Climate change is dramatically altering the San Francisco Bay Area’s ecosystems and raising profound questions among conservationists about how to help species best adapt to new conditions.
Ellie Cohen became president and CEO of what is now PRBO Conservation Science in 1999. Under her leadership, the organization has grown from the local Point Reyes Bird Observatory, founded in 1965, to a hemisphere-scale operation, conducting bird-focused applied ecosystem studies on land and at sea. PRBO uses its wealth of data and partnerships to assess and reduce the impacts of changes in climate and land use on ecosystem health.
A project in West Marin shows how ranchers, and a whole lot of compost, can help mitigate climate change.
New artificial islands at Oakland’s Arrowhead Marsh provide some welcome refuge for endangered clapper rails. But can they be expanded into enough other habitats to keep the birds safe from rising sea levels?
To launch our new series on climate change in the Bay Area, we follow a group of researchers as they scan the bottom, poke the mud, and gauge the tides at Marin's Corte Madera Marsh, in the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary effort to understand how the Bay Area's tidal wetlands will respond to rising sea levels.
As I write this on Thanksgiving weekend, I have many things to be grateful for. For example: On Thanksgiving morning, I watched a huge raft of cormorants take off from the surface of the Bay in front of Angel Island. But behind such moments and places of great beauty, several dark clouds are gathering.
Global climate models are critical to understanding climate change, but they don't tell us anything about changing temperatures and other surface level changes in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is what we need to know to plan for our future. A new model for the North Bay creates a closeup view critical for watershed managers. And soon the model will expand to cover all of California, 18 acres at a time.
A new study finds flooding and episodic storm events could result in an estimated $20 million in damages by 2100. And accelerated landward erosion from an estimated 1.4-meter rise in sea-level by 2100 could result in $540 million in damages. Along the way, we'd lose habitat for plovers and bank swallows and a favorite recreation spot for millions of people.
The Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, along with its sister sanctuaries to the north and south, Cordell Banks and Monterey Bay, are sentinels for the effects of global warming on ocean waters. And, as documented in a new report released, Central California's offshore waters and coastline are already showing the effects of global warming.
Kids take the Creek Seeker Express to Martinez to learn about the creeks that run through our neighborhoods, while a new juried exhibit shows off designers' ideas for confronting sea level rise.
Climate change may have arrived in your own yard, and scientists across the nation would like to hear about it. Researchers and educators in the abstruse-sounding National Phenology Network hope to harness the power of hundreds or thousands of citizen scientists across the nation all keeping notes on critical changes in the natural world.
Independent, nonprofit environmental journalism connecting people with nature in the San Francisco Bay Area.
