Tesla: Offroad Expansion, Park, or Both?
The latest on a long-running debate over a possible expansion of the Carnegie State Vehicular Recreation Area into a valley near Livermore.
Category: Stewardship
The San Francisco Bay Area is bejeweled with hundreds of parks and open space preserves as well as a rich set of laws and policies meant to ensure the survival of vulnerable species and ecosystems. Real people made this happen through a dedicated call to stewardship.
First-ever Solano County flora in the works
Two local botanists are at work on a multi-year project to create the first-ever Solano County flora -- a record of all the native plants that grow there.
Beachcombers Hunt Plastic, and Data
It's early on a weekday morning, and Chris Pincetich is sifting through a small pile of debris on Stinson Beach. He's at the high-water mark, called the wrack line. That's where buoyant ocean flotsam gets stuck as the tide goes out. As we walk along, he stops and points out how plastic strapping looks a lot like weathered eelgrass. Pincetich isn't your ordinary beachcomber. He's a scientist trying to compile a local data set for a global problem: marine plastic pollution.
Lessons from the Mountain
The looming bulk of Mount Hamilton is a familiar sight to anyone driving Highway 101 through the Santa Clara Valley. At 4,196 feet, it's the tallest peak visible from the shores of San Francisco Bay. This is the most expansive wild landscape in the Bay Area: roughly 700,000 acres of public parks, university and conservancy reserves, and private ranches. Now it's also become a living laboratory for studying the affects of climate change.
Kids Tracking Climate, in Real Time
Maybe you take the bus to work or abandon the gas pedal on Bike to Work Day, but how do you know whether you and your neighbors are making a difference in your community?
A Natural Geometry Class
Walk any Bay Area trail and your kids might marvel at the views, the wildlife, or the gurgling of a creek--but the variety of geometrical shapes? That takes a junior nerd or somebody interested in making abstract classroom ideas concrete.
Can the Bay Area grow in population and be sustainable?
As the Bay Area struggles to meet sustainability goals, double-digit population growth presents a clear challenge to reducing the region’s ecological footprint. Residents must use resources more efficiently to counteract the addition of more than a million new residents. In many ways, it mirrors a challenge the planet is facing. Can population growth in San Francisco and the Bay Area be sustainable?
Faulty water system pulls Russian Gulch off closure list
A mechanical breakdown could, oddly enough, be one of the reasons Russian Gulch State Park comes off the state parks closure list just before a July 1 shutdown.
Cargo Ships Keep Bringing Invasives to the Bay
A recent study has proven the obvious: San Francisco Bay is a major conduit for invasive species. And the biggest culprit? Cargo ships and their ballast water. Environmentalists are now pushing for new treatment requirements to stem the tide of alien species.
Discovering Past Landscapes with Robin Grossinger
Robin Grossinger directs San Francisco Estuary Institute's Historical Ecology Program. Grossinger's team uses hundreds of historical texts, photographs, and survey maps to depict what the Bay Area used to look like to help inform present and future stewardship, including several extensive restoration projects around the region.
