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Around the Bend

July 1, 2009 •  by

Put your boat or raft in the river above Healdsburg and follow a wild, green thread flowing through an altered landscape.

urchin galls

Call of the Galls

July 1, 2009 •  by

Standing sentinel near the highest point in the East Bay Regional Park District, an ancient blue oak is our window into a spectrum of life in the orbit of one grand tree.

Counting Gulls, with Protective Gear

July 1, 2009 •  by

Clad in bike helmets and ratty clothes, staff and volunteers with the San Francisco Bird Observatory brave the South Bay’s raucous seagull nesting colonies, where the explosion of breeding gulls threatens to push aside less aggressive species.

Exotic Jellies in the Bay

July 1, 2009 •  by

On a hot July afternoon last year, UC Davis graduate students Alpa Wintzer and Mariah Meek dipped glass jars and nets into Suisun Slough at Suisun City’s public dock in Solano County. They were capturing small gelatinous creatures that look and act like jellyfish. These jelly look-alikes seemed to be everywhere and are beautiful to watch. But they’re also a problem…

Seeking Creeks, Confronting Sea Level Rise

July 1, 2009 •  by

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.

Hard Time to Be an Oak

July 1, 2009 •  by

About one-eighth of California’s land area is covered in oak woodlands. Despite that vast acreage, it’s hard to be an oak in California. Threats to oak survival include the effects of fire management, increased pressure from booming rodent and deer populations, disease, drought, competition from exotic plants, and the largest threat of all, development…

Aerial view of the Weep, near Alviso in the South Bay.

Out at the Weep

July 1, 2009 •  by

Using kite-mounted cameras and field microscopes, an architecture professor and a retired microbiologist have uncovered surprising diversity in an unassuming ditch next to a railroad grade that cuts across the South Bay salt ponds near Alviso. From vivid oranges laced with bird tracks to bright greens bubbling with oxygen exhaled by cyanobacteria, there’s complexity and wonder waiting at the Weep, from several hundred feet in the air down to the microscopic level.