Bay Nature July-September 2015 by Bay Nature Institute

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A N E X P L O R A T I O N O F N A T U R E I N T H E S A N F R A N C I S C O B A Y A RE A

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Ride on the Wild Side in the East Bay Hills Rocking Out at Kehoe Beach Rivers in the Sky

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Sunset Hikes - 6pm to 8pm Wednesdays, July 15 and August 19 Thursdays, July 16 and August 20 Experience the tranquility of Filoli’s nature preserve in the light of the setting sun.

Painting in a Nature Journal - 9:30am to 3:30pm Friday, July 17 and Saturday, July 18 Learn how to draw and paint natural objects found in the Filoli nature preserve while creating a memorable record of your time spent here.

The Property through Time - 1pm to 3pm September 20 and October 18 Discover how the families that lived at Filoli used what is now the Nature Preserve.

Mosaic Classes - 9:30am to 3:30pm For thousands of years, mosaics have been called the eternal art form, adorning ancient temples, churches, fountains, public squares, and homes of royalty. In these fun, NEW classes you will learn how to create beautiful mosaics for your garden or natural areas. Bird Baths - Friday, July 24 and Saturday, July 25 Gazing Balls - Friday, August 14 and Saturday, August 15

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Visit www.filoli.org or call (650) 364-8300 for complete program information and registration. Open early February to late October. 86 Cañada Road, Woodside, CA 94062

c o n t e n t s

july–september 2015

Features 28

TOMALES BAY REVIVAL Th e R i p p l e E f f e c t s o f Re sto r at i o n Tomales Bay, the long skinny estuary in West Marin beloved by boaters and birders, is undergoing a wildlife resurgence. Populations have risen by 145 percent in some cases. The restoration of wetlands—cut off from the tides by levees for six decades—in 2008 has unleashed an impressive rebound of species, from sandpipers to scoters to salmon, throughout the bay. by John Kelly and Jules Evens

RIDE ON THE WILD SIDE E x p lo r i n g t h e E a st Bay Pa r k s by M o u n ta i n B i ke Of the many ways to traverse the East Bay Regional Parks’ 119,000 acres of open space, mountain biking is fast becoming one of the most popular. New biking-tailored trails have been built and others are in the works. Come join us for a spin with one of the pioneers of East Bay trail riding … if you can keep up with him. by Greg Fisher

john w. wall

galen leeds

karl nielsen

WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS H i sto r i c D ro u g h t a n d At m o s ph e r i c R ive r s When you get a December with more than four times the normal rainfall and a fourth consecutive year of record-breaking drought, everyone—from meteorologists to water supply managers to the rest of us—wants to know what’s going on. For the answers, we fly up into the storm clouds, hitch a ride on atmospheric rivers from the South Pacific, and investigate dust particles from a desert in China. by Lester Rowntree

Departments 4

Bay View Ear to the Ground

News from the conservation community and the natural world

Conservation in Action

New pathogen strains threaten native plant restoration projects and much more by Alison Hawkes

10 Signs of

On the Trail

12 Rocking Out at Kehoe Beach

Letter from the publisher

the Season

Watching out for fall’s wayward birds at Point Reyes by Carolyn Longstreth

A Trip Through Time on the Pacific Plate The dramatic cliffs of Kehoe Beach at Point Reyes National Seashore are a great place to “read” about the restless history of the Pacific Plate as it passes by on its way north. by Doris Sloan

18 Elsewhere . . .

Don Castro Recreation Area, Loch Lomond Recreation Area, San Mateo Memorial Park

40 First Person

Watching the weather with Daniel Swain Interview by Eric Simons

53 Ask the Naturalist

Summer meteor showers by Michael Ellis

54 Naturalist’s Notebook

Is that an otter or a beaver? by John Muir Laws

visit us online at www.Baynature.org

by david loeb

bay view letter from the publisher

Diane Poslosky

ome 19 years ago, in between jobs, I took a midweek camping trip to Big Basin State Park in late October. I was the only one in the campground that night and the only person on the long trail down to Berry Falls the next morning. It was a glorious autumn day in the mixed hardwood and conifer forest, with the leaves of the big-leaf maples turning yellow, Townsend’s warblers foraging in the trees, winter wrens appearing along the creek, and no other sounds but those of the trees, the birds, and the flowing water. But as I started back mid-afternoon, my idyll was broken by the sound of loud male voices coming from up the trail. The voices got closer and closer, and louder and louder, and were soon accompanied by the high-pitched squeals of hastily applied brakes. Minutes later, four guys on mountain bikes came busting down the single track, exulting— I supposed—in their speed and physical prowess. Of course I was ticked off. My delightful day of communing peacefully with the sights and sounds of nature had been disrupted. These guys weren’t reveling in the big-leaf maples or Townsend’s warblers. For them, this forested slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains offered little more than an awesome slalom course. As I continued up the trail, I noted the two-foot-long skid marks in the soft duff. At the trailhead, I checked the signs, and sure enough, they were clearly marked no bikes, except that the red

contr ibuto rs Elizabeth Devitt (p. 18) is a freelance science journalist based in Santa Cruz. She draws on her first career in veterinary medicine to write about the links among animals, people, and the environment. Michael Ellis (p. 53) is a Santa Rosa–based naturalist who leads nature-based tours with Footloose Forays (footlooseforays.com) and waxes eloquent for KQED’s Perspectives series. Naturalist and illustrator John Muir Laws (p. 54) is the author of The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds and teaches

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slash across the bicycle had been partially scraped off. The only (and best) way to vent my anger was to write an article excoriating the whole sport and its spandex-clad practitioners. Now, I was and am a bicycle rider. I’ve ridden a road bike to work for 35 years. And I’ve done my fair share of mountain biking as well: I enjoy the physical exertion and mastery required to power up and down dirt roads over beautiful terrain. And I do believe that there’s no one “right” way to experience open space. But, as I asked myself that day 19 years ago, is there a hierarchy of experience here? Putting aside the illegality and hubris of those guys biking where it was prohibited, was I just expressing a personal bias for my contemplative, naturefocused way of experiencing the park? This question comes back to me as we publish an article on mountain biking in the East Bay Regional Parks. On the one hand, the parks are there to be enjoyed by everyone. And mountain biking is one of the fastest-growing recreational uses of the parks, especially among youth. Better for them to be biking on the trails than playing video games, right? But at the same time, there’s a voice inside me that says parks like Big Basin aren’t playgrounds for humans. They’ve been created for recreation, yes, but they’re also places of refuge for many of the animal and plant species we’ve elbowed out of more developed areas. And places to observe those species and gain insight into a world not totally dominated by humans. So I guess I remain biased toward quiet observation. But there’s room for all, as long as we can have a culture of cycling that respects the rights of others on (continued on next page) nature observation and illustration. Info at johnmuirlaws.com. Carolyn Longstreth (p. 10) is a freelance journalist, birder, activist, outdoor enthusiast, and Inverness resident who returned to the Bay Area in 2006 after many years in New England. Ann Sieck (p. 18) is dedicated to helping people with disabilities, including those using wheelchairs, find parks and trails they can enjoy. See her reviews at baynature.org/asiecker.

BayNature Exploring, celebrating, and understanding the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area

Volume 15, Issue 3 july–september 2015 Publisher David Loeb Editor in Chief Victoria Schlesinger Editorial Director Eric Simons Associate Director Judith Katz Contributing Editor Alison Hawkes Marketing & Outreach Director Beth Slatkin Office Manager Jenny Stampp Information Technology Peuan Thinsan Development Associate Katy Yeh Design Susan Scandrett Advertising Director Ellen Weis Copy Editors Cynthia Rubin, Sue Rosenthal Board of Directors Carol Baird, Christopher Dann, Catherine Fox (President), Tracy Grubbs, Bruce Hartsough, David Loeb, John Raeside, Bob Schildgen, Nancy Westcott Volunteers/Interns Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton, Paul Epstein, Avihai Guzy, Melanie Hess, Timothy Hill, Chelsea Leu, Destiny Palacios, Brett Simpson Bay Nature is published quarterly by the Bay Nature Institute, 1328 6th Street #2, Berkeley, CA 94710 Subscriptions: $53.95/three years; $39.95/two years; $21.95/one year; (888)422-9628, baynature.org P.O. Box 92408, Long Beach, CA 90809 Advertising: (510)665-5900/advertising@baynature.org Editorial & Business Office: 1328 6th Street #2, Berkeley, CA 94710 (510)528-8550; (510)528-8117 (fax) baynature@baynature.org baynature.org issn 1531-5193 No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission from Bay Nature and its contributors. © 2015 Bay Nature Printed by Commerce Printing (Sacramento, CA) using soy-based inks and alternative energy.

Front Cover: A greater yellowlegs is mirrored in the calm waters of Nicasio Reservoir, a short distance from the Giacomini Wetlands, where the population of yellowlegs has increased by 145 percent since the 2008 restoration project. [David R. Moore, pbase.com/drmoore]

letters Editor’s note: We received several letters from readers alerting us to an error in our “Wildlife Parenting 101” article in the April-June issue. Thank you for correcting us, and kudos to the ensatina for perfecting the art of mimicry. Dear Editor, While thumbing through the pages of the April-June issue of Bay Nature, I noticed an incorrect caption for the photo on page 41 in Robin Meadows’ “Wildlife Parenting 101” article. Under the California newts section, the photo shows a yellow-eyed ensatina (Ensatina eschscholtzii xanthoptica), a common terrestrial salamander in the Bay Area. A closer look at the photo shows vertical lines along the salamander’s side (costal grooves), a gummy skin texture, and a much lighter dorsal coloration than typically found in California newts. This is a common mistake, as the yellow-eyed ensatina is a Batesian mimic of the California newt. Research has shown that the ensatina benefits by imitating the warning coloration of the highly toxic newts, discouraging would-be predators from eating it. One could even argue that this mistake was by evolutionary design—if the yellow-eyed ensatina can fool a discerning scrub jay, it can just as easily fool an amateur herpetologist. Trent Pearce, Naturalist East Bay Regional Park District Dear Editor, The article by Kaitlyn Kraybill-Voth in your April 2015 edition, “A National Monument on the Santa Cruz Coast,” in which I was quoted, while overall accurate, contains a couple of misstatements. The statement that the land “was on the verge of being developed into a 139-home luxury subdivision” is not quite accurate. The developer never applied for a subdivision, nor for building permits. His business model was to take out an option on a piece of land that people

want to preserve and the owners are trying to sell, then create the impression that it will be developed. Conservationists rushed to raise the money to buy it, for much more than the owners were willing to sell it for originally. As Kraybill-Voth writes, BLM has been struggling to get funding to begin the process of opening the property to the public, but that is not the primary reason public access is still a ways off. BLM was unwilling to accept the agricultural parcels of Coast Dairies and manage leases to farmers, so the Trust for Public Land had to not only find someone else to accept these parcels for them but to rearrange the boundaries of the various parcels that made up Coast Dairies. A lawsuit regarding this and other issues concluded in 2014 with the finalization of a Coastal Development Permit, which enshrined the stiffened restrictions on such activities as mining, drilling, and off-road vehicles and ensured that the farmlands would remain in agricultural use in perpetuity. This process wasted years. As I was quoted in the article, the proposed name for the national monument—Santa Cruz Redwoods—is misleading and was created as a marketing ploy. I am pleased to report that name has now been abandoned. The new name has not been officially chosen, but will either remain Coast Dairies or commemorate the longtime inhabitants of that land, with a name such as Coast Dairies Awaswas (the Ohlone group that lived there). Finally, the large increase in visitation that designation as a national monument could bring remains a concern. This is a unique and fragile landscape, and too many visitors would jeopardize the fauna and flora there, negatively impact underfunded public protection services such as police and fire, and add more traffic to roadways already strained on sunny weekends. For more information, please visit friendsofthenorthcoast.org. Ted Benhari, Chair Rural Bonny Doon Association

Dear Editor, Making sound decisions on how to best manage our public lands depends on understanding their ecology and using good science, factors that seem to be missing from much of the advocacy for public lands grazing. Too many articles on grazing, including a recent one in Bay Nature (“Range of Possibilities,” April– June 2015), uncritically repeat misinformation, myths, and unsubstantiated claims about the benefits of livestock grazing and the supposed catastrophic consequences of removing cattle from Bay Area parks and open space. The article paints damaging overgrazing as an artifact of the past. Yet most of the damage wrought by livestock—such as degradation of stream function, riparian habitat, and biodiversity—is ongoing. Too many native ecosystems in our public parks and watershed lands continue to be degraded by cattle. And many studies document how removing cattle can restore trout populations, native songbirds, wildflowers and amphibians. Karen Klitz and Jeff Miller Western Watersheds Institute Editor’s note: To read the full text of Klitz and Miller’s letter and other commentaries we received from numerous readers in response to our special coverage of ranching and conservation, please go to baynature.org/rangelands. We invite you to join the lively conversation! Send your letters to letters@baynature.org ( bay

view: continued from page 4) the trails

—both human and non—and respects the work it takes to create and maintain the trails themselves. I’m happy to say that I’ve had few similar encounters in the years since, and while conflicts between trail users persist, the work of groups such as the International Mountain Biking Association in support of responsible cycling has helped shift the debate (mostly) from shouting to discussion. If you’d like to continue that discussion, look for this letter online at baynature.org and add a comment of your own.

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bby y aal li se o t an gheaowr kg ee s

ea gro e arr to to the g r o uunnd d

Annie Burke, Bay Area Open Space Council

n e w s f r o m t h e c o m m u n i t y a n d t h e n at u r a l w o r l d

Using Your Outdoor Voice

The 2016 presidential election might seem a long way off — or maybe not, judging by the number of “Vote Hillary” stickers on Bay Area bumpers. But the Bay Area Open Space Council has already launched a creative initiative to connect people with the outdoors and then mobilize them to support conservation measures that are likely to be on Bay Area ballots. It looks as though election 2016 will bring a number of such measures, and council deputy director Annie Burke says the ever-important tax proposals to fund many open space initiatives require extra attention to make sure they cross the necessary 67 percent threshold for approval. “The Bay Area has a strong environmental history and ethic compared to the state and the country,” Burke says. “But a lot of these ballot initiatives squeak by, and it’s not reflective of the b ay n at u r e

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number of park users.” So the council has created Outdoor Voice, an outreach effort to amass, by the June 2016 primary election, a 10,000-voter-strong constituency for land conservation, made up of people who can be called upon to stick up for open space measures in the primary and general elections. Parks and open space supporters often don’t vote in places they visit. Think about how many people hike in Marin, for example, and live elsewhere. But those people can still be active supporters at election time of open space measures in the places they like to visit, if given the right tools, says Burke. “There’s a real opportunity here to leverage a lot of goodwill toward parks and open spaces for the support of those places, but we need to ask and we need to be very specific about that ask,” she says. You can sign up at OutdoorVoice.org. Through email alerts and social media,

they begin to hear about ways to use and get involved with their favorite parks— where to picnic with family and friends, for example. By the time election season rolls around, supporters will be moved up the “ladder of engagement” and asked to volunteer for campaign tasks — such as phone banking or posting signage — having to do with ballot measures affecting their favorite natural spaces, as well as engaging their community through social media. With the increasing diversity of park users, Outdoor Voice is especially interested in involving Latino voters; Measure AA, the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District bond initiative in 2014, had 75 percent approval in the predominantly Latino enclave of East Palo Alto. To reach this population, it’s important to develop messages that are “comfortable and familiar” and sensitive to cultural reference points, says José González, founder of the organization Latino Outdoors, who has been part of the initiative from the outset. “It’s important to showcase how these are healthy, special spaces that people can enjoy with their families,” González adds. “Don’t call it a solitary experience. That kind of ‘getaway’ [concept] works for some communities but not others.” State-of-the-art digital marketing will help Outdoor Voice customize its appeals, but its overall goal remains the same: to present the great outdoors as indispensable and to emphasize, most critically, that it needs our support at the ballot box. Saving the Spirit of Sonoma Development Center

Below the eastern slopes of Sonoma Mountain, just south of the town of Glen Ellen, sits a large woodland property with a rather unusual collection of 145 buildings, mostly abandoned and likely soon to be shuttered altogether. The Sonoma Developmental Center (SDC), a 124-year-old state-run facility, harkens back to an era when the developmentally disabled were routinely institutionalized. But there is something progressive going on here. Situated within nearly (continued on page 44)

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In conversation with Michael Krasny, host of Forum on KQED

Peninsula Open Space Trust

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by alison hawkes

A Phytophthora cactorum zoospore squeezes out of its enclosure, which grows from an infected

conser vation in action

root. The spore will seek a new host, spreading the

Ted Swiecki, Phytosphere Research

fungus-like pathogen.

Phytophthora: New Strains Breaking the Mold

arly last year, the San Francisco Public Utility Commission (SFPUC) received a shipment of sickly-looking toyon, a California perennial shrub, from a native plant nursery. The water agency had been planting toyon on restoration sites in central Alameda County as mitigation for the large water infrastructure projects it is undertaking nearby. On examination, the toyon roots appeared badly discolored and so, as is the protocol in such instances, the agency sent the plants out for testing, and one came up positive for a dangerous, nonnative species of microscopic parasite in a group of organisms named Phytophthora. The discovery has jolted the Bay Area habitat restoration community and could dramatically change the way the native plant industry does business. While nurseries are scrambling to tighten up their safety protocols, some restoration managers, including those at the SFPUC, have begun to shift away from planting seedlings and are instead spreading seeds directly as a safer alternative, a change that could have huge implications for habitat b ay n at u r e

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restoration practices. You’ve already encountered species of Phytophthora if you’ve heard of sudden oak death (Phytophthora ramorum) or the blight (Phytophthora infestus) that caused the Irish Potato Famine. Phytophthoras, Greek for “plant destroyers,” certainly live up to the name. More than a hundred species of these fungus-like organisms have been scientifically described, and they generally proliferate in the same way. Once introduced to a location, they can spread undetected in the soil or in water and wreak havoc on crops, nursery stock, and natural ecosystems. Also called “water molds,” they produce free-swimming spores and are more closely related to plants than to fungi. Typically, they rot plant roots or form lesions on leaves that then wilt and lose the ability to photosynthesize. The particular strain that the SFPUC found — Phytophthora tentaculata — was already on a federal watch list due to the damage it has caused in Europe and China. A study of P. tentaculata on

oregano plants in Italy found 80 percent of infected plants died within a month of showing symptoms. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Agriculture listed P. tentaculata in an ominous report on phytophthoras as a strain that would “likely cause severe economic impacts to the nursery trade, as well as environmental impacts on native species” if it ever reached U.S. soil. And here it was, one potted toyon plant away from being set loose in Alameda County. The SFPUC toyon shipment isn’t the first time P. tentaculata has reared its head in the U.S. There was a case at a plant nursery in Monterey County in 2012. But this second discovery proved that the incident in Monterey wasn’t isolated, and because both cases involved nurseryraised plants headed for restoration sites, it became apparent to the Bay Area’s restoration community that it had a problem on its hands. A big problem. The SFPUC had taken considerable precautions against introducing phytophthoras and other plant pathogens into its significant land holdings in the East Bay and on the Peninsula. The agency has a “pest and pathogen free” specification in its contracts that requires a number of safeguards to prevent spread of pests and diseases, including inspection of heavy equipment before it enters restoration sites, rejection of seed mixes that contain weeds, and 24-plus-hour treatment of root wads in high-temperature ovens to kill pests and pathogens. “Despite all this, we got infected,” says Greg Lyman, a habitat mitigation engineer for the SFPUC. “Our concern is that we’ve introduced a pathogen into the watershed that could decimate a whole ecosystem, and these watersheds are native habitats to endangered species.” Just as disconcerting was the possibility that native plant nurseries, many of them small-scale, mom-and-pop

lRead more about Watershed Nursery’s new approach to eradicating Phytophthora from small

nurseries. “It’s like when you’re coming into the country, everything needs to wait there,” says Diana Benner, co-owner of the Richmond-based restoration nursery. (baynature.org/articles/nursery)

ultimately deciding to raze 9,000 plants (none of those planted tested positive for P. tentaculata, although some presented another Phytophthora, P. cactorum), heattreat the soil, and switch to relying on seeds for some of its restoration rather than nursery plants, Benner and Hanson quickly got their own house in order. Watershed Nursery was unconnected to the SFPUC incident, but Benner and Hanson began tightening their own protocols with the help of two plant pathologists experienced in best management practices for Phytophthora: Kathy 2014

2002

Ted Swiecki, Phytosphere Research (2)

operations with the best of intentions, outlining the spread of P. cinnamomi, a could be unwittingly cultivating and species long known to affect nurseries spreading these deadly pathogens. “As it and orchards, into native plant habitats turns out, a lot of them are following where it’s so persistent in the soil that practices that are pretty sketchy when it eradication is not an option, and efforts comes to producing clean plants,” says focus simply on stopping its spread. Ted Swiecki, a plant pathologist and Swiecki worries that the proliferation consultant to the SFPUC and other public of new Phytophthora species could create a agencies, who examined the sick toyon lethal brew in California soils. “You can plants. “There are a lot of things they’re end up with a mix of Phytophthora species. trying to do to reduce their carbon There are ones that do well in wetter footprint, like reuse pots. It’s like sharing habitat, ones in drier, ones that go after needles. You immediately introduce the woody plants,” Swiecki says. “You pathogens into your operation.” mix them around and you end up with a Swiecki, the founder of Vacaville-based consulting firm Phytosphere Research, has observed the spread of a fair number of nasty Phytophthora species. Since his graduate school days in the 1980s, plant pathologists have known that ornamental nurseries were “loaded with these pathogens, but there wasn’t really anything anyone would do about it,” he observes. In commercial agriculture, the main An infestation of Phytophthora cinnamomi management strategy is to develop decimated a hillside of endangered Ione Phytophthora-resistant cultivars. manzanita between October 2002 and Then, in 2000, researchers October 2014 at the Apricum Hill Ecological identified P. ramorum, a previously Reserve, east of Sacramento. unknown Phytophthora species, as the cause of the puzzling plague of dying huge number of plants at risk.” oak and tanoak trees in Marin and Santa Phytophthora tentaculata’s discovery in the Cruz counties. Despite emergency Bay Area jarred the restoration commufederal funding, task forces, “death nity by exposing a major vulnerability in summits,” and quarantines on California the supply chain of materials heading host plants, P. ramorum has continued to into wildlands. Native plant nurseries advance across the landscape to kill have quickly, and voluntarily, responded. more than a million trees in Central and One of the local leaders in the effort to Northern California, and more than bring about new standards of operation that around the rest of the country. As has been Watershed Nursery, a Richpart of the concerted decade-long mond-based native plant nursery owned campaign against P. ramorum, California by Diana Benner and Laura Hanson, nurseries have been encouraged to ecologists by training who collect native overhaul their practices and carefully plant seeds and grow varieties for inspect plant carriers of the disease. individual restoration sites. Nurseries have repeatedly been found to “This was the first situation I was unwittingly nurture the pathogen in aware of where it looked like restoratheir plant stocks. tion material was the direct vector,” says But just as we’re beginning to Benner. “That’s why it was for me, understand how P. ramorum got here and personally, a massive alarm. We’re all how it spreads, other destructive doing what we do because we’re trying Phytophthora species are popping up, to protect the environment. That was sometimes in lethal combinations. In distressing.” 2009, Swiecki co-published a paper While the SFPUC went to work,

Kosta at the California Department of Food and Agriculture and Karen Suslow, the manager of Dominican University’s National Ornamentals Research Site. According to Suslow, Watershed Nursery has become a pioneer in adapting best management practices to prevent the introduction and spread of Phytophthora in moderate-size native plant nurseries. “Watershed has set the stage for a number of native plant nurseries. It has caused a groundswell,” says Suslow. Meanwhile, plant pathologists are trying to understand how the new phytophthoras got here and spread. Nurseries are likely the primary vector, but there are so many other ways phytophthoras can proliferate once they're here. The restoration and native nursery communities are working hard to ensure they are no longer aiding the spread, but more public education is needed, because all it takes is a boot and loose soil to keep these pathogens moving. j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 5

b ay n at u r e

by carolyn longstreth | photos by david r. moore

signs of the season

The Lost Birds of Point Reyes On a Saturday in late September, fall bird migration is in full swing and, with winds light and southerly, Bay Area birders are heading to outer Point Reyes. At B Ranch, five or six cars are parked under a line of gnarled old Monterey cypresses. Standing shoulder to shoulder along the east side of the road, the birders stare intently into the treetops through their binoculars. Local birding Listservs are reporting an uncommon Philadelphia vireo, a species that breeds in the young deciduous forests of northernmost New England and Canada. In the fall, Philadelphia vireos migrate to Central America, traveling southeasterly to the Atlantic coast and Florida or across the Gulf of Mexico, so this bird’s appearance at Point Reyes is highly unusual, even extraordinary. Hence the gaggle of birders seeking a glimpse of the rarity. A bit of movement on the back side of a cypress prompts the birders to hurry up the slope and around to the other side of the trees. After several minutes, a white-crowned sparrow gently shakes a twig, drawing the birders’ attention. Then a small green-backed bird flits across the top of the tree only to dive out of sight again—not enough of a view to make an identification. Finally, the bird—the vireo—hops to the end of a scraggly, upturned branch and sits there quietly for several minutes. Its bright yellow breast and black and white markings around the eyes glow softly in the autumn light. “In plain view!” shout a couple of the birders; the others exclaim, “Oh my God, it’s gorgeous!” and “A bright male, awesome!” After lingering briefly, the birders move on. The Philadelphia vireo is not b ay n at u r e

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A Philadelphia vireo makes a rare appearance at the Mendoza Ranch on Point Reyes in September 2014.

the only rarity spotted in the vicinity today. They head off to scour a handful of other sites for blackpoll warblers, a prairie warbler, an American redstart, and an eastern phoebe, all species that hail from the northeast and north-central sections of the United States and Canada yet reportedly seen on Point Reyes. These out-of-range birds are known as vagrants: Individual birds that, during migration, veer far off the normal route for their species and are, essentially, lost. A worldwide phenomenon, vagrancy was first noticed along the California coast in the late 1800s. In 1967, researchers at

Southeast Farallon Island began to systematically trap and band land birds, creating a long-running record of unusual birds on the island. As birding became more popular in the 1970s and 1980s, records of the rare sightings accumulated from Point Reyes and other local “vagrant traps”—coastal sites with high concentrations of vagrant birds. Today, with birders instantaneously sharing notable sightings on the Internet, many more birders are making spur-ofthe-moment trips to Point Reyes in search of these locally unusual birds. Fall vagrancy at Point Reyes, for all its unpredictability at the species level, follows a predictable pattern. A trickle of vagrant birds begins in August; hundreds more appear from mid-September through October, and a few continue to be found into late November. It is easiest to spot vagrants on days with southerly or easterly winds or little wind at all. The greatest number of vagrants turn up on nearshore islands, promontories, and headlands. Flying overnight in a southwesterly direction, from their northern breeding grounds these migrants often overshoot the shoreline and at dawn are forced to seek rest and cover on the closest visible land. Banding records from Southeast Farallon Island reveal that 4 percent of all fall migrants caught there are vagrants, compared to only 0.5 percent at a Big Sur banding station. High numbers of vagrants are also found at Outer Point Reyes, where the land juts 12 miles into the Pacific and is in close proximity to the Farallones. Many of these birds find shelter in the shrubby vegetation, willow clumps, and Monterey cypresses at the lighthouse and on Outer Point ranches in the National Seashore. Certain species of wood warblers reliably appear every fall and in roughly

the same proportions. American redstarts and palm, blackpoll, prairie, and chestnutsided warblers are some of the most “common” vagrants. Most of these individuals are hatch-year birds and thus lack the stunning breeding plumages for which the wood warblers are admired, although adults can also be found, showing their striking and colorful patterns. Scientists have long debated the causes of vagrancy. An early theory, now discounted, was that these birds are disoriented: Their flight lacks any pattern or consistent direction and is in effect random. Researchers now believe that instead of being disoriented, vagrant migrating birds are “misoriented”—consistently oriented, but in the wrong direction. In fact, the theory of “mirror-image misorientation” neatly accounts for the appearance of birds from the northern U.S. and Canada ending up at Point Reyes. Based on experiments with vagrant blackpoll warblers on Southeast Farallon Island, Institute for Bird Populations ornithologist Dave DeSante posits that these individual birds have a defective sense of direction, causing them to confuse left and right in a precise manner. Although fall migration generally takes northern birds south for the winter, over the millennia, many of the vagrant species expanded their ranges westward from the Northeast while still retaining the habit of migrating down the Atlantic coast on their way to the tropics. The result of mirror-image misorientation is that, if a species’ normal route is, say, 40 degrees east of due south, the misoriented individuals orient 40 degrees west of due south and keep going, eventually reaching the coast of California. But mirror-image misorientation

More fall vagrants observed visiting at Point Reyes National Seashore (clockwise from upper right): palm warbler (Nunez Ranch); American redstart (lighthouse); chestnut-sided warbler (fish docks); blackpoll warbler (lighthouse).

does not affect birds in a uniform manner; otherwise, the tendency would have been eliminated by natural selection. Rather, experts have concluded, it works in tandem with wind drift, a second critical influence on vagrancy in California. If northeasterly winds occur just when a misoriented bird sets off, this individual will be blown in a southwesterly direction and, rather than making a course correction, the bird simply continues. Scientists have also noted that common vagrant species are all songbirds with nine primary wing feathers, groups that have evolved more recently. Correspondingly, evolutionarily older species, evidenced by their ten primary feathers, such as ducks, hawks, shorebirds, and some songbirds, do not experience vagrancy. These younger

lineages may be more prone to mirrorimage misorientation because they have had less time to evolve migratory habits and strong navigational skills, including left-right discrimination. Many vagrants from the East that appear on the California coast are thought to rest, refuel, and then continue southwest over the ocean, eventually becoming exhausted and drowning at sea. Others may remain on the mainland but are not known to survive for long in unfamiliar habitat, let alone find their way farther south to their species’ normal wintering areas. On the other hand, a few of these species, in particular palm warblers, white-throated sparrows, and swamp sparrows, have established wintering populations in Northern California. In spring, some may actually migrate in a northeasterly direction back to their normal breeding grounds. In this way, the tendency for mirror-image misorientation—at least for these species—is passed on to the next generation. j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 5

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A trip through time on the pacific plate by Doris Sloan A visit to Kehoe Beach takes you on a geologic journey to one of the Bay Area’s most dramatic geologic sites, where you can see rocks that have traveled far through time and space to pause temporarily in the Bay Area. Your journey takes you across the boundary between two of Earth’s huge tectonic plates, from the western edge of the North American plate across the San Andreas Fault to the eastern edge of the Pacific plate. b ay n at u r e

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The bedrock of Point Reyes is part of the Pacific plate’s Salinian Block, and quite different from the bedrock underlying most of the Bay Area east of the San Andreas. This rock is granitic, formed millions of years ago during a time of plate collision. Transported by the San Andreas Fault system, it has come over 350 miles from Southern California, jolting its way northward in a succession of earthquakes for some 30 million years.

Looking north along the beach and cliffs at Kehoe Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore. Lighter tan cliffs to the right are the Laird Sandstone; graying rocks to the left are granitics.

These rocks record a long history of the upheavals and paroxysms of the San Andreas Fault. Along the way, layer after layer of sediment was deposited onto the granitic rocks and joined them for the ride. Some of these layers can be seen at Kehoe; others you can visit at the south end of the Point Reyes Peninsula. On the Way to the Beach At the Kehoe trailhead the first rock you see is the Laird Sandstone, the oldest of the sedimentary rocks in this area. We will meet it again at the beach. Here step carefully up the outcrop to view California Indian mortars carved into

Najib Joe Hakim, jaffaorangephoto.com

o nn t hteh ter a itl r a i l

John Karachewski, geoscapesphotography.com

The Cliffs As you near the beach, a sand dune turns an easy stroll into a two-steps-forward,

John Hurst

the sandstone, a fine place to grind acorns, close to fresh water and sheltered from the often fierce winds. The rest of the 0.6-mile trail lies on the younger Monterey Formation, mostly hidden from view by coastal scrub; you will get a close-up look at the beach. As you walk the trail along a marshy creek, the trilling of red-winged blackbirds serenades you from the cattails. This rich freshwater wetland is filled with bog lupine, watercress, and other marsh plants that attract buzzing insects and singing birds. Keep an eye out for a great blue heron patrolling the lower reach in search of edible morsels. The trail is level and easy, and the sound of the surf gradually becomes louder, more beckoning. Notice the huge driftwood logs in the creek far upstream from the beach. What force could have carried them inland? Come at a king tide, especially after a major winter storm, and you may get an answer. High waves back water up the creek, floating the huge logs so that they slosh back and forth with each incoming pulse. Imagine the energy of the winter storm that carried such large driftwood so far upstream and you get a sense of the power of the forces that have sculpted the cliffs that await us at the beach.

one-step-back climb. The rock at the top of the dune is a fine outcrop of the Monterey Formation, a rock unit that occurs widely along the California coast, but its composition and appearance vary from place to place. Here it is composed mostly of the microscopic skeletons of diatoms, single-celled plankton that float in the sea. When they die, their skeletons, which are made of silica, drift slowly to the seafloor. Eight to six million years ago, when ocean conditions were favorable for high productivity, the skeletons accumulated in vast numbers. The ocean basin where they settled was far from shore and therefore very little sediment from land

The trail to Kehoe Beach parallels this freshwater creek. The driftwood logs seen here inland from the beach are evidence of the power of winter storms at the coast.

accumulated with them. Over millennia, as more and more skeletal grains settled on the ocean floor, they were compressed and turned into the marine sedimentary rock we see today. The fractured appearance of the rock is due to changes that occurred as the sediment became rock and was later uplifted and subjected to other stresses during its long eventful trip north on the Pacific plate. Heading north along the beach, you walk back several million years in time to the Laird Sandstone. The fossil barnacles, mollusks, and other invertebrates in a layer near the base of the formation tell us that the Laird was deposited about 10 million years ago in a shallow marine environment near shore. A look at the Laird sand grains shows that they eroded from terrestrial granitic rocks that are similar to the rocks on which they rest. Here the Laird has been folded into a gentle syncline (a downwarp with layers tilted toward each other) and is highly fractured, evidence of its long travels with the Pacific plate. Try to follow one of the prominent layers along the sea cliff and you will see how disrupted the rocks are. The Laird Sandstone cliffs are also a An exposure of the Monterey Formation is visible where the trail reaches the beach.

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on the Laird Sandstone cliffs at Kehoe.

Daniel Dietritch, pointreyessafaris.com

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relative to those on the south. If Yosemite comes to mind when you think of granite, this outcrop of granitics north of the landslide may puzzle you. No high cliffs of light-colored rock; no straight white dikes—bands of lighter, younger rock—cutting through the granitic rocks for hundreds of feet. Here you see a jumble of multicolored rocks, cut by contorted and faulted white dikes. The rocks are so mixed up and fractured, so different, that you would think there is no connection to Yosemite. However, these granitic rocks once formed the southernmost end of the Sierra Nevada, 32

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This peregrine falcon has been nesting high up

splendid place to see peregrine falcons. For several years now, a pair has nested near the top a few hundred feet south of the contact between the Laird and granitic rocks to the north. A small but obvious landslide marks the contact between the Laird Sandstone and the underlying granitic rocks along a small fault. As demonstrated here, contact between two rock types commonly results in zones of weakness that are often marked by landslides. If you look closely at the cliff on the south side of the fault, you can see granitic rocks beneath the wall of Laird Sandstone. On the north side a small amount of Laird Sandstone lies on the granitic rocks at the top of the cliff. Thus you can get a sense of relative movement along this fault— the rocks to the north have been uplifted

about 350 miles south of their present location; they ended up on the other side of the San Andreas Fault system and got hijacked by the Pacific plate on its way north. This is Kehoe’s most interesting outcrop. The rock here, formally called the Granodiorite and Granite of Inverness Ridge, is different from the sedimentary rocks we have seen until now. It is a plutonic igneous rock that formed about 85 million years ago deep in the crust from magma produced during long-ago plate collisions. At that time the entire west coast of North America was in tectonic turmoil from plate collisions that extended from Alaska to Mexico and beyond. You can see other granitics that originated from this same process at several places on the Point Reyes Peninsula—farther south at the lighthouse and north at Tomales Point—but they vary somewhat in appearance because of different proportions of the light and dark minerals. This Kehoe Beach outcrop is particularly interesting to geologists because of its great complexity and the variety of features revealed in the rock. Half a dozen variations on the granitic theme are jumbled together here, each with a different assortment of minerals. In addition to the relatively light-colored granitics, you will find a darker rock called diorite and white dikes cutting through the older rocks. You can also see inclusions of the older “country rock” into which the granitic melt (magma) intruded, breaking off pieces and altering them by heat and pressure. These metamorphosed rocks are the oldest on the peninsula, probably displaced relatives of Paleozoic rocks (more than 400 million years old!) seen

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A subsequent change in geologic processes along the San Andreas Fault uplifted the granitics and overlying sediments above sea level but continued to carry them on their northward journey. A hike to Kehoe Beach today reveals this story of the far travels in time and space of these beautiful rocks.

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The Beach Now, before you take the trail back to the trailhead, look south down the beach. Kehoe lies at the northern end of one of the longest unbroken stretches of sand beach in the Bay Area, 11-mile-long Point Reyes Beach. You can walk the entire way from here to the Point Reyes headland on which the lighthouse sits, with nothing obstructing your way. (But don’t be tempted into the water along the way; the strong surf, sleeper waves, and riptides make this a dangerous place to wet your feet.) If a long walk on shifting sands isn’t your cup of tea, you can stand here and wonder about the forces that have built, and continue to build, this magnificent beach, forces that are an example of geology in action on a John Karachewski, geoscapesphotography.com

(above) People on a geology field trip try to make sense of the beautiful but “tortured” granitics at Kehoe and the bold white dikes that cut through them. (right) The

John Karachewski, geoscapesphotography.com

A Brief History of the Pacific Plate at the Beach Now that we’ve reached the oldest rocks, let’s walk back along the beach, putting the story told by these rocks into its proper chronological order. The granitic rocks formed 90 to 80 million years ago, as an earlier plate—called the Farallon plate—was colliding with the North American plate. In a process called subduction, the Farallon plate sank beneath the North American plate and began to partially melt. The hot and less dense magma flowed up into the crust and formed magma chambers, which eventually hardened into granitic rock. After the plate collision ended about 30 to 25 million years ago with the entire Farallon plate getting subducted beneath the North American plate, the geologic regime of California changed dramatically. Millions of years of uplift and erosion of the miles of rock overlying the magma chambers eventually exposed the granitic rocks that had formed in those magma chambers. As subduction ended, plate motion changed and the massive Pacific plate replaced the disappearing Farallon plate and began moving northward past the North American plate. The granitic rocks at the southern end of the Sierran chain were captured by the Pacific plate and traveled with it. Over more millions of years, the land composed of these granitics sank and was covered by the sea.

Some 10 million years ago, as the Pacific plate continued its slow voyage northward, rivers washed sediment off the North American continent and deposited sand and silt in the ocean onto the granitic rocks. This sediment compressed and hardened into the rock we call the Laird Sandstone. As the Pacific plate continued its travels, ocean conditions changed, and some eight to six million years ago, local marine basins formed, many of them thousands of feet deep. Those far from land or separated from land by island barriers did not receive sediment washed off the continent. Instead, skeletons of diatoms and other micro-

today in the Southern Sierra. These granitic rocks have been extensively folded and faulted—one might almost say tortured—by their travels with the San Andreas Fault. Try to follow a single dike, and its twists and turns are breathtaking. Many a geology student (and professional!) has stood here trying to figure out which rock is the oldest, which the youngest, and how they interacted.

contact zone between the Laird Sandstone to the right and the granitics to the left is marked by a small landslide, evidence of the vertical fault between the two formations.

organisms accumulated, and over time they were compressed (and later uplifted) to become the Monterey Formation we see at Kehoe Beach. Somewhat different sediment accumulated in other basins during this extended period, forming the Monterey rocks found elsewhere in the state.

much shorter time scale than the formation of the cliffs behind us. You are fortunate if you visit Kehoe on a day that is not windy. On many days the blowing sand will sting bare legs up to the knees. The winds blow mainly j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 5

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from the northwest, driving the swells that move sand grains southward down the beach and pile them up into small dunes at the base of the rocky cliffs. Take along a hand lens so that you can enjoy a close look at this beautiful sand. The grains consist largely of sparkling clear quartz, yellowish translucent feldspar, and a scattering of dark minerals, including black magnetite; all have eroded out of the granitic cliffs, including those farther to the north, up to the tip of Tomales Point. Occasional reddish chert grains tell you, however, that some of the sands have come from the “mainland” of North America, on the other side of the fault, most likely from the large Russian River watershed, which drains into the ocean some 20 miles north. The sandy beach in winter after a big storm or two can be a surprise to those who have visited only in summer. Waves crash against the cliffs, relentlessly eroding them back. Last winter during the early December storm of 2014, which occurred at a time of king tides, waves beat directly against cliffs, washing away dunes and exposing rocks rarely seen in b ay n at u r e

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View of the 11-mile-long Point Reyes Beach from the cliffs above Kehoe Beach south to the Point Reyes headland.

summer. A great quantity of sand was carried off the beach and deposited offshore. A waterfall dropped to the beach through a notch in the Laird Sandstone and shallow pools formed in low spots at the base of the cliffs. The wrack line lay high up the beach, a jumbled tumble of bull kelp and other seaweeds. This pattern of sand removal in winter is typical of California beaches. The high-energy waves of winter carry sand out a few hundred feet offshore; summer waves are only strong enough to bring it back onto the beach, not carry it away again. At any time of year, stop a moment before you leave the beach to watch the feather-like branching of the ocean water as it advances and retreats over the barely perceptible swells in the sand. As the waves retreat, small holes may suddenly appear in the wet sand, made by mole crabs (Emerita analoga), small crustaceans also known as sand fleas or sand crabs; flocks of sandpipers rush in to feast before the next wave

rolls in and covers the holes. No matter what time of year you visit Kehoe, there will always be surprises and delights from the rocks and the constantly changing sea. Stay for the sunset as the colors of sea, sky, and rocks intensify. Think of the far travels of the rocks you have seen. A stroll to Kehoe Beach takes you back into a dynamic geologic past and at the same time gives you a fine setting to observe present-day geologic processes where land meets sea. Doris Sloan is former adjunct professor of earth and planetary science at UC Berkeley. Her articles on the geology of the Bay Area have been appearing in Bay Nature since our first issue. Her book Geology of the San Francisco Bay Region was published by UC Press in 2006. the geology and natural history of kehoe beach

Sunday, September 20, 10 am–2:30 pm Join Bay Nature, geologist Doris Sloan, and naturalist Claire Peaslee for a fun and informative outing at Kehoe Beach. Space is limited, registration required. Sign up at baynature.org/field.

Run for

the Seals

August 15, 2015 5k (timed and USATF certification in progress) plus the traditional Fun Run/Walk Dog and stroller friendly

Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of The Marine Mammal Center and raising funds to support the care of sick and injured seals and sea lions.

RunForTheSeals.org

Don Castro Regional Recreation Area A summer afternoon at a local swimming hole is a delight unavailable to most city folk, but at least ten East Bay parks provide sandy beaches where one may swim in lakes, “lagoons,” or San Francisco Bay. Don Castro, a 101acre park in Hayward just south of I-580, with a grand lagoon and beach, is one of the less natural sites: no fish will nibble your toes in its chlorinated water. But steps away, there are fish, and you can try to catch them—but not swim with them—in San Lorenzo Creek Reservoir. A two mile loop trail begins east of the parking area on Ridgetop Trail, a steep fire trail that passes eucalyptus and oaks on grassy hillsides and down into a creekbed jungle of blackberry, thistles, and poison oak. Cross a footbridge and you’re on Whispering Creek Trail, which turns to skirt the south side of the lake, where cattails and water lilies grow and dragonflies dart and hover. Cormorants loiter on a sunken snag, ducks dabble in the brown water, and swallows flit after invisible bugs. Before returning to the parking area, the trail crosses the road and descends to where a secret waterfall sometimes trickles down the chute from the dam. It will be silent in this dry summer, but dormant life waits in the moist creek bed for rains to return. getting there: AC Transit, or take I-580 to Grove Way/Castro Valley exit and follow signs. Water, toilets, and nice picnic areas are provided; dogs okay but bikes and horses are permitted only on the Ridge Trail. [Ann Sieck]

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San Mateo County Parks Department

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Elizabeth Devitt

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Dan Hill

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Loch Lomond Recreation Area A little-known nature lover’s haven is hidden in the Santa Cruz Mountains north of the city: The Loch Lomond Recreation Area. Here, nine treecanopied trails fan out around the 175acre reservoir that serves as a backup freshwater source for the City of Santa Cruz. Given the persistent drought conditions, the visitors’ gates have closed indefinitely to protect the water supply until wetter times return. But hikers can still enjoy the tucked-away trails on the last Saturday of each month when park rangers offer free two- or four-hour guided tours. Even in the company of fellow tour-takers, walking the trails on the 3,000-plus-acre property feels like a private eco-escape. Hiking paths range from a short loop meandering along the water line to a five-mile ramble into hillsides forested with Douglas fir, oak, madrone, and second-growth coastal redwoods. The lake attracts a variety of waterfowl—night herons, mergansers, and grebes—as well as western pond turtles. Eagles, osprey, gray foxes, and mountain lions also frequent the area. Bring 3 your binoculars!

getting there:

From Highway 17, exit Mount Hermon Road to Loch Lomond Way. For tour reservations: cityofsantacruz. com/departments/water/watershed/ outreach-events or call (831)3357424. Free parking, picnic areas, and restrooms available. Dogs allowed on leash. [Elizabeth Devitt]

Memorial Park Imagine a towering sunshade of oldgrowth redwoods and a lattice of cool, tinkling creeks and you’ve got a pretty good image of Memorial Park and an excellent way to escape the summer heat. The 499 acres of redwood and tanoak forest are threaded by eight miles of hiking trails that run through the park. South of Pescadero Road, you’ll also find picnic areas, a campground with 158 individual sites (as well as group and youth sites), and a refreshing natural wading pool. The trails north of Pescadero Road offer more opportunities to stretch your legs. The Mount Ellen Nature Trail from the park entrance is a gateway to a handful of trails that either lead up to the 680-foot-high summit of Mount Ellen or traverse alongside it through Pomponio Canyon. The routes range from 1 to 3.5 miles and move from redwood forest to chaparral. For longer hikes, connect with trails in Pescadero Creek County Park, which surrounds Memorial. Or take a short ramble in the redwoods along the 0.5-mile, self-guided Tan Oak Nature Trail. And don’t miss the shallow swimming area on Pescadero Creek, good for a cooling dip or just relaxing on the sandy banks. Acquired by the county in 1924, the park is dedicated to San Mateans who died in World War I, hence the name for this stately, peaceful retreat. getting there: Heading southwest from La Honda on Highway 84, turn left on Pescadero Road and follow the park signs. No dogs or horses allowed, and biking permitted only on the paved roads. [Victoria Schlesinger]

d i s c o v e r m a n y m o r e t r a i l s at b ay n at u r e . o r g /t r a i l f i n d e r b ay n at u r e

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Tomales Bay

Revival

b y J o h n K e l ly & J u l e s E v e n s

The restoration of tidal wetlands in 2008 has reinvigorated habitat for wildlife from sandpipers to scoters to salmon throughout the estuary.

Ken Wilson

ur three observation boats rarely break formation as we count waterbirds along the 12-mile survey route on Tomales Bay. That’s a lot of water to cover, and the effort requires intensive focus. Only when we encounter a rare or spectacular seabird, or a gray whale visiting from the outer coast, do we interrupt the count to relish the moment. So when veteran team member Jim White radios the other boats to announce “a couple of black scoters, male and female, coming your way!” field observers on our Audubon Canyon Ranch (ACR) Waterbird Survey team focus their attention, briefly, on the noteworthy pair of diving ducks. As the birds take flight at a low angle off the water with a broad sheet of several hundred surf scoters, cheers arise from the team members, who have been concerned about previous declines in both species. Could the large flock of scoters we’re see-

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ing today be a sign of the changes on Tomales Bay? A growing body of evidence— including a tenfold increase in the number of dabbling ducks—points to a dramatic rebound of wildlife populations in Tomales Bay following restoration of its largest tidal wetland, at the southern end of the estuary. As the Conservation Science Director at ACR, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with Jules Evens of Avocet Research Associates, to monitor both subtle and dramatic changes in wildlife use of habitats around the bay, for nearly three decades. But none of our observations has been as profound as the changes we have witnessed since tidal action was reintroduced into the Giacomini Wetlands seven years ago. When the National Park Service finished removing the earthen levees in 2008, allowing tidal waters to inundate 550 acres of diked agricultural land for the first time in six decades, the goals were simple and powerful: restore the natural flow of water through the system, then stand back and let nature design the details. To achieve that, the historic marsh plain was reconnected to both the bay’s saltwater tides and the area’s freshwater creeks. The mixing and circulating of these waters through the marshland restores the fundamental processes needed to promote the natural recovery of the estuary. We hoped birds and other wildlife would move into the recovering wetland. But we also sought to understand the extent to which the restored wetland might (left) Members of ACR’s Waterbird Survey team on enhance the rich patterns of life in the rest Tomales Bay. Scenes from Tomales Bay (clockwise from upper right): flock of dunlins in flight; river of Tomales Bay. The recovery of the restoration site otter; male surf scoters; great egret; kayakers on has quickly exceeded our expectations, Lagunitas Creek; least sandpiper; harbor seal; rock and we now have evidence that the effort is crab; in the Giacomini Wetlands, looking north. (clockwise from upper right) Courtesy U.S. Geological Survey; Galen Leeds, galenleeds.com; Rick Lewis; Galen Leeds; Kathryn Barnhart; Dave Strauss, dscomposition.com; Galen Leeds; Rick Lewis;Galen Leeds

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profoundly benefiting the entire system. Point Reyes National Seashore wetlands ecologist Lorraine Parsons, the lead planner of the restoration project, puts it simply: “The Giacomini Wetlands restoration is not only restoring the historic tidal marsh, it is restoring Tomales Bay itself.”

Renewed Abundance in the Restored Wetlands

The restoration experiment began on October 30, 2008, when the tide rushed in over the lowered levees that once protected the pastureland of the Giacomini Ranch. As the waters flowed in, a tight flock of a dozen or so dowitchers—chunky, medium-size shorebirds — flew in to investigate. Wheeling and twisting at high speed, the flock completed a long, low sweep over the incoming water, then settled at the tide’s edge. Their arrival seemed auspicious and exactly right, eliciting cheers from the crowd of restorationday onlookers. Each fall, upon arriving in California from nesting grounds in northern Alaska, short-billed and long-billed dowitchers seek such places— marshes, flooded agricultural lands, sand or mud-bottomed ponds, and the shallow edges of mudflats—to either spend the winter or refuel before continuing south. Long-billed robert campbell, robertcampbellphotography.com

The waters of Tomales Bay flood the northern 14.5 miles of the Olema Valley, formed by the San Andreas Fault along the central California coast, about 30 miles north of San Francisco. The bay is mostly subtidal, offering more waterbird habitat through the tidal cycle than most other Pacific coast estuaries do. Even before the restoration, the exceptional abundance of wintering and migrating shorebirds qualified Tomales Bay as a wetland of regional importance according to the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network. The extraordinary value of Tomales Bay to shorebirds and other waterbirds (especially diving ducks) also led to its recognition as a “Wetland of International Importance” by the Ramsar Convention, a global intergovernmental treaty for the conservation of wetlands. But bringing back the heart of the estuary—its largest tidal marsh and primary source of freshwater—has demonstrably enhanced Tomales Bay’s importance to birds and other wildlife. Set between the pastoral ranchlands of West Marin to the east and the protected wildlands of Point Reyes National Seashore on the western shore, Tomales Bay has long been recognized as one of the most intact and biologically healthy estuaries along

the California coast, even prior to the restoration. As such, it has long served as an essential refueling site for migrating shorebirds and waterfowl along the Pacific Flyway as well as home for large numbers of overwintering and resident species. And now, by bringing back some 12 percent of the historic coastal wetlands between Cape Mendocino and Point Conception, the Giacomini Restoration project dramatically enhances the bay’s ecological value to those species. For some 60 years, a critical piece of the estuarine system had been missing. The restoration of that missing piece stimulated the natural development of a complex habitat mosaic of shallow ponds, mudflats, emergent marshes, and tidal sloughs. The new range of habitat conditions provides a kaleidoscope of feeding and resting opportunities for resident and visiting wildlife through the tidal cycle. In addition, because these new conditions blend gradually into higher portions of the wetland landscape— well beyond the current reach of tides—they provide valuable space for the tidal marsh to adjust and shift in response to future sea level rise. We can get a picture of the impact of these new conditions by looking at some of the species that make use of the range of habitats now on offer in the bay.

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Looking northwest up the length of Tomales Bay, with Point Reyes National Seashore on the left, the ranchlands of West Marin on the right, and the recently restored Giacomini Wetlands in the foreground. Note the vestiges of the agricultural fields visible in this aerial view from February 2009. Lagunitas Creek runs along the base of the wetlands before entering the bay on the west side.

Rick Lewis

(left) A greater yellowlegs stands in the pickleweed in the Giacomini Wetlands; (above) several dowitchers probe the water and mud in search

Galen Leeds, galenleeds.com

of food.

dowitchers, in particular, soon began to frequent a portion of the restored wetlands that developed precisely into the kind of still, brackish shallows that they prefer. Foraging dowitchers often move with a mob-like intensity among shifting tidal conditions, using their stout bills to “stitch” through the mud, like a sewing machine, to find prey. Individuals will even submerge their heads underwater to probe into the soft bottom. Using special tactile receptors at the end of their bills, they detect burrowing crustaceans and other invertebrates buried in the mud. The early presence of dowitchers was on the one hand unsurprising, as dowitchers often feed on a variety of larval insects and even earthworms that are present during the early stages of restoration. On the other hand, the increased presence of long-billed dowitchers within weeks of the tidal reintroduction hinted at the restoration’s broader impact on the birds inhabiting and visiting Tomales Bay. The inspiration and intent of restoration efforts are indeed often to provide expanded, regional benefits to wildlife. So we wondered if the restoration would stimulate growth in regional bird populations or if shorebirds from the more distant reaches of Tomales Bay were simply shifting their activities into the new wetland. Documenting such impacts can be difficult, but we were fortunate to have 25 years of Tomales Bay–wide shorebird monitoring observations, gathered before and after the restoration by birders working with Audubon Canyon Ranch, to guide our investigation. Now, seven years after tidal reintroduction, it is clear that wintering shorebird populations in southern Tomales Bay have grown in response to the revitalized wetland. (Shorebird numbers in northern Tomales Bay have shown relatively little, if any, boost.) This growth of surrounding shorebird populations is far more important, ecologically, than the more easily observed rise in wildlife use of the restoration site. Unlike local shifts in wildlife visitation to particular areas of the landscape, population growth reveals an actual increase in the number of individuals that depend on Tomales Bay—and the capacity of the bay to support them.

as with dowitchers and other wintering shorebirds, the value of the restoration to least sandpipers—sparrow-size shorebirds with yellowish legs and strongly patterned brown backs—was strong enough to not only draw them to the new wetlands but also stimulate the growth of their surrounding population in Tomales Bay, fueling a broader “ecological release” that increased the overall number of birds. These tiniest of shorebirds travel in large flocks, which can be seen wheeling into the restoration area like puffs of silver smoke, stretching, expanding, and flattening in the wind, then landing and scattering, blending with the color of the tidal flats. Weighing less than an ounce, leasts must feed more continuously than larger birds to balance their energy needs. But evolution has provided them with an unusual ability to hide in the vegetation while foraging and as a result take quick advantage of the new wetlands. They move, like other shorebirds, from location to location in the bay with the rhythms of tides, seasonal runoff, weather, and other conditions that affect their ability to find food. Other small shorebirds, such as western sandpipers or dunlin, rely on open mudflats to forage while they protect themselves through a communal readiness to leap into tight, flashing flocks to confuse and elude predatory falcons. When foraging in mixed flocks, leasts also respond with this kind of evasive flight, but they have another strategy too, which apparently provided an immediate advantage as the tides began to circulate through the new wetland. Even before the former pasture transitioned into salt marsh vegetation of pickleweed and sea lavender, before polychaete worms, crustaceans, and other invertebrate prey developed beneath the surface of the developing tidal flats—and despite the dramatic spiking of predation pressure from raptors as tidal flooding packed meadow voles and other terrestrial prey into the upper edges of the new wetland—least sandpipers took cover beneath remnant pasture grasses while foraging for larval insects and other transitional prey on the hidden surfaces of the evolving marsh. Some bird populations in Tomales Bay have lingered for decades in low numbers, occupying marginal habitat around j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 5

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the bay until the restored circulation of water finally revitalized their preferred habitats across the estuary’s new landscape. Among these is the greater yellowlegs. We had long suspected that the lost portions of the estuary held a kind of “magic” for yellowlegs because these slender, elegant shorebirds could reliably be found in the marginal puddles and upper sloughs outside the diked pasture. Now that suitable shallow-water habitat has increased dramatically, yellowlegs frequently dot the flooded expanses of the restored marsh plain, each foraging independently with its high-stepping gait or breaking into a short sprint to pluck a small fish from the water. A remarkable 145 percent increase in the yellowlegs population of southern Tomales Bay confirms the spectacular benefits of the restoration for this species.

2012. The consistently huge early-winter abundances of dabblers indicate that Tomales Bay is providing important new support for wintering duck populations—and their dramatic late-winter declines indicate that the bay is supporting wide-ranging populations of these birds over a large area that extends beyond Tomales Bay—as these same birds move off to other, seasonally available feeding areas with increasing winter rains. so far, we have observed 90 waterbird species and 13 species of raptors visiting the new wetlands. The dowitchers, least sandpipers, and ducks exhibit particular responses to the restoration, but species respond in numerous other ways, expanding the overall scope of avian activity in Tomales Bay. Western grebes and red-throated loons venture far from their preferred haunts in the deepest waters of Tomales Bay to pursue small fish in the developing tidal sloughs, which offer a different kind of subtidal habitat. Other species, such as great egrets and white pelicans, have established stable groups that

Percent change in abundance

400

200

0 1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

The results of ACR’s annual waterbird surveys on Tomales Bay show a dramatic increase in shorebird abundance (bold black line to red line) in the southern portion the northern portion (thin black line) show no change.

In addition to yellowlegs, other, more secretive marsh birds, such as American bitterns and state-listed California black rails, are also expanding from the marginal patches of habitat into the newly restored marshland. Local populations of endemic salt-marsh common yellowthroats and Bryant’s savannah sparrows are recovering from historic habitat loss as a range of estuarine conditions spreads across the new wetland.

Jules Evens

of the bay following the restoration of the Giacomini Wetlands, while the counts in

Moving Out into the Bay

While monitoring waterbirds from one of our survey boats, with binoculars pinned on the shoreline across a quarter-mile of bay, volunteer Roger Harshaw calls out, “Green-winged teal flock...22!” Prior to restoration, these small dabbling ducks occurred consistently but only in small, scattered numbers around the margins of Tomales Bay, and their abundance had been gradually declining for decades. Now, they too are staging an impressive comeback in the restoration area, with incursions that are spilling into the larger bay. As soon as the tides flowed back into the historic wetlands, surface-feeding ducks (“dabblers”) such as green-winged teal arrived to check out the newly flooded ponds. During that first winter in 2009, numbers peaked at about 3,000 ducks—wigeon, shoveler, gadwall, pintail, and teal. Those calculations nearly doubled each subsequent year, with over 10,000 birds counted in b ay n at u r e

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galen leeds, galenleeds.com

Courtesy Audubon Canyon Ranch

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(above) A black brant carrying a blade of eelgrass. (below) A pair of bald eagles started appearing at the restored wetlands in fall 2009, perhaps drawn by the increase in prey.

Eelgrass Meadows: An Ecological Keystone

restoration enhances regional climate resilience As the planet warms, Tomales Bay will be caught—like other estuaries—in a deadly climate-

driven contest that requires marshes to keep pace with increasing sea levels. Rising seas will interact with increasingly severe winter storms, flooding events, and the deposition of

sediment eroded from watersheds to dramatically reshape coastal marshes and estuaries. Sea level rise will drown most of the marshland along the bay’s eastern and western

shorelines, which rise steeply and provide no new space for the marshes to occupy. This could be especially problematic for the sensitive—and valuable—eelgrass meadows, which can only survive in fairly shallow water.

However, nearly 40 percent of the Giacomini restoration site (200 acres) currently lies

beyond the reach of the tides, providing valuable space for marshes to expand into, as the

current shoreline submerges beneath the advancing tide. Future efforts could easily extend the landward reach of the estuary into the lowlands immediately to the south. Circulation channels could be developed across the bordering roadway (Levee Road)—allowing for

further expansion of tidal marshes into the “wetland frontier” of Olema and Bear valleys. This potential underscores Audubon California’s recent recognition of Tomales Bay as one of the state’s “Top 50 Climate Refugia” for the future survival of birds.

As a highly dynamic system exposed to heavy seasonal flooding, the wetland landscape

in southern Tomales Bay not only accumulates huge amounts of sediment, it also buries undecomposed plant matter, or peat, at a fast rate, further raising the elevation—and

increasing the climate resilience—of the marsh. In addition, the growth of new vegetation, especially root biomass, will dramatically raise surface elevations needed to sustain tidal

wetlands. In southern Tomales Bay, the tidal landscape is not just the heart and lungs of the

system. It is a growing body of muscle and bone. For more than 60 years, the diked lower reach of Lagunitas Creek delivered heavy pulses of winter storm water, depositing blades. Eelgrass meadows simply teem with life. excessive loads of suspended sediment and nutrients from the Recognizing a global decline of eelgrass meadows and their upper parts of the watershed directly into the bay. Since essential ecological role in estuaries, the National Oceanic and removal of the Giacomini levees, runoff from the creek once Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has designated eelgrass as a priority habitat for conservation in California. The Giacomini again flows over an open marsh plain and gets filtered through Wetlands restoration was specifically designed to prevent or the marshland. Complex ecological lessen this decline in Tomales Bay, and the prospects for success processes have realigned, and hydrologic are encouraging. connections through the tidal marsh have Nearly a thousand acres of eelgrass meander along the length been repaired, nourishing substrates and of Tomales Bay, mostly at depths within two meters of average stimulating the productivity of the system. daily low tides. To remain healthy and photosynthesize effecAs life proliferates in the marsh, bayward tively, these subtidal meadows need a good amount of light to elements of the system are buffered from filter through the bay water. Excessive loads of suspended abrupt changes in water quality. sediment can darken the waters until they appear virtually Improving the quality of water entering opaque. Similarly, excessive nutrients stimulate thick blooms of the bay is helping to nurture the vast phytoplankton that render the water’s clarity into something like subtidal meadows of eelgrass. These “pea soup.” The improved quality of water entering the bay underwater meadows provide essential through the new wetlands will help ensure the growth and habitat for waterbirds, fish, crabs, marine protection of eelgrass, despite predicted increases in the snails, amphipods, nudibranchs, anemones, intensity of future stormwater runoff from the watershed. and numerous other members of the However, restoring water quality is a gradual process. estuarine community. The rooted vascular Turbidity downstream of the restoration site actually increased eelgrass plants thrive in the rhythmic initially an expected response to the tides reworking barren balance between freshwater runoff and soils—but far less than predicted, and the murkiness has since saline tides, photosynthesizing and breathdecreased noticeably. Other aspects of water quality are improving life into the bay, accounting for a major ing faster than anticipated, and they are expected to continue portion of the biological energy that improving for many years. sustains the estuarine system. Myriad Of the many species that thrive on the eelgrass beds of invertebrates graze on the algal epiphytes that grow on eelgrass

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Courtesy NOAA

feed primarily in the restoration site, leaving only occasionally to take advantage of alternative feeding areas elsewhere in the bay. Dramatic fluctuations in habitat conditions caused by natural “disturbance” events—a key ecological feature of the Giacomini Wetlands—spur dynamic changes in bird use that further highlight connections with the rest of Tomales Bay. For example, when heavy storm runoff from Lagunitas Creek scours sloughs and marshes, dropping new layers of silt and debris over the tidal flats, many species— diving ducks and other waterbirds—move out into the larger bay, away from the dense, muddy plumes of storm water. Estuarine fishes swim bayward toward saltier, less turbid waters, some dispersing into nearshore coastal waters, while steelhead and salmon head upstream.

Looking southeast across the restored Giacomini Wetlands toward Black Mountain at sunrise.

John W. Wall

Tomales Bay, perhaps the most noticeable is the black brant, a small sea goose that spends its summers in arctic breeding areas. Magnificent clouds of wintering and migrating brant, often numbering in the thousands, lift into dense aerial laceworks above their eelgrass feeding areas. These are truly specialized grazers that rely almost entirely on eelgrass. Although numerous other plants and animals grow on the eelgrass blades, the dietary requirements of brant are focused specifically on the vegetation. pacific herring also rely on eelgrass habitat. Each winter, tens of millions of these small schooling fish enter Tomales Bay from coastal waters, depositing vast quantities of roe, up to a kilogram per square meter of eelgrass. These spawning events act as powerful magnets, pulling in hungry species from all parts of the bay and nearshore coastal waters, including dense gatherings of resident harbor seals, which surface, roll, and dive over each school of herring. The sticky masses of herring eggs also provide critical sustenance for fishes, crabs, and nearly all species of waterbirds. Eelgrass meadows also shelter and feed juvenile salmon, which move into the bay after surviving a considerable gamut of water-quality threats in the upper watershed. When young salmon, called parr, develop into more salt-tolerant smolts, they

Sarah Swenty, USFWS

migrate down from freshwater streams to seek critical food and protection in the estuarine sloughs of the tidal marsh. As they continue to develop and mature, they move into the safety of eelgrass beds to feed on tiny invertebrates and continue adjusting to higher salinities before heading out into the ocean for the next stage of their anadromous lives. The California bat ray is another underwater denizen of the bay’s eelgrass meadows, but it can frequently be seen when its “wing tips” break the surface of the water while it is cruising along the shallower regions of the bay. As bat rays wander through the eelgrass maze, the up-and-down movement of their wings creates a suction used to excavate invertebrate prey from the soft bay bottom. They are, in effect, tilling the substrate and oxygenating the sediments. Bat ray numbers may exceed several thousand throughout the bay. In summer, they use the eelgrass beds as nurseries, giving live birth to small replicas of themselves.

ti dewate r goby

A remarkable story emerged from the Giacomini Wetlands

restoration involving a tiny (less than two inches long) fish, the tidewater goby (Eucyclobius newberryi). This federally endangered species inhabits a narrow range of estuarine

waters that connect only occasionally with the tidal environ-

ment, with salinities generally less than 12 parts per thousand. It occurs only in isolated populations along coastal California and had not been reported in Tomales Bay since the early 1950s. But in 2002, during reconnaissance studies for the Giacomini Wetlands restoration, the tidewater goby was

rediscovered in a remnant tidal slough. Since the restoration, the goby has increased in abundance and spread to other

newly created channels and backwaters within the restoration site—a fulfillment of one of the goals of the restoration effort:

to protect and improve habitat values for rare, threatened, and endangered species.

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restoring the natural flow of water between land and sea is fundamental to the health and living systems of Tomales Bay—from the rich pulses of marine life produced in eelgrass meadows during summer to the tiny creatures that live in and under the mud to the fishes, birds, and mammals and the habitats on which they depend. But the full effects of the restoration, and its likely benefits to Tomales Bay, are yet to be seen, because the seasonal dynamics of the estuary have been uncommonly moderate and mild since the project began. Extreme storm events are a key aspect of this system but remain essentially unobserved. How dramatically will storms accelerate the development of tidal sloughs, resculpting the marshland into a more elaborate system of tidal circulation? To what extent will thick deposits of sediment from extreme flooding events lift and nourish the newly formed marsh? And how resilient to winter storms will the expanded populations of estuarine invertebrates and shorebirds prove to be? We obviously don’t know the answers, but we feel privileged to have a ringside seat to observe the unfolding drama of nature reasserting itself across Tomales Bay. In the years and decades ahead, we look forward to seeing just how life adjusts to changing conditions in a fully functioning estuary.

John Kelly is director of conservation science for Audubon Canyon Ranch, where he conducts and oversees programs in conservation research, ecological restoration, and natural resources management at ACR’s sanctuaries in Marin and Sonoma counties. He is also a research associate at Point Blue Conservation Science. His home and office are at ACR’s Cypress Grove Research Center on Tomales Bay. Jules Evens has worked as a wildlife biologist in the San Francisco Bay Area for over three decades, with a primary focus on tidal wetlands; avian population trends; and rare, threatened, and endangered species. He is the author of The Natural History of the Point Reyes Peninsula (3rd edition, 2008, University of California Press) and lives in Point Reyes Station.

We Make Artisan Cheese!

bay nature kayak adventure on tomales bay Saturday, Oct. 10, 9:30 am–4 pm Join Bay Nature and Environmental Traveling Companions for a day on Tomales Bay, launching from Heart’s Desire Beach, Tomales Bay State Park. Trip includes a tour of Cypress Grove Preserve with John Kelly of Audubon Canyon Ranch. $75/person; reservation required; write to katy@baynature.org.

explore tomales bay or giacomini wetlands on your own You can rent a kayak or join a tour through the following outfitters: blue waters kayaking: bluewaterskayaking.com point reyes outdoors: pointreyesoutdoors.com

Miwok Archeological Preserve of Marin (MAPOM) and College of Marin Invite You to Attend

“Native Americans: Past, Present and Future” Family owned and operated general store and working feed barn serving the community since 1942

Malcolm Margolin, publisher of Heyday Books And three respected California Indian speakers

Saturday July 18, 9:30 AM Red Barn, Point Reyes National Seashore Fee $49

Open Mon-Sat 9-5 & Sun 10-5 11250 Highway One Point Reyes Station CA 94956 (415) 663-1223

This program is part of the dynamic lectures, skills classes, and field trips on California Indian cultures sponsored by MAPOM. Learn more at mapom.org

www.tobysfeedbarn.com

Registration online through College of Marin Community Education Or call (415) 485-9305

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Ride on the Wild Side

East Bay Parks by Mountain Bike

by greg fisher

It’s

P h o to s by Ka r l N i e lse n

mid-afternoon and I-80 heading into Berkeley is clogged again. The ride was supposed to start exactly six minutes ago, but I’m in four lanes of humanity feeling like a can on an endless grocery store shelf. I take out the phone and text my regrets, hoping I don’t get left behind. Without my mountain biking partner, I’d be as lost on the trails we’re riding today as I am in this maze of freeway exchanges lining the Bay. As it eventually always does, the traffic eases and I meet my friends at the West Berkeley offices of NICA, the National Interscholastic Cycling Association. The group is helmed by Austin McInerny, a former environmental planner and mediator who now shepherds the growth of youth mountain biking across the country. Austin resembles a piece of razor wire; his long, lean, and sharp features have been a fixture around the land management tables of the Bay Area. He’s advised agencies at the local, state, and federal level about public access to open space, most recently during his time on the board of the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council. And he’s no slouch on the bike, being a longtime high school cycling coach. Today his assignment slides considerably higher up the age scale. He’s agreed to introduce me to the joys of trail riding along the urban-wildlands interface in the East Bay Regional Park District, starting with Tilden Park and later Crockett Hills Park, where trails designed with mountain bikers in mind opened this spring. We take off in the late afternoon sun and begin winding our way through Berkeley city streets—up, up, up, and up—to Tilden Regional Park, one of the oldest and best-known parks in the East Bay. Its proximity to a exploring the east bay regional parks dense, urban environment makes it a This story is part of a series exploring the natural and cultural history and resources of the East Bay Regional convenient refuge for those seeking a break Park District (EBRPD). The series is sponsored by the from the aforementioned traffic snarls and district, which manages 119,000 acres of public open space in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. other rigors of shoulder-to-shoulder human b ay n at u r e

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(above) A lone cyclist climbs the Ridgeline Trail up from Shady Creek Trail in

Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park; (left) a signpost for the Bay Area Ridge Trail in Crockett Hills Regional Park props up Austin McInernyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bike; (middle) a

western toad during a moonlit ride in Pleasanton Ridge; (right) McInerny takes a breather just off the Nimitz Trail in Tilden Park with Mount Diablo behind him in the east.

A break in the oak-bay woodland canopy along the Ridgeline Trail in Pleasanton Ridge

living conditions. Comb its more than 2,000 acres and you’ll find a sufficient sliver of solitude. While mountain biking wasn’t even a notion when visionary planners created the park in the mid-1930s, the wheeled sport is among the fastest growing recreational activities in the East Bay Regional Park system. With Austin as my guide, I’ll get a firsthand look at what’s drawing the two-wheeled species. As we ascend out of the flatlands into the hills, Austin regales me with stories of Berkeley cycling personalities from mountain biking’s humbler, wilder days in the late 1970s and ‘80s, specifically the famed downhill runs in Redwood Regional Park by BMX and clunker-riding cyclists identifying themselves as the Berkeley Trailer Union. “We were a part of something new and different then. It was supposed to be disruptive and nonconforming,” recounts Austin. Marin gets a lot of press as the birthplace of mountain biking, but the East Bay had no shortage of people—like Austin—attracted to the green spaces on the map and excited to bike there. “Mountain biking’s come a long way since then,” Austin continues, “not only as an industry, but also as an answer to how to get (and keep) people outdoors.” We hit the park boundary, and Tilden lies before us as if someone pulled back a curtain to reveal it. We’re surrounded by

Regional Park offers a glimpse of the sprawl of the Tri-Valley area below.

are often poorly understood by other park users, which can lead to some acrimony on the trail. While Marin County may hold the record for the most vehement head-butting between user groups, the East Bay is not immune. Official guidelines, both from EBRPD and the International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA), dictate that in cases of narrow passage, cyclists should yield the trail to foot and horse traffic. The best examples of trail user interaction come from friendly engagement and a willingness to acknowledge and listen to one another, even if only for a few seconds. Austin stresses that approach with the youth he coaches. “We launched ‘Spirit of Howdy’ in 2010 because we wanted to teach kids that being on a trail isn’t simply about their experience,” says Austin. “It’s about using your time in nature to be an ambassador for cycling and to help people understand why someone would do what we do.” Spirit of Howdy and its parent initiative, the Teen Trail Corps, are joint projects of NICA and IMBA. The Teen Trail Corps promotes responsible stewardship of trails, both on and off the bike, and is integrated into the curriculum for young student athletes. Started here in Northern California, NICA fosters cycling leagues across the U.S. to get more kids riding and exercising outdoors. “We want to impart respect, empathy, and compassion to these up-and-coming cyclists,” says Austin, “not only because it’s the right thing, but also because we want our sport to lead the way in trail advocacy and access.” Programs like this could prove vital as park visitation continues to rise across all demographics. According to recentlyretired EBRPD Trails Development Program Manager Jim Townsend, “Youth participation is up across all activities, including mountain biking, which is now a top three activity for park users of all ages. Groups like NICA, the Bicycle Trails Council of the East Bay (BTCEB), and others are all having a positive effect on parks use.” This is evident as we head north on one of the most popular stretches of trail in Tilden Park: the rough road known as Nimitz Way that winds along the ridgetop into Wildcat Canyon Regional Park. We’re in the wind now, which buffets us as we roller-coaster along an exposed ridgeline dotted with cattle. We pedal over the Nimitz’s torn asphalt for a nearly effortless four miles before coming upon the turn to Havey Canyon. From here, the escalator points down, though there’s no handrail to hold. “Careful,” Austin says. “This stretch’ll outrun you if you let it.” His words hang in the air as he disappears into a chute lined with oak, fir, and sword ferns. It’s a fast drop, just over a mile and a half, and we quickly shed 500 feet. It ends at a creek where a bridge certainly should be, but isn’t. We dismount, toss bikes onto shoulders, and dance across the rocks in our stiff-soled, metal-cleated cycling

participation is up “Youth across all activities, including

mountain biking. It’s now a top three activity for park users of all ages.”

green, bathed in cool, salty Bay air, our skin infiltrated with eucalyptus and laurel. I can relax now that the city’s behind me. Momentarily, anyway. After dropping down into the park, we have to once again fight gravity up Meadows Canyon Trail. But with dirt under our tread, it seems far less of a labor. As we climb, I feel myself opening to the sights and sounds: the red-tailed hawk circling overhead getting mobbed by crows. The monkeyflower and willow betraying a hidden seep. The elegance of a small patch of cobweb thistle. The buzzing of pollinators around stands of bee plant. The raccoon tracks, coyote scat, and owl cavities in the live oaks, all suggesting the world that comes awake as we sleep. When we reach the top of Meadows Canyon, we cross over to Seaview Trail and keep climbing to the spectacular 360-degree view at the high point on the ridge. Austin’s wife, Celeste, has finished her nursing shift and rides up to join us. Looking west, the three of us revel in the view of a shimmering Bay, its islands arranged precisely, its gate open wide.

Back

on our bikes, we head north toward Inspiration Point. Along the way, we pass people either on foot, wheel, or hoof, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine. All are cordial, which is frankly unexpected given that mountain bikers b ay n at u r e

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shoes. This is likely the most dangerous part of the ride, as anyone who’s walked in such footwear can attest. It’s also the part of the ride where we feel farthest afield, precisely because there’s no bridge to aid our crossing. On the other side, we remount and meander along a well-tended double-track that hugs Wildcat Creek. Having climbed, traversed, and descended, we’re now coming full circle. We head back into the city, soaring down streets we had scaled only two hours prior. We’ve explored an array of habitats and vistas in short order, covering a third of the almost 40 miles of trails that stretch across Tilden, a journey that would have taken a full day on foot. Soon, we’re back in civilian attire, sipping beer and ordering Thai food. Our excursion didn’t have to wait for the weekend and shouldn’t be saved for days off; it should and can be everyday life. Over curry, we discuss the possibility of a trans-East Bay ridge route, starting as far south as Lake Chabot and heading north to the Carquinez Strait, at Crockett Hills Regional Park. Phones flop out on the table, websites are consulted, maps are scanned and scrolled. Most of the route could follow the Bay Area Ridge Trail and potentially be covered in one very long day. By the time the check drops, we’ve determined that a route like that, while exceptional, would have to be conducted at least partly on city streets. Not exactly what we were after, but the Bay Area Ridge Trail is a living thing. Connectivity is its currency and, someday, a (mostly) off-road route seems likely. By way of substitution, we opt to reconvene our little crew for a ride at Crockett Hills. Much buzz has been building about new trail construction there and, while not quite offering the lengthy adventure that began our conversation, a park with trails optimized for mountain bikes is too good to ignore.

Just

over a week later, Austin, Celeste, and I meet up again in the northeast pocket of the San Francisco Bay. It feels a world apart from the cosmopolis that rings its larger shoreline. The towns of Crockett, Hercules, and Martinez are more reminiscent of small-town California—former industrial towns where time clocks in a bit slower. Crockett Hills Regional Park, overlooking the Carquinez Strait, traffics in a similar humility, but quietly exhibits an innovative approach to land management. Crockett Hills is one of the East Bay’s newest public lands, having opened to the public in 2006. Visitation on the former ranchland has remained low. “Almost no one went there,” says Townsend. “It was pretty empty.” In late 2014, however, a push for new trail construction began, incorporating design elements to entice a highly mobile user group. Soon six miles of new trail appeared in Crockett’s oak-dominated rangelands, trails that didn’t follow fall lines across the land, but rather clung in moderate grades to the contours of the hills. “We worked to specifically make our new trail design in Crockett mountain-bike friendly,” Townsend says. “Crockett is not as environmentally sensitive as many of our parks are, and a land use plan and environmental impact report had been completed. This allowed us to readily build new trails to accommodate mountain bikers rather than struggle to increase access on existing trails in other parks.” The new alignments feature mid-trail erosion control installed to accommodate a descending mountain biker but also to reduce speed. Sight lines were carefully considered. Sharp switchback turns were made more gentle and, most importantly, bermed. These bermed turns enable mountain bikers to come into turns with more control, reducing the need to slam on brakes and skid, damaging the trail surface and potentially causing injury. j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 5

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(left) McInerny checks out a bermed corner on the bike-friendly Tree

Farm Loop Trail at Crockett Hills Regional Park. (above) Members of the Berkeley High mountain bike team stop briefly to watch the sunset from the top of Sea View Trail in Tilden Park.

“Response has been incredibly positive,” Townsend notes. “Parking lots are full now and we’re seeing a huge difference in park usage. The new trails are fully multiuse, and we’ve seen an increase in hikers as well as cyclists. We made a promise for more trail access for park users with the passage of [2008 parks bond extension] Measure WW. The trails in Crockett Hills are part of keeping that promise.” To those who cry foul over mountain-bike-optimized trail construction, Townsend says, “We have nearly 119,000 acres of parks, a number of equestrian facilities, hundreds of miles of foot traffic-only trails, and camps and playgrounds for the disabled. We’re here to accommodate all users who have a right to use their public parks. Mountain bikers are part of that. We need to attract a new generation of outdoor enthusiasts so they will grow up loving these places.” Our time in Crockett Hills is exemplary. We leave our vehicles in a parking lot just off the Carquinez Bridge in the town of Crockett. We climb past dilapidated barns and quickly find our words lost to our increasingly heavier breathing as we ascend through oak and bay laurel to a small tunnel underneath the Cummings Skyway. Once on its southern side, we see the promise of Crockett come to light. The hills are rippling with emerald grass, broken by clumps of oaks like stones in a slow, wide river. We look out on a valley and, from our vantage at the old cattle staging slab off the Crockett Ranch Trail, descend the new trail into the trees below. We glide down switchback after switchback, trying out the new trail features before meeting up with Big Valley Trail near a small creek bed along the valley floor. Once at Big Valley, we begin a grueling ascent onto the opposite side of the canyon. A third of the way up, we see one of our trail options closed to protect nesting eagles. We quietly commend our winged friends for their choice of residence and continue to grunt upward toward the top of the South Tree Frog Trail. Once we reach this summit, we stop to look out over the Carquinez Strait, turning full circle to take in views of mounts Diablo and Tamalpais. Satisfied, we again point our bikes downward. We roll toward the valley floor, alternating between stands of trees and open grassland. Again the trail surfaces seem tailormade for mountain bikes, with high-sided turns and grade structures that favor steady handling and strong control. Over the course of the three-mile descent, our bodies fatigue from the effort of engaging every muscle group we have to maneuver the bikes. Our necks ache. So do our inner thighs, our feet, our triceps. b ay n at u r e

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We pass two riders sitting on the side of the trail, looking west down the valley. “Perfect day,” they say. We smile and agree. They were the only people we’ve seen that morning other than a woman walking her dog near the parking lot. Back at the car, we calculate we had logged almost 14 miles in under 90 minutes. On foot, it would have taken the better part of a day to cover that distance; we had done it in time to arrive at the office for 10 a.m. meetings. While time spent in nature isn’t measured by the clock, it is in the rest of the world. We had something that we’d carry with us as armor against the mundane demands of daily life: the beautifully decaying barns, the eagles building a home, the wind in the grass, all offering some comfort. When leaving Tilden the prior week, we had seen the mountain bike team from Berkeley High School filing into the park for practice. This was their scrimmage, their spring training, but it was in the woodsy wilds rather than in the confines of a gymnasium. I think about the challenges of being caught between childhood and adulthood and then consider the solace we three were able to find in just a couple hours, right out the back door. I think about the clarity one gets from an engaged and tired body and how the brain thrives when the brawn is pushed to its edge. I think about all the video games they could be playing right now. It’s often assumed mountain bikers are one-dimensional, that we seek only the biochemical surges brought on by high-speed antics at the expense of anyone who’d get in our way. Let it be said here: We’re not the “other.” Where it counts, mountain bikers share immense commonality with those who favor hiking, bird-watching, riding horseback, or simply sitting in the grass watching the sun go down. Though we all glean some tribal pleasure from consorting with our own, placing yourself in nature is not a matter of gear, nor is it limited to a recreational discipline. It’s an awakening of our connection to the planet that nursed us, and it happens regardless of how we choose to be outdoors. Pace, clothing, culture all fade when our ancient DNA rewires itself into the great green expanse. Greg Fisher was a habitat restoration specialist before diving full time into the world of trail riding. He was the founder and publisher of Bike Monkey magazine and is now part of a team that produces competitive cycling events. He lives and rides in Sonoma County. Karl Nielsen is a Berkeley-based freelance photographer shooting for regional transportation agencies, the San Francisco Chronicle, and UC Berkeley. He is also an assistant coach for the Berkeley High School mountain bike team. Find him at karlnielsenphotography.com.

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c l i m at e c h a n g e : Dispatches from the Home Front

by lester rowntree

when it rains, it pours

The 2014-15 rainfall season was a head-spinning array of meteorological extremes that set records, raised and then dashed hopes for an end to the state’s three-year drought, and possibly—just possibly—gave us a hint of California’s climate-change future. First, 12 inches of rain fell in the Bay Area between Thanksgiving and Christmas, a record-setting 469 percent of normal that stoked speculation about a wet winter. But in January, usually our wettest month, the atmosphere went dry, completely dry, with nary a raindrop falling—another record set, but a very unwelcome one. In early February two drenching Pineapple Express storms revived hopes for at least an average year. However, after three days the skies ran dry once again. In a “normal” winter we get over 70 days of rain spread out over five months. This year, in stark contrast, 90 percent of our rain fell in just five days. So what’s going on? Over the past two years, we’ve been hearing a lot about the ridge of high pressure that has blocked b ay n at u r e

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our winter storms and helped cause our current drought. But now scientists are gaining a better understanding of a second, related question: When it is wet, why is it really, really wet? Current climate change research suggests California’s weather could become even more variable than in the past, a “new normal” of drier dry periods punctuated by wetter winter storms. introducing atmospheric rivers One reason for the extreme wetness is that an increasing percentage of our rain in the last few years has come from “atmospheric “Climate Change: Dispatches from the Home Front” is a series of articles highlighting groundbreaking work being done by Bay Area institutions, agencies, and nonprofit groups to comprehend, mitigate, and adapt to the impact of climate change on Bay Area ecosystems. The series is a partnership with the Bay Area Ecosystem Climate Change Consortium (baeccc. org). More at baynature.org/climate-change.

TJ Gehling, flickr.com/photos/tjgehling

Historic drought punctuated by heavy “atmospheric river” rainstorms may be the new normal for a climate-changed California

rivers”— long, narrow, river-like filaments of moist air, stretching thousands of miles across the Pacific from the deep tropics, that can bring extraordinarily heavy rainfall to the West Coast, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). You can compare these “rivers in the sky” to, say, the Mississippi River, flowing a thousand miles through the heart of North America before dumping huge amounts of water into the Gulf of Mexico, except scientists say an atmospheric river may carry 10 or 15 times more water than Old Man River. (If you want to do the math, the average flow of the Mississippi at New Orleans is 600,000 cubic feet per second.) Atmospheric rivers, commonly abbreviated as ARs, aren’t actually rainstorms themselves. Rather, they’re a product of the earth’s heat-balancing act, the natural process of moving heat and moisture from the tropics to higher latitudes. It’s only when an atmospheric river combines with a Pacific storm that ARs become energized into super-storms like those that drenched the Bay Area in December 2014 and February 2015. Because most of our winter storms are created over the Pacific from the dynamic mixing of cold arctic air from Alaska and warmer air from the mid-latitudes (north of the Hawaiian Islands), they consist of two distinct parts, one warm and one cold; commonly, most precipitation falls from the warm front since warm air holds more moisture than cold air does. The difference between a normal Pacific storm and an AR event is that the latter has an extensive river-like warm sector that delivers vast amounts of moisture directly from the warm and wet tropics. discovering rivers in the sky West Coast meteorologists had long been baffled as to why some winter storms produced so much more rain than others. But over the last decade and a half, scientists have started to understand the complicated conditions that create an atmospheric river storm. In 1998—a huge year for rain in California— scientists began a series of airplane flights through winter storms over the California Coast Ranges and the Sierra Nevada. These “Hurricane Hunter” flights discovered extraordinarily large amounts of water vapor embedded in strong air currents, rolling off the Pacific at around 6,000 feet in altitude, uncommonly low compared with the usual Pacific storms. Around the same time, researchers from the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology, using brand-new satellite remote sensing imagery, found scores of long, narrow, river-like air masses moving vast amounts of heat and moisture from the tropics into the mid-latitudes —“atmospheric rivers.” West Coast scientists wondered if this new atmospheric river concept might be the answer to their long-standing question about why some winter storms are much, much wetter than others. Being able to answer this question would not simply satisfy scientific curiosity, but would allow them to more accurately warn water management and emergency response agencies of incoming dangerously wet weather. the rainmakers: aerosols and magic dust While discovering the role atmospheric rivers play in transporting tons of water vapor across the sky was significant, another critical question remained, and that is how the water vapor in an AR is transformed into a liquid state, resulting in rain and snow. For an atmospheric river to really pour, something has to

Earth simulator created by Cameron Beccario, earth.nullschool.net

Heavy rainfall engulfs Alcatraz Island in this view from San Francisco on December 5, 2014.

An intense plume of atmospheric water vapor (blue-purple) stretches from the Hawaiian Islands northeast across the Pacific and splashes into the California coast on the morning of February 8, 2015, in this image from a visualization created with earth.nullschool.net.

happen to get the water out of the clouds, into raindrops, and down to the ground. And that something, it turns out, is a gathering of water molecules around tiny particles known as aerosols, which are the very seeds of rain and snowfall. But aerosols come in many varieties—both natural, like oceanic salt spray, desert dust, and volcanic ash, and human-generated, like soot from autos and factories. Determining which of these aerosols are more likely to attract water molecules and which are not is a major scientific quest. To answer questions about the character of atmospheric rivers and what kind of aerosols they carry with their tropical water vapor, NOAA, NASA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanogj u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 5

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John W. Wall

Rain (inches)

Upper Cataract Falls on Mount Tamalpais floods as an atmospheric-river-fueled storm raphy, and UC San Diego began a two-year expedition in 2009 brings heavy rain to Northern California on February 9, 2014. known as CalWater1. The groups collected aerosol and precipitation data both in the air, by flying planes through the storms, finding are huge. If dust aerosols from the desert in China and on the ground, through a new network of ground stations. seeded that one storm, they’re probably seeding others. If The results were startling. Taklamakan dust has been seeding California AR storms for centuries, which we infer to be the case based on the accumulaAlthough by definition all ARs transport huge amounts of water vapor, there can be massive differences between the tion of Asian desert dust in the Sierra Nevada mountains, what amount of rainfall actually precipitated from different AR if the desert’s supply of that water-friendly dust is finite or— worse yet—paved over or eliminated by industrial activity? events. While some storms drop only 2 percent of their water vapor, others can precipitate seven times that amount. Two of the storms that When It Rains, It Pours were studied had identical water vapor Whenhistoric It Rains, It atmospheric Pours rivers have burst through Even in the midst of California's drought, content, but one storm dropped 40 Even in the midst California’s historic drought, atmospheric burst through for a from for a handful of of days of intense, record-breaking rain. rivers Dailyhave precipitation records handful of days of intense,County's record-breaking rain.River Dailybasin, precipitation from Venado, in Sonoma percent more than the other, a difference Venago, in Sonoma Russian showrecords a remarkable pattern over the County’s Russian River basin, show a remarkable pattern over the last year of long dry stretches on the ground that amounted to 1.5 past year of long dry stretches punctuated by drenching storms. punctuated by drenching storms. million acre-feet of water, more than the 12 city of San Francisco uses in a year. So what was the difference between these two AR storms? 9 Aerosols, yes, but not just any aerosols. The wetter storm was laden with dust from the Taklamakan Desert in northwestern 6 China, while the drier storm had none of these microscopic water-friendly particles. Professor of chemistry Kim Prather and her lab at UC San Diego have determined that 3 the Taklamakan Desert aerosols actually contained unique organic compounds that were extraordinarily water vapor friendly, 0 July 1, 2014 AR: 12/2014 AR: 2/2015 June 1, 2015 much more so than the more common array of marine salt aerosols. July 2014-June 2015 Source: California Department of Water Resources The implications from Prather’s

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don foley, donfoley.com

c li mate c han ge

atmospheric rivers hit northern california the New Year’s flood of January 3, 2006, when the Russian Rivers and aerosols may produce the right conditions for a River crested 10 feet above its 32-foot flood stage at Guernevdrenching winter storm, but it’s also important to try to ille, while nearby Santa Rosa measured 17 inches of rain in predict how those storms will hit us and how much water less than a week. During the December 2014 and February they’ll drop here. To start answering those questions, 2015 AR events, more than 10 inches of rain fell within 24 hours, but flooding was minimal because the region’s parched researchers needed to understand just how atmospheric rivers soils sucked up the copious rainfall before it ran off into land in Northern California. streams and rivers. Climatologists say that during a normal rainfall season Not surprisingly, the Bay Area’s diverse topography exerts a around 20 atmospheric rivers combine with Pacific storms to strong influence on the amount of rain deposited by an AR—as strike the West Coast, with most ARs making landfall in Oregon and Washington while just four or five affect California north of it does with regular storms, too—with more rain falling in higher Monterey Bay. (Few atmospheric rivers visit Southern a n at o m y o f a n at m o s p h e r i c r i v e r California.) But because of the persistent high-pressure ridge for the last three winters, that number has been reduced. During the 2014-15 rainfall season the Bay Area and Northern California had only three atmospheric river events: one in late November; the strongest of the season, on December 11; and 3. Lift. As the warm, moist air encounters then the third, a double-barthe mountains of the Coast Range or Sierra reled AR on February 7-9. At Nevada, it rises and cools, forcing more water out as rain. The result is much least five other atmospheric higher rainfall in the mountains than in river storms were shunted areas in the “rain shadow” to the east. northward to Washington state by the ridge. Analysis of California’s daily precipitation records suggests that normally ARs contribute 30 to 50 percent of our seasonal rainfall, with the remainder coming from the weaker, cyclonic storms that brew over the North Pacific. But in the last 1. Formation. Winds over the Pacific Ocean force water vapor into several drought-plagued years a narrow band of intense moisture, ARs have accounted for around and this “river” travels across the 80 percent of our meager Pacific from the tropics. A Pacific seasonal rainfall. So while ARs storm pattern can “capture” this 2. Impact. Atmospheric rivers generally arrive from river, directing it toward the coast bring with them the threat of the southwest. The more perpendicular the angle of and leading to a major rain event. a river to the coastal mountains, the more of its severe flooding, water managers water will fall in the Coast Ranges, with less of it increasingly see them as an reaching the Central Valley or Sierra Nevada. To essential contribution to the maximize rainfall, a river also needs to carry aerosols, such as dust particles from the Chinese desert, for state’s water supply. the water molecules to cluster around. Nonetheless, atmospheric rivers have indeed wreaked havoc in the Bay Area, An atmospheric river is a long, narrow ribbon of moist air that stretches thousands particularly in the Russian of miles across the Pacific Ocean. Since discovering them in the late 1990s, scientists River basin, where they’ve have tried to better understand these massive sky rivers, which can hit the West been responsible for 37 of the Coast with hours or even days of sustained, heavy rainfall. past 39 floods during the 20th century. Heavy rains created

ridges and rivers in our future Global climate change computer models have long been unclear on whether Northern California will receive more or less rainfall in our climate-changed future. Those same models, however, have been remarkably consistent in projecting b ay n at u r e

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Water had almost completely disappeared from this pond at Coyote Hills, Fremont, in late fall 2014, until atmospheric river storms in December 2014 brought several inches of rain to the region in a few days.

increased variability, with more extremes in our already highly variable rainfall. Has that future actually arrived, given the erratic dry and wet pattern of the last several years, winters of alternating “ridges” and “rivers”? There’s not yet a consensus from the scientific community, but at least some experts think so. “Under current climate scenarios, atmospheric rivers will hit Northern California twice as often by 2100 as they do now,” said USGS hydrologist Mike Dettinger at the December 2014 meeting of the American Geophysical Union. ”When the atmosphere is warmer it holds more water, so there will be a huge increase in these atmospheric rivers.” With more pressing questions to answer about atmospheric rivers and aerosols, a 22-member science team, backed by an array of agencies and universities, launched CalWater2 in December 2014. Once again Hurricane Hunter aircraft arrived from Florida while research vessels headed out to sea. Unfortunately, there were no storms at all in January 2015. But then the atmospheric river arrived in early February, sending researchers out into the torrential rain to collect data in the air, on the ground, and at sea, making it perhaps the most studied storm in California’s history. CalWater2 will run for several more years, until 2018, and scientists hope that conditions will shift enough during that time to give them a few more atmospheric river storms to study. Of course, they’re not the only ones. Almost everyone in the state, from farmers and fisherman to water agency officials and golf course managers, is hoping and praying that we’ll get a few wet winters to replenish our dwindling water supplies and bathe our parched landscapes. Lester Rowntree is a research associate at UC Berkeley working on local and global environmental issues and a frequent contributor to Bay Nature. Previously he taught environmental science for 35 years at San Jose State University. He can be reached at rowntree@berkeley.edu.

Davor Desancic

places as a result of what meteorologists call the orographic effect: Rainfall increases with elevation because air masses are cooled as they rise over hills and mountains, a process that lessens the moisture-holding capacity of an air mass. For example, during the December 11, 2014, AR event the venerable San Francisco rain gauge at the Old Mint measured 3.4 inches of rain in 24 hours. Across the Bay in the Oakland-Berkeley hills, at around 1,000 feet, that amount was closer to 5 inches. Higher still in the mountains west of Healdsburg, the Venado gauge measured 7.5 inches. These rainfall intensity rates—the amount of rain that falls during a given period of time—put our AR West Coast storms right up there with the intense downpours associated with tropical typhoons and hurricanes. Topography also matters when you consider a storm’s directional approach, which hydrologist Marty Ralph of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at Scripps calls the “angle of attack.” Do the AR winds meet the Coast Range mountains head-on, at a true 90-degree perpendicular? If they do, heavier rainfall results, due to the orographic effect. A good example would be when southwesterly AR storm winds flow over the southeast-northwest trending Santa Cruz Mountains, dumping more rain onto the slopes, rain that then drains into the San Lorenzo River, which then floods downtown Santa Cruz. The angle of attack also determines how far inland AR moisture travels and whether or not it will add to California’s or other states’ water supply. Those storms that arrive just north of the Golden Gate usually go through a gap in the mountains near Petaluma known as the Petaluma Gap and proceed into the Sacramento Valley, then northward along the Sierra front, dropping rain and snow that will collect in Oroville and Shasta Lakes.

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first person

Watching the Weather with Daniel Swain Interview by Eric Simons We’re told to keep our climate and our weather separate. But Daniel Swain, a fourth-year graduate student climate scientist at Stanford, is happily mixing them up. His research focuses on the causes of persistent patterns in the atmosphere—like the ones that cause drought or exceptional rain in California—and how climate change might be affecting them. In his spare time, the 25-year-old Marin native runs the California Weather Blog (weatherwest.com), a must-read for weather nerds where he comments on statewide weather patterns and their big-picture causes. Swain is most famous, though, for something he did almost as an afterthought: He’s the one who gave the name “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” to the pattern that’s being blamed for our three years of drought. bay nature: You coined the term “Ridiculously

well, that’s just a hyperbolic modifier, but certainly in a historical context it’s an unprecedented event. Is it resilient? Yes. It keeps returning. It’s not there all the time—it’s not the ridiculously permanent ridge. We have seen these individual storms break through. But if you average over a long enough period of time, there’s always a big red blob in that part of the Pacific for each of the past three winters, deflecting the North Pacific storm track to the north of its typical position. We keep getting these dry

Michael Macor, courtesy San Francisco Chronicle/polaris

Resilient Ridge.” Where did that come from and what is it? daniel swain: It was tongue-in-cheek initially. I certainly didn’t expect it to spread as far as it has. But the primary motivator was to communicate effectively what was going on. The last “r” is fundamentally what it is. The ridge is a region of unusually persistent high atmospheric pressure over the northeastern Pacific Ocean, aligned along the west coast of North America. Ridiculously,

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spells that last for weeks and then months during the rainy season. bn: You got your undergraduate degree in atmospheric science at UC Davis and started your Ph.D. at Stanford four years ago, right as this unprecedented pattern just … appeared. ds: It did coincidentally align with what my interests already were, looking at things at the weather-climate interface, but even more specifically, looking at persistent atmospheric events. These persistent patterns, particularly in a place like California, are the ones we need to watch out for. Because on one end of the spectrum, you get drought, like we’re having right now. On the other hand, if you see a winter season where it’s persistently the opposite—and the dynamics of that are not all that different, the whole pattern just needs to shift by a couple thousand kilometers or so—all of a sudden we’re on the persistently wet side of the storm track. People often say California’s a land of extremes. In a statistical sense, that is actually kind of true. In terms of precipitation, for example, an average year is less likely than an above-average year—but then we occasionally get these incredibly prolonged dry spells. bn: So you know what’s going on with the weather pattern, but how do you start to approach that as a climate research question? ds: One of the first important things was to recognize the existence of this ridiculously resilient ridge. You can’t say the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge is or isn’t there by looking at a weather map for a particular day. You have to smooth over months or even years to see it. Because we’re not really interested in saying, “Are there days when there’s a huge mega-ridge over the west coast of North America?” Sure, there are. But it’s OK if we have a big ridge some days during winter, as long as on other days it’s not there. What matters is the average over a whole season. Are instances where this extreme high pressure area sticks around for a long period of time Stanford graduate student and climate scientist Daniel Swain in class on the Stanford campus in spring 2015.

Leah Mills, courtesy San Francisco Chronicle/polaris

f i r st p e r s on

occurring more frequently, or will they average is not really your average Underground—but you realize, they’re occur more frequently in the future? anymore. We have this shifting baseline. all just looking at the same data to make Ultimately that becomes a more Part of it is this ridge. The other part their forecasts. interesting question, because really that’s of this is we have these incredibly warm It’s funny, because some unnamed the question that’s relevant for knowing ocean temperatures, just phenomenally senator from some state that isn’t about the patterns that lead to drought warm, nearshore along the California California will say something like, “We and low precipitation in California. coast. Granted, we don’t have records don’t have to spend public money on It’s been argued that this ridiculously going back that far for sea surface weather services, Accuweather does a resilient ridge could just be internal temperatures, but again, we’re continugreat job doing it by themselves.” Of atmospheric variability, popping up in ously exceeding the existing records in course, Accuweather is essentially just the same spot over and over again by many places. It’s one thing to get a repackaging federal government data. random chance. I think there’s a lot of couple-degree temperature anomaly in Accuweather doesn’t run satellites. They evidence that it’s not random, that the atmosphere, but when you’re seeing don’t have weather radar. They don’t have there’s a traceable physical cause. And three-, four-, five-degree Daniel Swain’s quick sketch of a high-pressure ridge rests on top of a cover photo of that there’s almost certainly something warming in the ocean, Arctic sea ice in the March 22, 2013, issue of the journal Science. going on in the ocean system that’s that’s a huge amount of causing this to continually pop up, and energy involved. Think that there may be something going on in about how much the high latitudes that’s at least influencenergy it takes to boil a ing the likelihood of seeing it. I don’t pot of water: it’s a lot think anyone out there is arguing that more than it takes to the cause of the ridge and the drought is heat up the same climate change, singularly. But you can volume of air by the ask about the likelihood of an event same amount, that’s for occurring. Then you go down the chain sure. So think about of potential causality, and you say, OK, how much energy is the ocean’s important, the Arctic is coming out of the important, snow cover, ice cover is ocean. It’s not surprisimportant. Whatever it is, once you ing that California is so understand what the proximal physical warm. causes are, you can then ask more targeted questions these earth observation “People often say California’s about the role of climate platforms, or these very , and in a statistical change in influencing these expensive computer models causes. That, ultimately, is that produce the weather sense, that’s true. how we’ll have a better forecasts in the first place. an average year is than understanding of how what’s Unless there’s some going on is influenced by company out there that’s an average year.” climate change. This is all going to invest tens of fairly separate from the billions of dollars in these bn: You started Weather West in 2006, when you temperature question. things, this is definitely a governmental bn: So say more about the temperature were in high school. Where were you drawing your and multinational effort. These are data question, then. information from? shared across nations, across borders, ds: The increase in the rate of warming ds: Largely the same places I do now. that sometimes transcend political between a few years ago and now is not The federal government makes all this boundaries that can’t be transcended in something that will continue indefinitely. information available online. I can other realms. It’s hard to know a lot At some point we’ll have a year that is remember the first things I ever looked at about the earth. Because it’s a big earth cooler than this year—although probon the Internet were weather maps. I and it’s hard to see what’s going on at all ably still above the long-term average. remember connecting the dial-up times from our lonely perspective on the But what’s interesting is, these last couple modem, pissing off my parents because I ground. bn: Where did your interest in the weather come of years have just been extraordinarily was screwing up the phone line. from? persistently warm. It’s not like we saw a It’s one of the great things about ds: It was partly being outdoors. It was couple of big heat waves and that skewed weather: how much information is out partly watching the big winter storms of the mean. Just about every day has been there and available. Most everyone relies the 1990s. There was one (continued on page 42) above average, which tells you that your on a filter like Weather.com or Weather

a land of extremes For precipitation, less likely above or below

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Daniel Swain (right) and his graduate adviser, Associate Professor of Earth System Science Noah Diffenbaugh, examine a model of high pressure over the northeastern Pacific—the phenomenon Swain

Courtesy Daniel Swain

has dubbed the “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge.”

( continued from page 41) storm in particular in 1995 that really slammed the North Bay. There were all sorts of really wild conditions. Trees snapped in half; we lost windows at the house in San Rafael. That was pretty vivid; I remember being under my parents’ bed. It’s like a tornado experience even though it was Marin County. I’ve always thought the atmosphere changes on a timescale that’s fun to watch. Granted, the last few years, it’s been warm and sunny a lot. But in general, it changes day to day, it changes hour to hour. The weather’s changing between now and 6 p.m. But also the weather is changing because we’re going into summer. But also the weather is changing because we’re emitting a lot of greenhouse gases and things are going to be different in 20 years, and 40 years. There are all these timescales on which you can ask interesting questions, and they’re never totally distinct from one another. bn: When you do have some time off, where do you go to get outdoors? ds: The last few summers I’ve tried to get out and do at least a brief road trip around the American West. I saw more rain in Arizona in July last year than I did the whole year in California. It’s nice to get away and go to a place with a pretty different climate, even though it’s not that far away. Even just going up

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to Yosemite and seeing what’s going on, meandering around Nevada. bn: When you go somewhere with a different climate pattern, is this like when a birder who

knows every bird in Northern California goes to the tropics? Or is it like, I don’t want to do this on vacation? ds: No, it’s the opposite. Part of the reason I go to the Southwest in the summer is the monsoon season. There’s these awesome clouds, you get these awesome thunderstorms, this crazy weather you don’t get in California at any time of year. That’s part of the reason I go, to get out of the routine. bn: You enjoy unusual weather. ds: I enjoy unusual weather. I seek it out. It’s probably a good thing, at least for the sake of my dissertation, that California has had relatively stagnant conditions because it means I have fewer distractions. Of course, even when that’s the case, it’s turned into my dissertation. So take that with a grain of salt.

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a thousand acres of open space, it’s long been a place where “nature as therapy” has been part of the course of treatment. The disabled residents and their caregivers have enjoyed the property’s diverse habitats—from oak woodlands to grasslands and wetlands—as have many

Scott Hess, Sonoma Land Trust

( continued from page 6)

wildlife species, including mountain lions. The property serves as an important stepping-stone for the lions and other wildlife moving across the Valley of the Moon, which lies between Sonoma Mountain to the west and the Mayacamas Mountains to the east. Sonoma Creek and its tributaries snake through the property, supporting steelhead trout and the endangered California freshwater shrimp. These days, however, the state wants out of the business of housing the developmentally disabled, and SDC’s end point as a residential care facility could come as early as 2018 if Governor Jerry Brown moves ahead with his recently announced closure plan. What happens to the wildlife corridor and open space for people if the state sells off the land to a vineyard or a developer? A group of Sonoma County agencies, conservation organizations, and a patients’ advocacy group aren’t taking any chances. The Sonoma Developmental Center Coalition is drafting a “transformation plan,” due out next year, that envisions alternative uses for the property. Wildlife and the developmentally disabled remain the most important constituents in the vision. Over 250 local residents showed up at a community meeting in May to discuss the property’s future. One of the groups leading the b ay n at u r e

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discussion is the conservation nonprofit Sonoma Land Trust. “We don’t talk about the land without talking about the people,” says John McCaull, the trust’s project manager in this effort. “We feel like our future is linked to their future.” The transformation plan envisions a complex where the developmentally disabled can go for services such as custom-made wheelchairs or orthotics on an outpatient basis, and where nature and the enjoyment of it can take center stage. McCaull says the property could generate income through leasing many of the buildings on the site, as has been done at the Presidio in San Francisco. “We’re using the Presidio as, roughly speaking, a very relevant example of a process for an incredible community asset that the government doesn’t want anymore,” he says. “The Presidio obviously has a lot of differences, but also similarities.” If the coalition has its way, new hiking trails through the property will be created

for public use, with connections to Jack London State Historic Park to the west and Sonoma Valley Regional Park to the north. Meanwhile, the Sonoma Land Trust is learning more about the place’s significance as a wildlife corridor with a suite of motion-activated cameras it installed on and around the property in 2013. “We’ve found species we thought were no longer present on Sonoma Mountain or in the valley, like porcupines and badgers. We caught them on camera,” says McCaull. This shows that wildlife is already at home here, and proponents like McCaull are hoping to keep it that way. Linking Four San Francisco Peaks by Trail

Twin Peaks and the chain of surrounding hills are the tallest ridges in San Francisco—island peaks in a sea of development. Perhaps their most iconic inhabitant — the Mission blue butterfly — hangs on by a thread, flitting through

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focus of much debate. In 1880, silver magnate Adolph Sutro bought up hundreds of acres west of Twin Peaks and began taming the dunes with, most famously, eucalyptus plantings. His largest purchase was Rancho San Miguel, a remnant of a Mexican land grant that contained present-day Mount Sutro, Twin Peaks, and Mount Davidson. Some advocates still call the area the San Miguel Hills, but regardless of whether it’s called that or the Twin Peaks Bioregion, how to treat the legacy of Sutro’s tree planting remains one of the more controversial aspects of restoring habitat in the area. “What everyone seems to agree is less controversial is restoring trails and public access,” says Tom Radulovich, executive director of the sustainability nonprofit Livable City. And so trail projects may be first up for improvement under the new PCA designation, once approved by ABAG. Advocates are working to realign the Bay (continued on page 46) Area Ridge Trail so

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the remaining patches of grassland and coastal scrub that used to cover what was long ago the edge of a sand dune habitat swept by wind and fog and impenetrable to early settlers. These days it may be hard to imagine their interconnectedness —Twin Peaks, Mount Sutro, Laguna Honda, Glen Canyon — but city officials and advocates are reintroducing the concept with the Twin Peaks Bioregional Park. The concept was recently approved by city supervisors as one of San Francisco’s five Priority Conservation Areas (PCA), making it eligible for federal funding as part of Plan Bay Area, the Association of

Bay Area Governments’ (ABAG) regional transportation and land use strategy. “The vision for that whole area is to create a bold bioregional park in the heart of the city,” says Peter Brastow, San Francisco’s biodiversity coordinator. “We have a bunch of separated natural areas and open spaces there, so let’s knit those together into one coherent open space park as an incredible natural and recreational asset to the city.” The Twin Peaks Bioregion represents the densest concentration of small and medium-size parcels of open space in San Francisco. But as Brastow points out, the opportunity is not without its challenges. The open-space parcels are largely degraded lands that make up the backside of Laguna Honda Hospital and the Juvenile Detention Center, the area abutting Laguna Honda Reservoir, some private parcels around Sutro Tower, and the UCSF-owned Mount Sutro Open Space Preserve, where an aging eucalyptus forest has been the

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that it goes across Mount Sutro. They also want to stitch together segments connecting Mount Sutro to Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks to Glen Canyon as part of an envisioned long-distance trail from Crissy Field to Candlestick Point. Funding for trail building could also bring in money for restoration work, Brastow says. Among the more novel ideas is restoring Laguna Honda Reservoir and the area around it into wetlands. The reservoir is lined with cement and fenced off from the public, but it used to be a natural lake fed from a seasonal creek coming off Twin Peaks. Right now “only the intrepid” hike through much of this land, Brastow says, but the hope is that one day all nearby residents would take to these hills as a walk in the park. ( continued from page 45)

Pacific Sardines Plummet

Pacific sardines are among the most critical forage fish for important marine species along the California

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measured by their collective weight). That represents a 91 percent drop from 2007. The population is so low, in fact, that it has triggered a shutdown of the sardine fishery for the foreseeable future. It’s unclear what’s behind the drop. Possibilities range from natural cycles having to do with cooling waters to a drop in reproduction to fishing limits. Sardines are prone to natural cycles of boom and bust that last, on average, 60 years. The ocean conditions that favor their growth can easily turn against them. Sardines like warm waters, and some scientists believe that, notwithstanding the warmer ocean surface temperatures in recent years, the prevailing trend is a naturally caused cool-water regime in the Pacific. The sardines may be responding to that long-term trend. Nowhere is the sardine collapse more evident than among the youngsters of the species. There hasn’t been a good-size “cohort” of young fish replenishing the

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coast, such as sea lions and brown pelicans. When the population of these normally abundant schooling fish, which are rich in oil and protein, crashes, the whole coastal ecosystem— and economy—suffers. And that’s what we’re seeing now. Perhaps the most obvious sign of distress to the ecosystem today is the 70 percent mortality rate this year for California sea lion pups, as their nursing mothers forage farther afield for food and turn to poorer sources. And there are, no doubt, countless other impacts to other sardine predators. Not since the sardine population plummeted in the late 1940s, causing the shutdown of Cannery Row, have sardine numbers reached such an epic low. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal regulatory agency in charge of monitoring sardine stocks, estimates that there will be just 96,668 metric tons of sardine biomass this coming year (sardines are

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Amidst the excitement and fanfare showered on San Francisco during its 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the Golden State inaugurated a new tradition: It named its first state poet laureate, Ina Coolbrith. A pioneer (she came to California in 1851) and breadwinner for her family, Coolbrith found refuge and inspiration in the natural world, writing about California wildflowers, fog rolling through the Golden Gate, and the striking landscapes of the West. A new book Ina Coolbrith: The Bittersweet Song of California’s First Poet Laureate by long-time Bay Nature contributor Aleta George commemorates the 100-year anniversary and chronicles Coolbrith’s post-Gold Rush life—from time spent in Los Angeles to becoming (continued on page 49)

th e

Pearls of Poetry—Ina Coolbrith

sardines make their comeback; until then the ocean is going to feel a great deal less vibrant without them.

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stock since 2009, and those fish are now elderly (sardines only live to be about 5 to 7 years old). At some point along the way, the sardines stopped spawning enough to regenerate their stocks. Because Pacific sardines are a heavily regulated and monitored species, their collapse has brought on some handwringing about whether fishing has also played a role. As the population began to nosedive, should fisheries managers have eased up on the throttle more? Would leaving more fish in the sea have provided some lift to the eventual drop in numbers?

“When ocean conditions are productive, you can fish sardines pretty hard and remove a significant amount without causing a crash. You can have a sustainable fishery and have enough for other animals to eat,” says Geoff Shester, the California program manager for the nonprofit oceans advocacy group Oceana. “The problem is when nature takes the foot off the gas pedal, when ocean conditions no longer support these fish. We keep fishing as if it’s still productive. You exacerbate the decline, which happens much faster and bottoms out at a lower level.” Shester is hoping to convince fishery managers that the fishing cutoff level for sardines should be raised, effectively ensuring a larger population of fish can withstand environmental pressures. For their part, NOAA officials maintain that sardines have not been overfished and the collapse was entirely a result of the natural cycle of the marine environment. Either way, it may be a while before

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Oakland’s first public librarian and then gaining notoriety as “the most popular literary ambassador in the early American West,” writes George. Coolbrith’s contemporaries—Mark Twain, John Muir, Jack London, and Isadora Duncan—considered her “the pearl of her tribe.” A decade before the California poppy was chosen as the state flower Coolbrith published an ode to it, titled “Copa de Oro,” in the San Francisco Bulletin on May 24, 1893. The poem was again brought to light in 2003 when former U.S. poet laureate (and Berkeley resident) Robert Hass selected the poem as part of the Addison Street Poetry Walk in Berkeley. Printed on a cast iron plate, the poetic lines of Coolbrith’s “cups of gold” can be read on the corner of Addison and Shattuck avenues. ( continued from page 47)

Ina Coolbrith: The Bittersweet Song of California’s First Poet Laureate by Aleta George. Shifting Plates Press, 2015.

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su pport f or bay natur e The Bay Nature Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes exploration and stewardship of the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. Through tax-deductible contributions, the Friends of Bay Nature invest in the growth and development of our capacity to serve as an independent voice for local nature and conservation. The Friends of Bay Nature listed below are individuals whose donations were received between March 3 and May 31, 2015. Donors of $500 or more become members of the Publisher’s Circle and receive invitations Friends of Bay Nature $1,000 + Gertrude Allen Valerie Barth & Peter Wiley Norman Fritz & Fran Mueller Barbara & Phil Leitner Jake Sigg Aleks Totic $500–999 Elizabeth & Paul Archambeault Douglas Booth & Margaret Simpson Kathleen Cahill & Anthony Chorosevic Marilyn & Nat Goldhaber Harriet & Robert Jakovina David Sacarelos $250–499 Lee Ballance & Mary Selkirk Louis Berlot & Joyce Cutler Terry & Zeo Coddington Joe & Sue Daly Christopher & Kathryn Dann Charles Garfield & Cindy Spring Patrick Golden Tracy Grubbs & Richard Taylor Mary Ellen Hannibal John Hartog Harriet & Robert Jakovina Sam McFadden Scott Van Tyle Matt Zinn $100–249 Janice Barry Linda Bartera Magnus Bennedsen Ralph Benson Susan Bloch Brigid Breen & Armando Quintero Donald Breyer Karen Burbano Elizabeth Carlin Roseanne Chambers Hortensia Chang & John Nelson Nancy Dobbs Carol Donohoe Marta Drury Linda Eastman & Philip Hanley Robin Fautley Richard Ferry (in honor of the marriage of David & Susan Bergner) Lucile Griffiths Kathleen Hall & Leslie Murdock Melissa Hippard Sheila Jordan & Martin Nicolaus Nomi Kane & Evan Loeb Dave Kwinter Linda Lee Reta Lockert Mary Anne Miller & James Suekama Mia Monroe Harriet Moss Suzanne Moss Marjorie Murray Richard Neidhardt & Susan Snyder Robert Newton Ruth Nuckolls Robin Phipps Derek & Janice Ransley Amy Risch

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q: Every August a splendid meteor shower is visible in the Bay Area. When are the best times to see it this year, what is its name, and what is its source?—Paul, Piedmont a: So Paul, you would like my comet-ary on the best meteor shower of the year? During early August earthlings are treated to a spectacular evening display of streaking lights through the starry sky. These heavenly striations light up the summer nights and are commonly called “shooting stars.” But they don’t shoot and they aren’t stars. Correctly called meteors, they are actually small pieces of very old comets. Comets are fragments of solid matter that did not accrete into the planets or the sun when our solar system formed. Consisting mostly of ice and rock, comets are essentially 4.5-billionyear-old “dirty snowballs.” Most travel in vast elliptical orbits around the sun and may travel halfway to the next nearest star before slowly turning and coming back. These comets pass by the earth about every million years. But some comets, like Halley’s, orbit within our solar system and come around every 200 years or less. The ancient Chinese astronomers were aware of comets and called them “guest stars.” As these guest stars saunter through the solar system, pieces of them are constantly sloughing off and drifting into space. As the comets circle the sun again and again, always treading the same path, a bunch of comet crud is left floating in large streams. During our journey around the sun, the earth passes through this debris at about the same time every year. The regular passage through this rubble creates our predictable meteor showers.

e l l i s The comet debris consists mostly of very small particles the size of sand grains or tiny pebbles. The proper name for these coasting celestial tidbits is meteoroids. About 75 to 90 miles above earth, the meteoroids enter our atmosphere and immediately vaporize due to the friction of the air—that’s the “shooting” phase in our misnamed shooting stars. If this occurs during the day we don’t see it, but at night the sky lights up and we call them meteors. Very rarely, large meteors will fall from the sky and not completely burn up but actually hit the earth. When they land, meteors are called meteorites. Got that? Meteoroids to meteors to meteorites.

Jeffrey Sullivan, flickr.com/photos/jeffreysullivan

m i c h a e l

translates to “high in the sky” and originally referred to any atmospheric phenomenon. This summer, from around August 11 through 14 the earth will pass through the center of debris left by the comet Swift-Tuttle. Called the Perseid meteor shower, this display is the best known and most dramatic of the eight major annual showers. The meteors appear on average one per minute and occasionally at a much faster rate. To fully appreciate the beauty of this event, view it away from city lights and cloud cover. The show really begins after midnight, so I suggest that you sleep outside. Get yourself firmly ensconced in a warm sleeping bag propped up by pillows and face northeast. For additional comfort have a hot toddy and a friend nearby. As the earth rotates during the night

This is a composite image of forty meteors over four hours during the early morning hours of the Perseid meteor shower on August 12, 2013.

The Barringer Meteor Crater near Winslow, Arizona, is a mile-wide hole where a meteor crashed 25,000 years ago. Closer to home, and thankfully much smaller, a two-inch meteorite struck a Novato house in 2012; scientists determined that it broke from its parent meteoroid some 470 million years ago. The word meteor comes from the Greek meta, meaning “beyond,” and aeirein, meaning “to raise.” This literally

it turns right into the stream of comet debris. It is similar to riding in a car during a rainstorm—you see more drops on the front of the windshield than on the side windows. Therefore we see more meteors after midnight when the earth is plowing right through them. While you watch the “falling stars,” draw an imaginary line back to where they appear to start. After several lines you’ll notice they all tend to intersect in the same general area. For our August shower this point is in the constellation Perseus; hence the shower’s name. j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 5

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