The Fish We Never Knew
The Galapagos damselfish exists only in the specimens collection at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the victim of an unusually strong El Nino. Thoughts on the fish,...
Climate Change
Living Shorelines
A few years ago the State Coastal Conservancy went looking for something new: habitat restoration that would also address sea level rise. Two years into a pilot experiment, the results...
The Elusive Black Rail May Adapt Better Than You’d Think
Black rails are one of the most secretive of birds. But new research is showing that the scurrying marshland species can pick up and move if it must.
Connecting the Dots for Pacific Marine Life
National Park Service ecologist Sarah Allen has been looking at the “big picture” of marine ecosystem health since the mid-1970s when she worked as a field biologist on the Farallon...
The Beauty of an Atmospheric River
The forecast calls for big rain this weekend from an "atmospheric river," a plume of moisture stretching thousands of miles across the Pacific and splashing onto land right smack on...
What’s Causing the Dry Weather — And When Will It End?
In the 150-plus years that we’ve been tracking rainfall in Northern California, it’s never been this dry. It was the driest December in many places, and this week’s drizzle wasn’t...
Fish Forecast: Swimming Upstream Against Climate Change
The survey research that Peter Moyle started decades ago now has a dual purpose: It offers evidence for the free fall of native fish populations, but it also may ultimately...
Q&A: The Long Bike Ride from Palo Alto to Tierra del Fuego
Over two years, David Kroodsma rode his bike 21,000 miles from Palo Alto to Tierra del Fuego and then from New York back home, to study and talk about climate...
The Rise of Cyanobacteria at Pinto Lake
This past fall a cyanobacteria known as, Microcystis aeruginosa, spiked toxin levels above the state's safe recreational exposure limit at Watsonville’s Pinto Lake. Scientists and the community have begun tackling...
Capturing King Tides Through Citizen Science
Since 2010 the California King Tides Initiative has been documenting king tide events through photography—presenting a very real picture of rising sea levels. This year, the project has expanded to...
