Tafoni Around the Bay
The tafoni weathering formation featured at El Corte de Madera Creek Preserve is a particularly accessible example of an uncommon phenomenon, but there are several other places to see tafoni...
Science and Nature
Making Peace with Coyote
Clementine is a 130-pound great Pyrenees—a white shag carpet of a dog who sleeps through the day out in the rolling hills of West Marin, guarding up to 1,500 head...
The West Coast’s Living Sand Dollars
There’s a lot more to the western sand dollar (Dendraster excentricus) than meets the eye. Most people who spend any time at the beach are familiar with the sand dollar’s...
Standing the Tests of Time
Walk patiently along a few ocean beaches in the Bay Area, and you just might find objects of stunning beauty that also provide clues to a lost world, fossil sand...
What is the largest species of fish you could find in San Francisco Bay?
Q: What is the largest species of fish you could find in San Francisco Bay? A: Let’s limit ourselves to the true bony fish, which leaves out any great white...
When was the last volcanic eruption in the Bay Area? Where was it?
You can easily visit the 10-million-year-old Sibley Volcano (see Voice of the Volcano, April-June 2005) in the hills above Oakland. And college geology classes often visit the Nicasio Dam in...
Recalling the Wild
Walk a few miles in Jack London's boots to see the landscape he declared more beautiful than any he'd seen in all his travels.
Sleuthing Sudden Oak Death
By the time that sudden oak death (SOD) began hitting North Bay oaks and tanoaks in the mid-1990s, Ted Swiecki and Elizabeth Bernhardt, husband-and-wife plant pathologists, had been studying oak...
Birding Blind
When I was growing up in Tiburon, my grandparents lived only a couple miles away and were a big part of my childhood. It was my grandfather who ignited my...
Unearthing Mountain Lake
In 2001, bulldozers excavated two immense old army water tanks that long sat at the edge of Mountain Lake, a two-and-a-half-acre lake in San Francisco’s Presidio that’s one of only...
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