plans in place. And the report also acknowledged the ongoing work of STRAW to restore more than 50,000 linear feet of stream bank, creating new habitat for the shrimp-not to mention other native species.

When Congress passed and Richard Nixon signed the ESA in 1973, a little freshwater shrimp was not at the forefront of their minds. But there is an inspiring sense of democracy in the ESA as written: It empowers citizens to petition or sue the government to protect species. And it doesn't discriminate between the big, showy species and the small and obscure-but equally unique and imperiled-ones.

According to the US Fish & Wildlife Service, since 1973 the ESA has protected 99% of listed species from extinction. National Endangered Species Day is coming up May 16. Find out about ways to help celebrate.

Ann Dickinson is Communications Manager for The Bay Institute (www.bay.org), a nonprofit research, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay and its watershed, "from the Sierra to the sea."




,




Posted in Biology, Environment, Partners | 2 Comments

Where have all the salmon gone?

February 28th, 2008 by Ann Dickinson

Run down

Recent news headlines have been full of Chinook salmon, but sadly the same cannot be said of Central Valley waterways. This fall, only about 90,000 Central Valley Chinook salmon returned to their home rivers and streams to spawn, down from more than 800,000 just a few years ago.

Like most salmon, Central Valley Chinook are anadromous, spending the bulk of their lives in the ocean but hatching and returning to reproduce in freshwater. The journey from the Valley through the Delta and San Francisco Bay to the Pacific, and back again, has always been a long and arduous one. In the past half century it has become even more difficult as the fish have increasingly faced an obstacle course of dams, pumps, and dewatered rivers and creekbeds.

Central Valley Chinook salmon populations include four runs-winter, spring, fall, and late fall-with each spawning not only at different times of the year but in different parts of the watershed. The dawning of the age of dams hit the winter and spring runs the hardest, cutting the fish off from their historic spawning grounds in the upper reaches of the watershed. Both runs are now listed under federal and state Endangered Species Acts.


The fall run, which spawns lower in the watershed, was less impacted by dam construction. In recent decades it has numbered more than 10x all the other runs combined and has been the mainstay of the California coastal salmon fishery. Now, even it appears to be in serious trouble: The count of 90,000 salmon this year was the second lowest on record and well below the minimum conservation target of 122,000 set by the Pacific Fishery Management Council. Also alarming is that the number of 2-year-old "jacks" returning was just 2,000, down from a typical count of 40,000. Since most spawners are 3-year-olds, these early returners are considered a good predictor of the size of next year's run.

Ocean conditions are one factor in the salmon decline, with rising water temperatures and more unpredictable upwellings-possibly resulting from global warming. But scientists are also pointing to overexploitation of our rivers and Delta-the "highway" for migrating salmon. The abrupt decline in the salmon population comes concurrently with the collapse of other fish species dependent on the Delta ecosystem, including delta smelt and longfin smelt. The salmon returning to spawn this year would have been juveniles headed to the ocean in 2005, the year Delta water exports hit a record high.

Between unfriendly ocean conditions and the degraded condition of the watershed, the salmon are facing a double whammy. But, as Bay Institute Senior Scientist Tina Swanson points out, "Apart from rolling back global warming, we can't really control ocean conditions. What we can do is drastically improve conditions within the watershed so that more adults can spawn successfully and more juveniles survive the journey to the ocean."

Ann Dickinson is Communications Manager for The Bay Institute (www.bay.org), a nonprofit research, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay and its watershed, "from the Sierra to the sea."




,




Posted in Biology, Environment, Partners | 1 Comment

Live! from the Green Carpet

February 4th, 2008 by Ann Dickinson

January and February are exciting months for movie buffs like me. And no, I'm not referring to Golden Globes, Oscar nominations, or Screen Actors Guild awards. I'm talking about two wonderful "green" film festivals, both right here in our own watershed: the recent Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival in Nevada City, and the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival.

For The Bay Institute, this year's Wild & Scenic Film Festival was particularly exciting because it included the first public screening of "Taking Root," a film-in-progress about our STRAW (Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed) Project. I recently talked to David Donnenfield, who is co-producing the film with Kevin White (Kevin also has two films in this year's Ocean Film Festival: Restoring Balance: Removing the Black Rat from Anacapa Island and Returning Home: Bringing the Common Murre back to Devil's Slide Rock.) I asked David how the two came to be making a movie about kids working to save an endangered freshwater shrimp.

Taking Root is part of a larger project entitled How on Earth, which began with the goal to survey the spectrum of restoration work happening across the country. David and Kevin wanted to look at projects large and small, in different regions and involving different constituencies and different issues. They also were interested in documenting projects initiated by kids-one of the things that drew them to our STRAW Project, founded in 1992 by a class of fourth-graders.

David attended film school at UCLA (after he "got the bug" while starring in a high school film), but says he was always more interested in social issues than theatrical production. As to why he finds the topic of environmental restoration of particular interest, David points to the late environmentalist David Brower's 3-part concept of "Global CPR"– Conservation, Preservation, and Restoration. While we've all heard about conservation and preservation, David notes, "We felt that very little of the story of restoration had been told." That's a critical oversight, since "in the face of worldwide environmental decline, there is less and less to preserve but more to restore."

In talking about their process for making films, David explains that they do a lot of research up front to understand the issues, the players, and how the story fits into the "big picture." But there is also that sense of "serendipity and discovery" when they actually get out into the field, and that's a large part of what they bring back to the editing room.

And, in fact, editing is the next big challenge for Taking Root. Production on the full-length film (which will run about 1/2 hour) is nearly complete, but David and Kevin are still raising funds to complete the editing. Meanwhile, folks around our office are already looking forward to next year's Wild & Scenic Film Festival, where we hope to be nibbling organic popcorn and cheering the completed film's premiere.

Ann Dickinson is Communications Manager for The Bay Institute (www.bay.org), a nonprofit research, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay and its watershed, "from the Sierra to the sea."




,




Posted in Environment, Partners | 2 Comments

Nursing the marsh-upland transition zone back to health

December 27th, 2007 by Ann Dickinson

In the North Bay, a new nursery is lending Mother Nature a hand.

On a recent foggy morning, I drove up to the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge to tour their native plant nursery with biologist Giselle Block and nursery manager Leia Giambastiani. The Refuge hugs the northern reaches of the Bay (If you've driven across Highway 37, you've seen some of it). Historically this was part of one of the most extensive wetland systems on the West Coast. Here at the Bay's ecologically rich fringes, habitats shaded one to the next, from open water, to mudflat, to tidal marsh, to upland. During extreme high tides, marsh inhabitants like salt marsh harvest mouse and California clapper rail–both now endangered–sought refuge in the marsh-upland transition zone, where native plants provided cover from predation.

Over the past 150 years, the marsh-upland transition zone has, so to speak, gone the way of the wetlands. Now, with plans to restore 100,000 acres of the Bay's lost wetlands in the coming decades, scientists also are turning their attention to the critical habitat just above tide line. These days, as a result of our radical re-engineering of the Bay landscape, the transition zone is often on man made levees.

Once reconnected to the Bay, tidal marshes can do a lot of the work of restoring themselves, as seeds and nutrients travel in on the tides. But the transition zone is not so lucky. Without sources nearby, many seeds don't have a way to get there. Even if they manage the journey, native plants face stiff competition on levees from weedy invaders. Here's where the Refuge's nursery comes in, raising from seed native plants such as yarrow (Achillea millefolium), blue wildrye (Elymus glaucus), seaside woolly sunflower (Eriophyllum staechadifolium), and western goldenrod (Euthamia occidentalis), then marshaling volunteers to help remove invasives and plant the natives. In 2007–just its second year–the nursery propagated over 4,000 plants.

What makes this restoration work particularly exciting is that it is truly science in action, an ongoing experiment still working to answer a variety of questions: what's the best way to get rid of invasives? (Different projects around the Bay have experimented with using a plastic sheeting to "cook" the weed seeds–solarization–and using concentrated salt water from salt ponds to poison them–salinization). Which native plants fare best on the levees, a relatively harsh environment with soils that may differ from natural transition zones? Should the new plantings be left to do their thing, or do survival rates significantly improve with mulching or fertilizer?

And what happens when, as a result of climate change and sea level rise, you run out of levee? Giselle Block points out that no doubt there will be new levees in new places. By working now to create habitat, there will be local sources for seeding new transitions zones, and–hopefully–there will still be clapper rails and salt marsh harvest mice to seek refuge there.

The Refuge and The Bay Institute are partnering to develop more opportunities for volunteers to assist with propagation of native plants at the nursery, invasive removal, and restoration plantings. For more information, contact Leia Giambastiani (707-769-4200, giambastiani@bay.org).

Ann Dickinson is Communications Manager for The Bay Institute (www.bay.org), a nonprofit research, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay and its watershed, "from the Sierra to the sea."



latitude: 38.1528, longitude: -122.492




,




Posted in Biology, Chemistry, Environment, KQED, Partners | Please Comment

Oil Spill Adds Insult to Injury

November 28th, 2007 by Ann Dickinson

Adding more straw to the Bay's back.

Image source: Jim M. Goldstein, JMG-GalleriesTalk about kicking someone when they're down down.

When the Cosco Busan collided with the Bay Bridge earlier this month, spilling 58,000 gallons of heavy-duty bunker fuel into the Bay, it was a heartbreaking reminder of the Bay's vulnerability.

But what makes the spill even more upsetting is that it is not the only injury the Bay is enduring: it's a spike against the already roaring background noise, another burden on an already severely stressed ecosystem. In the past 150 years, about 85% of the Bay's tidal marshes have been drained or lost to development. About a third—and in dry years double that amount—of the natural freshwater flows that feed the estuary are diverted instead to farms and cities. In effect, the loss of wetlands and massive diversions of freshwater inflows have compromised the Bay's natural immune system, making it less resilient in the face of disaster. To make matters worse, every year we are "spilling" about 3 million gallons of oil into the Bay and its watershed via polluted runoff and emissions. (Similarly, in the ocean only about 5% of the oil comes from big tanker spills; much more comes from runoff, routine maintenance, and emissions.)

As both a major shipping port and critical wildlife habitat, the Bay is at risk for an even more catastrophic spill. Obviously we need stronger regulations and stiffer penalties to prevent future spills. But we also need to continue working everyday to restore the Bay's wetland habitat and freshwater inflows, and to reduce pollution, so that our Bay will be better able to protect and heal itself.

It was heartening to see the public outpouring of concern for the Bay in the wake of the spill. Now it only remains for us all to harness that energy to continue working for a healthy Bay, even as the media coverage of the spill fades away.

Ann Dickinson is Communications Manager for The Bay Institute (www.bay.org), a nonprofit research, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay and its watershed, "from the Sierra to the sea."



latitude 37.8002, longitude -122.379




,




Posted in Biology, Environment, KQED, Partners | 1 Comment
Next Page »