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JA NUARY – M A R C H 2 0 1 2
A N E X P LO R AT I O N O F N AT U R E I N T H E S A N F R A N C I S C O B AY A R E A
CLOSED FOREVER? Can Volunteers Save State Parks?
NEW SERIES: Climate Change Hits Home Back to the Land at Hidden Villa East Bay Hills from the Inside Out
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c o n t e n t s
january–march 2012
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A LITTLE HELP F RO M O U R FR IEND S P i tch ing I n to S ave Stat e Pa rks In spring 2011, the bad news about California’s state parks hit: 70 parks were slated for closure by July 2012, including 18 in the Bay Area. Since then, volunteers, nonprofits, and public agencies have mobilized to contain the damage. At Henry Coe State Park, donations will keep the park running with existing staff. In Sonoma, closure loomed for five parks and groups have joined forces to create new models of park operation. by Joan Hamilton
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Jessica R. Lacy/USGS
Karl Nielsen, karlnielsenphotography.com
Courtesy Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods
Features
FRO M THE I NSI DE OUT D i g g i n g the Geolog y of the East Bay Hills Workers digging the new fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel are getting a oncein-a-lifetime view of one of the defining features of the East Bay: the range of hills that runs from San Pablo Bay south to Fremont. By visiting just a few accessible sites aboveground, you can find clues that tell the story of how these hills rose from their humble origins as deep ocean sediments and volcanic flows to the iconic fault-riddled hillsides of today. by Horst Rademacher
CLIMATE CHANGE : DI SPATCHES FRO M THE HOME FRON T Ta k ing the Meas ure of Climate Change At Corte Mader a Mar s h To launch our new series on climate change in the Bay Area, we follow a group of researchers as they scan the bottom, poke the mud, and gauge the tides at Marin’s Corte Madera Marsh, in the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary effort to understand how the Bay Area’s tidal wetlands will respond to rising sea levels. by Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Departments 4 Bay View
On the Trail
Letter from the Publisher
5 Letters from Our Readers 6 Ear to the Ground News from the conservation community and the natural world by Aleta George
8 Conservation in Action Citizen scientists are on the front lines of sudden oak death research. by Sue Rosenthal
10 Signs of the Season What’s cool as a cucumber, bitter as the biblical waters of Marah, and so well-rooted that pulling it up is futile? by Jake Sigg
12 Back to the Land at Hidden Villa A Peninsula Preserve for Farming and Nature Whether you’re looking for lessons in seed saving or hikes in nature, you’ll find them at Hidden Villa in the hills above Los Altos. by Lisa Krieger 16 Elsewhere . . . Sunnyvale Baylands, Richmond Landfill, Rush Creek 34 First Person Hidden Villa reflections, from a first encounter in the 1940s to today by Jean Rusmore
44 Families Afield: Exploring Nature with Kids Take your kids on a quest for nature at San Francisco’s Corona Heights. by Robin Meadows
45 Ask the Naturalist Nectar, food of gods (and bees) by Michael Ellis
46 Naturalist’s Notebook Rice in winter, a Pacific Flyway treat — for birds and birders by John Muir Laws
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le tter s To the Editor: I enjoyed Kate Marianchild’s article about our local woodpeckers (“Acorn Woodpeckers, So Happy Together,” Oct.–Dec. 2011). One curiosity: As a boy around Woodside, I was taught by my Audubon Society friends that the purpose of the acorns was not directly for the birds’ future food but rather as a source of worms that infest the acorns as they rot. Your article did not address this issue, so perhaps you could clarify. Thomas T. Mein, Menlo Park You’re not alone in having heard those stories. In fact, Kate Marianchild’s first draft explained that woodpecker expert Walter Koenig starts his workshops by chanting, “Acorn woodpeckers eat acorns!” We hadn’t heard the stories suggesting otherwise and so decided not to include Koenig’s debunking. The birds surely eat bugs infesting their stores, but they do in fact eat the acorns. — Ed. To the Editor: I happened to read John Hart’s article on East Bay open space (“Planned Wilderness,” Oct.–Dec. 2011) and then the Food Landscapes centerfold before I read David Loeb’s Letter from the Publisher. David re-created in me his “aha” experience — when he realized that trips to open space and to the farmers’ market were very connected. I too had seen ranch lands as “pre-open space.” It took the carefully crafted integration of the Bay Nature articles to make plain to me the notion that a sustainable ecosystem is a food landscape that feeds all of its inhabitants. Thank you! Cindy Spring, Close to Home, Oakland To The Editor: John Hart’s “Planned Wilderness” is a very motivating article that conservationists can use to expand implementation of the Eastern Alameda County Conservation Strategy. With no funding, Alameda County hasn’t gotten into the land acquisition that Contra Costa has. Eastern Alameda
County tends to be a bit more provincial in its approach to land conservation, but conservationists within the Alameda Creek watershed are active in Doolin Canyon, Niles Canyon, and the Altamont Pass Wind Resources Area. The City of Livermore has secured new land on Laughlin Road leading into Brushy Peak Regional Preserve and has also acquired land on its western border in hopes of fending off Dublin’s illplanned sprawl growth. The conservation community is also being proactive with county policy on solar developments pending in northeastern Alameda County by voicing the need for a raptor preserve in the far eastern county along Mountain House Road. Rich Cimino, Pleasanton To the Editor: Your recent issue (Oct.–Dec. 2011) is beautiful and full of great information. However, there is a disconnect between the feature on the “Diablo Wilderness” (continued on page 37) and the one about
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Built on the floodplain of the Sacramento River, the Yolo Bypass is an engineered system that has diverted floodwaters from the city of Sacramento and surrounding communities for nearly a century. During high flood events, the swelling river flows over a weir at the top of the bypass and onto a 40-mile-long, 57,000-acre collage of private farmland Eileen McFall, Creative Commons
Andrea Hurd License #883905 Horticulturist and Stonemason (510) 558-8429
roponents of the Yolo Bypass Floodplain Fishery Enhancement Project are starting small but thinking big. During the first year of the pilot project, scientists will test whether raising juvenile chinook salmon on flooded rice fields in the Yolo Bypass will help the fish get stronger and bigger before being flushed down to San Francisco Bay and out to the Pacific. Researchers believe the five-acre test plot will show that a fallow rice field can provide the same protection and nourishment as a natural river floodplain, which no longer exists along the Sacramento River. “It’s like a First Five for salmon,” says rice farmer John Brennan, referring to the statewide program aimed at early childhood development. Brennan, along with natural resource consultant David Katz, manages the salmon project. Marinbased Resource Renewal Institute’s Huey Johnson, the initiator of the project, says the endeavor may represent the best hope for California’s struggling salmon population. Johnson cited a recent two-year study conducted by the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences that found that chinook salmon grow faster in a floodplain than in a river. Courtesy Carson Jeffres, UC Davis
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by aleta george
www.mariposagardening.com
“The bigger they are, the less likely they’ll be eaten when they reach the ocean,” says the center’s fisheries biologist Peter Moyle, perhaps the state’s foremost inland fishery expert.
and public wildlife areas until it drains into the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta near Rio Vista. Today, any young fall- or winter-run salmon caught in the floodwaters either go for a fast ride out to the Bay or get stranded in the receding backwaters of the bypass when the flow stops. This winter, land managers will pump water onto a winter-dormant rice field at Knaggs Ranch and then truck in several hundred juvenile fish to study the fish’s habitat preferences, looking for ideal water depths and bottom vegetation. Next year, they’ll provide a 10-acre floodplain nursery for more trucked-in fish. The ultimate goal is to provide up to 10,000 acres of winter floodplain habitat for chinook salmon and other native fish. The people behind the effort are gambling with several unknowns while jumping into the pilot project because of the potentially large payoff. “I believe this is going to work,” says Johnson, who was also the first western regional director for the Nature Conservancy and founder of the Trust for Public Land. “If we discover that these little fish just need a nurturing environment, this could be a turning point for salmon recovery.”
Western bluebirds banked in and out of a large California coffeeberry in the blue oak savannah. Muick climbed up to a particularly beautiful oak and soon declared it to be
grou n d
ith the clock ticking toward a February deadline, the nonprofit Solano Land Trust is working to purchase 1,500 acres of land known as Rockville Trails in Solano County. Located across the road from Fairfield’s Rockville Park, this property has been slated for estate housing for at least 30 years. For just as many years, the Green Valley Homeowners Association has fought that plan, guided by a vision of turning the property into protected open space. Recently, a lawsuit put a stop to development plans and allowed the land trust to buy 330 acres of the property, with an option to purchase the remaining 1,170 acres for $15.5 million by February 28, 2012. If the land trust can’t raise the money, the current landowner will be allowed to build 185 homes on the site. All that development pressure seems far away when you are out on this wideopen landscape, especially in the shadow of one of the oracle oaks here. Oracle oaks are hybrids between interior or coast live oaks and California black oaks, explains oak expert Ted Swiecki of Phytosphere Research. Black oaks have long been coveted for wood products, so it’s not uncommon to find just a few of them among many live oaks. “That sets up a situation where the last remaining black oaks may be inundated with pollen from the other species but with little or none from their own species,” Swiecki says. The result is an oracle oak. I set out on a wide, dirt ranch road with Pam Muick, coauthor of Oaks of California, to find a group of oracle oaks mapped in one of the environmental documents for the proposed subdivi-
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an oracle. The leaves were lobed like a black oak, but ovate like a coast live oak. The tree also had a mix of green and yellow leaves, a telling characteristic of an oracle. “If we came back a month from now, we’d see that the tree still had some of its leaves,” she said. We found a few more oracles in a concentration known as a hybrid swarm. Here, explained Muick, you find specimens with varying degrees of their parents’ and grandparents’ characteristics. On one tree you might find leaves that look like a live oak’s but are as big as those of a black oak. On another, you might see those that look like black oak leaves but have the boat shape of a coast live oak. Fortunately, the conservation and botanical importance of Rockville Trails has not gone unnoticed by major open space funders; both the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the California Coastal Conservancy’s Bay Area Program have committed funds to the property’s acquisition. (continued on page 38) If Rockville Trails
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sions. The volcanic soils had absorbed the rain from a previous day’s storm — boding well for trail maintenance and wintertime hiking. We reached the spot where the oracle oaks were supposed to be and saw a few contenders. We climbed a bit higher and headed north on a steep-sided slope to a beautiful valley once slated for homes. Dramatic clouds floated above soaring turkey vultures and red-tailed hawks.
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ice fields and floodplains also contribute to the mosaic of habitat needed by birds migrating on the Pacific Flyway. At the 16th annual San Francisco Bay Flyway Festival from February 10 to 12, 2012, on Mare Island in Vallejo, you can explore a rich diversity of habitat and learn about the migratory and resident birds that spend the winter in and around the wetlands of the North Bay. Check out the array of outdoor tours and indoor programs and exhibits at sfbayflywayfestival.com.
Jorg Fleige
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Tammy Stellanova, tammystellanova.com
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stood for many years at the entrance to the administration building. It was several feet in diameter and weighed 467 pounds. The name Marah suits the plant well; all parts are exceedingly bitter to us; touch your tongue to a cut root and “So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea . . . and when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters your jaw will lock. Still, the members of the cucumber family in California, of Marah, for they were bitter; and therefore the name of it was called Marah.” exodus xv: 22 which includes five species of Marah, With the advent of autumn rains, wild cucumber, or manroot, is often the first plant out of were a pharmacopoeia for native people. Roots and seeds were used as a purgative. the gate, sending up its snaky shoots at the prodigious rate of several inches a day. Emerging Stoughton’s Bitters, a laxative popular in from summer dormancy, the plant (genus Marah) unleashes a scramble of shoots over slowerthe 19th century, was made from Califorgrowing plants, using its long tendrils to latch onto anything that can serve as support as nia manroot. Native Californians threw crushed root into water bodies to stun it climbs toward maximum light. Then it spreads out its extravagant blanket of wide, bright fish and used its seed oil for a variety green leaves to luxuriate in the sun. Its strategy: to maximize photosynthesis while water is of purposes. I am unsure what wildlife make use of the plant, except that abundant. The new shoots are mostly water; break a growing stem and water leaks out. Water rodents and scrub jays cache its seed, seems to be the plant’s only limiting factor: After the rains stop it goes dormant again. often, in effect, planting it. Its early There are two species of Marah in the that can become very large. Sometimes spring flowers make it valuable in a local Bay Area, both common in shrublands, it will partially divide, appearing to have grassroots conservation effort in San where they can climb up other plants but legs. A specimen tuber from a related Francisco as a well-timed and abundant don’t have to fight through the shade of species dug up during construction at nectar source for the green hairstreak a forest. The most widespread is the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden butterfly, concurrent with the butterfly’s California cucumber or manroot, spring flight. M. fabaceus. Unspectacular spikes When I was a gardener in of greenish-white flowers proGolden Gate Park, there was a duce eye-catching inch-and-amanroot plant that grew inconhalf-diameter fruits that harden veniently beside my toolbox. into stout, dangerous-looking I continually pulled up new spiked balls, effective at deterring shoots, attempting to get rid creatures wanting to open them of the plant by starving the root. before they ripen. Shortly after My efforts to deprive the plant rains stop in spring the herbage of its ability to photosynthesize turns yellow, then brown, and it had no apparent effect, so after dies back to the roots, there to five years, I dug it up. Although sit out the dry summer months. no rival of the Santa Ana tuber, You may also encounter the coast it was big enough — three feet long and a foot in diameter and manroot, M. oreganus, with larger, firm of flesh and sound in every whiter flowers. Laypeople are fiber. Good thing I decided to more likely to see the family relatake more drastic action; othertionship to garden cucumbers, wise it would have outlasted me. melons, and squashes in the coast My next-door neighbor, who has manroot, whose fruits resemble a similar problem, has not yet miniature striped watermelons, learned her lesson. But an extravalbeit with spikes. agant cloak of wild cucumber The plant’s blanket of foliage leaves is prettier than the contraps a lot of energy from the crete of her unused patio, so sun. Where does the energy go? I think I’ll let her continue wagThe garden cucumber, an annual, ing her annual quixotic battle puts its future into the fruit; its Wild cucumber grows vigorously in winter, springing to life after early rains. The against the tough old man of wild cousin, a perennial, puts it plant’s leaves and spiny fruits hint at its relationship to edible cucumbers, melons, the garden. into the root, in this case a tuber and squashes, but this plant is exceedingly bitter.
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Joel Bartlett, jfb.smugmug.com
on the trail
a pe n insu la p res erve for fa r m i ng an d nature
BACK TO THE LAND AT HIDDEN VILLA by Lisa M. Krieger
It’s lunchtime at Hidden Villa, and a cluster of hungry children suspiciously eyes a “garden burrito” filled with beets, flower blossoms, and apple, all wrapped in green sorrel leaves. Meagan Stewart, 8, takes a big bite, giggles, and decides to use the beet to decorate her face with bright red juice. On the other edge of the valley, teenagers pick organic squash for pizza — gaining an appreciation for food production unavailable at the corner 7-11. “It’s hard. They’re heavy. Things poke your hand,” sighs Marcelo Sotelo, 15, of Redwood City. These urban youth have come to this b ay n at u r e
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idyllic setting — carefully cultivated bottomland nestled in the eastern foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains — to learn an agricultural ethos far removed from the industrial-scale monoculture that yields most supermarket food. A “farming with the wild” philosophy — that small-scale agriculture can fit the land, feed the soul, enrich the intellect, and support social justice — has been at the heart of this 1,600-acre farm and open space park on the Peninsula for 67 years. “It’s such a respite. There’s no noise, above the human voice. You can go at a human pace, not a Silicon Valley pace,”
The white barn at Hidden Villa dates back to the 1880s, when the farm was a stopping point on the main road from Mountain View to Pescadero. These days, it’s part of an innovative nature and farm education center.
says Carol Espinosa of Portola Valley, a longtime donor who first visited in the early 1970s. Founders Frank and Josephine Duveneck conceived of Hidden Villa as a gathering place for discussion, reflection, and incubation of social reform. Themes of fairness and equality are woven into the lessons on agriculture and ecology taught by the independent nonprofit that now runs the preserve.
It is a fitting place to celebrate the
bounty of early spring, as rains recharge Adobe Creek, pastures turn a velvety green, and remnant orchards explode into bloom. Happy to be liberated from classrooms, slicker- and boot-clad children explore the farm and surrounding woods — pulling a carrot from the soil and searching leaf litter for banana slugs and mushrooms. There are lessons for the public as well. On wet days, visitors might gather
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(above) Organic vegetable garden beds at Hidden Villa, with the forested hillsides of the Santa Cruz Mountains beyond. (left) Adobe Creek in winter. Hidden Villa founders Frank and Josephine Duveneck first bought the land to protect Adobe Creek’s headwaters. Joel Bartlett, jfb.smugmug.com
around a fireplace to taste fresh mozzarella and goat-milk chèvre, made on site. There might be bread-baking classes or ham-cooking lessons. As days lengthen and temperatures climb, it’s time to look for wildflowers on the preserve’s many trails, watch squirming baby piglets in the barn, or see sheep get their annual haircut on Sheep Shearing Day. For quiet recreation, visitors can hike the park’s trail system through the Adobe Creek watershed. Several easy-to-moderate loop trails traverse oak woodlands, chaparral, and grasslands. By March, this creek will be a maternity ward for California newts. The farm’s rich alluvial soil comes from the steep flanks of nearby hillsides, rinsed down by the creek and its related tributaries in the 11-square-mile watershed. Just a thin blue trace on a map, Adobe Creek springs from the northeastern face of Black Mountain and trickles more than 14 miles through Los Altos Hills, Los Altos, and Palo Alto on its way to join the Bay. The founders of Adobe Systems, the global software giant, lived nearby and named their company after the creek. Long before that, Ohlones lived along the creek’s banks. Archaeologists say the valley was marshier then; the Native Americans would have likely fished in the creek, gathered bunchgrasses in the valley for weaving baskets, hunted deer, and gathered acorns in the hills. The nearest known pre-European Ohlone settlement, excavated in 1971, is on El Monte Road at Summerhill Avenue. With the arrival of Europeans, the land was valued largely for what residents could extract from it. In the 1700s, missionaries planted vineyards and olive
groves. An elegant grove of ancient Italian olive trees still stands today — look for them, on the right, as you enter from Moody Road. Later, mill owners harvested Douglas firs and redwoods for lumber, and, in the 1880s, the property served as a rest stop between the then-bustling port of Pescadero and the Mountain View train station. (The current driveway is a remnant of the old Moody Road stage road; look for a hitch on an ancient oak tree.) The two oldest buildings on the property, from this era, are the old white ranch house — built in New England, then reportedly shipped around the Horn — and the white barn, originally assembled with dowels rather than nails. In the 1890s, speculators sought to dam the creek to provide water for the burgeoning population and thriving orchards. In 1904, the army Three young pigs feast on vegetable and fruit scraps. The farm keeps livestock, including pigs, cows, goats, sheep,
Joel Bartlett, jfb.smugmug.com
on
Joel Bartlett, jfb.smugmug.com
and chickens.
tried unsuccessfully to purchase the land for a shooting range. Finally, the valley was saved — and its focus shifted to sustainability — in a foreclosure sale of 1,000 acres to Frank B. Duveneck in 1923 for a reported $10 in gold coin and a $20,000 mortgage. It seemed an improbable match; Frank and Josephine Duveneck, newcomers to California, descended from prominent Boston families. She traced her bloodlines back to the erudite and wealthy Whitney family and had studied at both Radcliffe and Oxford. He was a Harvard graduate and the son of a noted painter, yet also a genuine Renaissance man, whose roles ranged from electrician and woodworker to pianist, poet, and photographer. The Duvenecks were also avid environmentalists and nature lovers. “In California we encountered completely different species,” Josephine recounted in her 1978 autobiography. “We spent many evenings identifying specimens we brought back from trips. I am sure no other source of recreation is as satisfying and no other remedy for overburdened minds and frazzled nerves is as effective as getting away from routine into the untrammeled wilderness.” They spotted the valley one weekend j a n ua ry – m a rc h 2 0 1 2
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Local organizations are scrambling to rescue their favorite state parks. Is this the dawn of a new era of cooperation or yet another sign of the decline of California’s once-proud state park system? Or both?
On May 13, 2011, the bombshell hit.
For the first time ever, the state of California was going to indefinitely close 70 parks — one-fourth of the units in the system. Parks on the hit list contained prized redwood groves, ocean beaches, snowcapped peaks, fish-filled streams, and historic and archaeological treasures. But they got the ax anyway, because the state has run out of money to operate them. Northern California, with almost three-quarters of the total number of listed parks, was particularly hard hit. In the nine-county Bay Area, Frank S. Balthis 18 parks were targeted for closure. Outrage and despair were common reactions among park lovers. But a few determined advocates have gone beyond anger and begun to hammer out plans to rescue their favorite parks. Among those first in line with solid proposals are volunteers at two Bay Area parks: Henry W. Coe State Park near Morgan Hill and Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen. In a few months, a nonprofit has come up with $1.2 million for Coe — more than enough to keep the 89,000-acre wilderness park open for three years with existing staff. At London, a similar group has sent the state a bid to not only finance but run the park — leading hikes and staffing the visitor center (as volunteers have been doing for years), as well as maintaining trails, cleaning bathrooms, and keeping visitors safe. In the past, nobody would have expected to rely on private citizens to ensure public access to Coe’s splendid swath of the inner Coast Range or to preserve the legacy of an internationally
renowned author. The whole point of setting up a state park commission in 1928 was to avoid running state parks with a mishmash of boards, commissions, and agencies. State parks had value to the whole state, not just the immediate neighborhood. That was then. Now, volunteer groups are providing a glimmer of hope for budget-crunched state parks around California. But there’s a dark side, too — a concern that these measures will become permanent arrangements rather than a temporary fix while the state gets its budgetary house in order. As Jack London volunteer Greg Hayes asks, “Is California becoming like a developing country, a failed state, that is bailed out by nongovernmental organizations?”
Winslow Briggs is an emeritus Stanford biology professor and member of the National Academy of Sciences. His wife, Ann, is a retired environmental information specialist. If the
Courtesy Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods
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f r o m o ur f r iends Pitching In to Save State Parks by Joan Hamilton Laura Kavanagh, closingcaliforniaparks.com
(clockwise from left) Henry Coe State Park, Northern California’s largest state park, was saved from closure after supporters raised over $1 million to fund operations. The future of Sonoma’s Annadel State Park remains uncertain, though the nonprofit LandPaths may take on park programming. At Jack London State Historic Park, biologist Michael Fawcett searches for red-legged frogs in a man-made pond needing extensive repair. Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods volunteers, working on a trail at Sonoma Coast State Park, may take on nearby Austin Creek State Recreation Area.
Briggses were trees, Winslow would be a no-nonsense alder and Ann a colorful madrone. As part of the Pine Ridge Association, each of the two has donated more than 8,000 hours of time to Henry W. Coe State Park — the equivalent of about four years of full-time work — leading hikes, planning trails, making Elisa Stancil, jacklondonlake.org maps, working at the visitor center, even picking up garbage. They and several dozen other volunteers are the eyes, ears, and sometimes the hands of the paid staff of the largest state park north of Los Angeles. Winslow found the park closure announcement “ridiculous,” but he’s given up brooding in favor of getting things done. “There’s a very simple way to handle it,” he says, making a karate-chop motion with one hand. “You raise money and you give it to the state — with tight constraints. That money can only be used for Coe’s salaries and benefits. And the money the park brings in is used for operating expenses.”
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habitats of
the East Bay Regiona l Parks
by Horst Rademacher
F
rom the Inside Out
Digging the Geology of the East Bay Hills
It is dark, loud, and very wet deep inside the East Bay Hills. While rays of sunshine can form an intricate ballet of light with the fog when it rolls over these hills, deep underground only the miners’ lamps, a few work lights, and half a dozen green laser beams barely Karl Nielsen, karlnielsenphotography.com
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This story is part of a series exploring significant natural habitats and resources of the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD), many of which are encountered in other parts of the Bay Area as well. The series is sponsored by EBRPD, which manages 65 parks, reserves, and trails covering more than 100,000 acres in Alameda and Contra Costa counties (ebparks.org).
illuminate the rocks. Within these hills, pneumatically driven pumps clang with loud bangs in a deafening rhythm, the ventilation tubes in the tunnel roar like a major storm and the machinery used to excavate the rocks seems louder than the unmuffled engine of a motorcycle. And then there is the water. Even in the late summer, when the land above is bone dry and the fire hazard extreme, there is water everywhere inside what will soon be the fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel. It seeps through cracks in the ground and turns the rock tailings in the tunnel into a huge puddle of oozing mud. While we are standing ankle-deep in this mushy soup of b ay n at u r e
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(top) The rugged hills and ravines of Las Trampas Regional Wilderness contain large blocks of resistant sandstone, laid down 12 or 13 million years ago, when the area was a shallow inland sea or estuary. (left) View out from the east side of the Caldecott Tunnel excavation. (right) Deep under the hills, a Caltrans geologist inspects the recently exposed rock face, composed of sandstone with an intrusion of volcanic rock.
Courtesy Caltrans, District 4
John Karachewskl, geoscapesphotography.com
Such surprises are one of the main reasons why Neuhuber works as a tunnel geologist. “Compared to surface observations alone, we can paint a three-dimensional picture of the geology of an area when we go underground,” he says. Sloan, who knows the geology of the East Bay well, has accompanied us on the half-mile hike through the freshly excavated tunnel deep under Grizzly Peak Boulevard and part of Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve. From her knowledge of the rocks at the surface, she would not have guessed that so much sandstone underlies this part of the East Bay Hills. But while digging the other three bores of the Caldecott (the two southern tubes were excavated in the 1930s, the third one in 1964) miners had already encountered similarly thick layers of sandstone. Neuhuber estimates the layer in the new fourth bore to be at least 90 yards thick. This massive sandstone layer is one more piece in the complex three-dimensional puzzle that we call the East Bay Hills, one that geologists have been mulling over for at least 150 years. But the job of a tunnel geologist is first and foremost to keep the construction workers informed about which types of rock to expect during their dig — and thereby help keep the whole operation safe. Scientific investigations and the exploration of unexpected formations clearly have to play second fiddle. But with his training in his native Austria and work on tunnel projects in the Alps, the Andes, and along the East Coast, Neuhuber finds exploring the geology from within a mountain range fascinating. That is why he and his colleagues keep samples of all rock types and formations encountered during the dig. Once the almost 3,400-footlong tunnel is complete, these samples and the geologists’ mapping will provide a detailed cutaway of the building blocks of this part of the East Bay Hills. While being underground helps unlock some pieces of the puzzle, it’s really only from above, way above — like from the window seat of an airplane — that you can best appreciate the impressive topography of the East Bay. Rising abruptly above the bayshore lowlands, the first line of hills forms an almost straight ridgeline between San Pablo in the north and Fremont in the south. Farther inland, several valleys and more ranges follow the same directional trend. The valleys are filled here and there with reservoirs, and much of this land is protected watershed for those reservoirs or parkland
ground-up rock, Gerhard Neuhuber points to the freshly excavated face of the new tunnel. It consists of a grayish, homogeneous-looking rock. “This clearly is a huge wall of sandstone,” says Neuhuber, the chief tunnel geologist. Geologist Doris Sloan, UC Berkeley professor and author of the definitive book on Bay Area geology, is both surprised and exhilarated: “We don’t see these rocks on the surface in this area.”
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Brian Maebius
John Karachewskl, geoscapesphotography.com
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managed by the East Bay Regional Park District, gradually giving way to the broad valley carrying Interstate 680. Hiking across the terrain in these parklands provides another kind of perspective — and an appreciation for the steep up-anddown topography. In fact, scientists have learned a lot about the origin of our iconic hills from just a handful of easily accessible sites, many protected within the East Bay Regional Park system, from Sibley to Briones and Las Trampas regional parks. The first stop on our exploration of the hills’ geology is not at all park-like, however. In the road-cut near the east portal of
Tilted layers of dark-gray Orinda Formation conglomerates (left) and brown Moraga basalts (right) alongside Highway 24 east of the Caldecott Tunnel. Shown in dark red on the right side of diagram above, the basalts formed from lava flows during long-ago eruptions.
the current Caldecott tunnels, one of the region’s most notorious traffic bottlenecks, almost vertically tilted layers of rock in various shades of gray, dark brown, and red are exposed. Before the new fourth bore opens and improved traffic flow leaves us less time to marvel at these rocks, let’s study them for the story they tell of the formation of the East Bay Hills. These layers seem to defy one of the basic principles of geology, that rocks are deposited in horizontal layers, with the older b ay n at u r e
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formations beneath the younger ones. The first step in unraveling the story of these rocks is to imagine the layers tilted almost 90 degrees to the west into their original, horizontal positions. The gray layers closest to the tunnel would be at the bottom, overlain first by a reddish rock formation and finally by a layer of gray-to-brown rocks. The bottom rocks are part of the Orinda Formation, which is between 10 and 12 million years old. Geologists call these rocks “conglomerate” because they contain pebbles of all sizes, glued together by very fine-grained minerals, similar to the way cement binds sand and aggregate into concrete. The pebbles inside these rocks tell a fascinating story. They are of a rock type that we find today in San Francisco and in Marin County — to the west of us — but not elsewhere in the East Bay. Both the pebbles and the minerals they’re trapped in were carried by streams to their current resting place. But rivers flow only downhill, so geologists speculate that about 10 to 12 million years ago, the topography of our landscape was reversed: There was a highland where the valley of the Bay is now, and a lowland where the East Bay Hills are today. The “top” layer of rocks in our story — the layers now farthest east — have a very different and more violent origin from a later chapter in the evolution of the East Bay. These are basaltic lava flows of the Moraga Formation, which erupted from several volcanoes in the region. One of them, now exposed nearby at Round Top in Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, was active for more than a million years, starting about 10 million years ago. Its eruptions covered the Orinda Formation with many separate lava flows, some of them several feet thick. At their base is a red zone that formed when the hot lava oxidized the iron in the underlying sediments. This gave them the distinct red color we see today at the rock outcrops along Highway 24. If both formations were originally deposited horizontally, how did they end up almost vertical? The answer lies in the sliding of the Pacific Plate against the North American Plate, also the cause of our region’s notorious earthquakes. Although we think of today’s plate movement as almost exclusively horizontal (with the plates sliding past each other), it also has a small com-
This remarkable exposure near St. Mary’s College in Moraga shows fossilized ripples left by wave action in a lake or estuary.
Horst Rademacher
ponent of push. That started a few million years ago, when the angle at which the two plates collided changed slightly, pushing the plates together. As a result, the rocks in the collision zone were squeezed, folded, and uplifted, generating what are now the East Bay Hills. The almost vertical tilt of the Orinda and Moraga formations is one example of this process, which geologists call transpression. A few remarkable rock outcrops to the west, along Skyline Boulevard in Oakland, take us farther back in time, to rock layers formed 14 to 18 million years ago. They have been twisted, folded, and bent as if they had been squeezed between the jaws of a vise. These rocks look very different from the conglomerate and volcanics east of the tunnel. Though this stretch of Skyline sits more than a thousand feet above sea level, this rock is made of the fossil remains of countless single-celled plants and animals called diatoms and foraminifera. These microorganisms are the basis of the marine food chain, so the rocks must have originally been deposited on the ocean floor. The layers are the chert of the Claremont Formation, prominently exposed on Claremont Avenue just below its intersection with Fish Ranch Road. When did that long-ago sea disappear? We can find clues in another formation of rocks of marine origin, north and east of the tunnel. The exposed ridges in Briones Regional Park and in the Las Trampas Wilderness are made of strong, erosionresistant sandstone which was laid down between 12
On Skyline Boulevard near Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, a bicyclist speeds by a bent and folded rock formation called Claremont chert. These rocks are made of the remains of single-celled marine plants and animals that died and drifted down to what was then the seafloor.
and 13 million years ago. It contains fossilized clams and other mollusks that once lived in shallow waters near a shoreline. This formation essentially marks the beginning of the transition from deep waters of the Claremont Formation to a time when the land now covered by the East Bay Hills had risen out of the sea. There are great exposures of this sandstone with clearly visible mollusk shell fossils at the top of Las Trampas Ridge, west of the parking lot at the end of Bollinger Canyon Road (note that collecting is prohibited on park district lands). In another spectacular rock outcrop on Bollinger Canyon Road close to Saint Mary’s College in Moraga you can see a later stage of the evolution of the East Bay Hills. There the ripples left by the wave action in a lake or an estuary are “set in stone” in a layer that is also tilted vertically. From just these few easily accessible sites, we can begin to see a picture of the geologic history of the East Bay Hills: Until about 12 million years ago the area was first at the deep floor of the Pacific Ocean and later covered in shallow seas. As the sea receded the area became a coastal lowland. It was slowly filled
Horst Rademacher
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exploring nature with kids
A Nature Quest on Corona Heights by Robin Meadows
Gritchelle Fallesgon
“I see it!” Julia shouted out, pointing up at the pink rock outcrop in San Francisco’s Corona Heights Park. “Let’s go!” Clara said. And off they ran toward the 500-foot summit. But they didn’t go straight up to the top. Instead, they paused along the way to learn about various elements of the natural world—from geology and weather to plants and animals—in the heart of the city. These two third-grade girls were on an adventure devised by Urbia, a group of San Francisco-based nature educators who have created five self-guided nature-focused explorations in the city. The adventures, designed for kids ages 6 to 11, take about two hours. A mix of play, natural science, and treasure hunt, each one is described in its own packet, with a map, an illustrated booklet full of clues and nature activities, and pencils for notes and sketches. These booklets seem simple, but they are great for getting kids to slow down and notice things they might otherwise miss— all in the name of playing a game. If you live in or near San Francisco, Urbia’s adventures offer ready-made, kidcentric outings. But no matter where
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general principles for engaging kids in nature Randall Museum, also has discovery: Let them set cool rocks, great views, and the pace; follow their opportunities for adventure. interests; and be flexible (right) These two young nature if they want to backquesters used a booklet from the track. Make the outing group Urbia (pages shown at left) to chart a day of learning about into a game, with puznature in the city. zles to solve along the way. The goal is not to get the “right answer” immediately, but you live, it’s not hard to create simple for children to enjoy figuring out the adventures on your own. “As with birdadventure on their own. watching or botanizing, the most imporJulia and Clara did just that at Corona tant thing is making it fun to notice the Heights. On the way to the top, they details,” says Urbia cofounder Damien stopped near the Randall Museum to look Raffa. “This practice can enrich our expeacross the city and compare it to an illusrience of place no matter where we find tration of the landscape 300 years ago. “I ourselves—even the most urban corners wish it was still like that,” Julia said. They of the Bay Area.” searched for other wildland remnants in Urbia’s booklets demonstrate some the city and imagined themselves as animals traveling from one spot to another. Nature teams will be there with more fun “I might dig a little burrow here if I was a activities, too. Plus you can take part in rabbit,” Clara mused. “I might travel at Randall Museum programs on local geology night if I was a fox,” Julia said. and urban wildlife, see live native California As they ascended the hill, the kids animals, and even help plant native plants! looked over the railing and marveled at RSVP appreciated: team@urbikids.com. For information: baynature.org/inthefield the smooth, shiny rock face that plunged or urbikids.com. straight down below them. The booklet
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Join Urbia Adventure League and Bay Nature on Saturday, January 28, for a special indoor-outdoor urban nature event hosted by the Randall Museum! Drop in 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to explore Corona Heights’ natural areas with the adventure booklet “Wayfinding on Rocky Mountain” (Bay Nature special: $4). Urbia and Bay
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explains that the polished surface, called a slickenside, formed when rocks were grinding past each other on opposite sides of a fault. Another page in their booklets showed the girls how to estimate the age of chert, that pinkish rock they had seen from below. This rock is made of the skeletons of tiny single-celled sea creatures called radiolarians. After getting a little help with their math, Julia and Clara were amazed to learn that the chert in their hands had taken tens of thousands of years to form (a thousand years per millimeter, not to mention a few million years after that to get from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the hill!).
m i c h a e l Q: When I see bees and hummingbirds feasting on even tiny flowers, I wonder if each flower replenishes the nectar supply, or is it a one-time offering? [Dorothy Wonder, Berkeley]
Robin Meadows
Ask the Naturalist
At the summit, Julia and Clara perched on the park’s namesake crown of rocks, enjoying a panoramic view and a welldeserved rest before finding their way back down to the bottom of the hill. Julia and Clara did almost everything on their own by following the clues in the packet, but needed a hint to find the Urbia box hidden at the very end of the adventure. Then, poking her head under a bench, Julia yelled, “Here it is!” After opening the box and perusing the contents, the girls tucked it away to be discovered by future adventurers. “That was fun,” Julia proclaimed on the way out. “Oh yeah,” Clara agreed. For more information about Urbia, visit urbikids.com.
A: Great question and you have a great name! Plants pollinated by wind (many grasses) or even water (duckweed or eelgrass) have no reason to produce nectar but do produce prodigious amounts of tiny pollen grains. Think hay fever. Flowers that rely on insects, birds, or bats for pollination produce nectar as well as pollen. The word nectar, derived from Latin, means “overcoming death” and was the favored drink of the gods. It apparently worked for them. I like to imagine pollen as a hamburger (25 percent protein plus vitamins and minerals) and nectar as a candy bar (mostly carbohydrates in the form of sugars). Insects eat the pollen to provide energy for their own metabolic processes but also to provision their developing young. Nectar, on the other hand, provides immediate energy and ensures that the insect (or bird or bat) can fly to the next flower. In the case of honeybees, nectar is concentrated into honey and stored in the colony. Nectar composition varies from species to species. Generally, nectar is composed mostly of sucrose but also fructose and glucose. It can contain all 20 amino acids, vitamins, alkaloids, and oils — perhaps a healthy candy bar after all. After the flower has been pollinated, the plant absorbs the unused nectar. As with most careful research into biological phenomena, we soon discover there are no simple explanations. Plants have evolved a number of different strategies to attract and provide for pollinators. Gordon Frankie, a UC Berkeley bee expert, says some plants produce nectar differently throughout the day, effectively moving pollinators around by turning on and off their nectar source. Most plants produce one-day flowers and the nectar is produced just before
e l l i s the flower opens. So I would call it a onetime offering in general but there are exceptions, as Frankie notes. Some plants have nectar sources that aren’t in flowers. These plants create a food resource for insects, especially ants that protect the plant from herbivores. A classic example is East Africa’s whistling thorn acacia. Golf-ball-size swellings with nectaries house tiny ant colonies. When a grasshopper or even a giraffe tries to eat the leaves, the ants attack the animal. While most common in the tropics, some plants in the temperate zone also have extra-floral nectaries. Sunflowers and elderberries both produce sugars at the base and stem of the leaves that provide parasitic wasps with a reliable food source. These wasps prey on leaf-eating caterpillars, which can harm the host plants. Send your questions to atn@baynature.org.
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