Impressionism, Pointillism, Statistical Processing: Finding Truths in the Patterns of Nature
The beauty of science is that it really does search for truth. It is easy to follow the tracks and trails of one or several of nature’s patterns and yet...
Climate Change
The Jumbo Squid Have Left California. Or Have They?
Humboldt Squid have moved into and out of California, sometimes for years at a time, for centuries. Now an El Niño approaches the Pacific Coast, and squid researchers are waiting.
Fire Followers Arrive, with Scientists Right Behind
An expert in rare plants, Heath Bartosh is especially interested in “fire followers,” plants whose seeds stay buried in the ground until heat or smoke stimulates germination. These annuals flourish...
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,...
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...
