Submerged Surprise in Suisun: Pondweed usually flourishes in sloughs, but a new survey of Suisun Bay and the West Delta mapped more than 1,000 acres of two species of these submerged native plants in open waters. Biologist Katharyn Boyer released new maps of the extent of these underwater beds this February. "What's really exciting is how much fish food we saw during our first look at these beds," she says... Estuary News, February 2012
Healthier but still troubled - The good and the bad news about San Francisco Bay as told by 92 speakers at the September 2011 State of the Estuary Conference.Special 24-page conference summary issue Estuary News, December 2011.
Banking on Tules - Will Delta farmers someday be able to cash in on carbon credits by growing tules instead of asparagus? A 10-year-old pilot project on Twitchell Island explores the promise carbon capture by native freshwater vegetation... Estuary News, October 2011
Return of the Natives - As shorebirds and waterfowl have begun using newly modified salt ponds in the South Bay, so have fish. The first year of monitoring by the UC Davis Fisheries Research Team led by Jim Hobbs detected a high diversity of fish species in the ponds, with a strong preponderance of natives...Estuary News, August 2011
Vacuuming for Gold - Think of a gold miner and a grubby guy from early California history comes to mind. But up in the north fork of the American River, today's miner is more likely to be clad in an expensive wet suit, operating motorized machinery, and wielding a hose rather than a pick axe...Estuary News, June 2011
Signals from Senador - Most people visit the oak-dotted hills around the Senador mercury mine, now a county park, on warm dry days, but not Lester McKee. A geologist and water quality specialist with the S.F. Estuary Institute, McKee visits these Santa Clara County hillsides in storms. Ever since 2003, when a heavy rainfall brought enough mercury down the Guadalupe River watershed and into the Bay to alarm water quality monitors, McKee has been... Estuary News, February 2011
Seeing a woman about a boat — When Arthur Helwig died last year, he left behind a 1919 tug, a World War II landing craft, and a couple of work barges. In his prime, he'd kept these tools of his mom and pop marine contracting business ship-shape. But when he died, inspectors found everything from old car batteries and waste oil to antifreeze and wood preservatives stacked on deck. So Helwig's widow inherited a floating time bomb, in terms of Bay water quality...
Inside
The Green Factory — Those tanker trucks labeled "FOG" barreling around East Bay streets carry the fuel of the future: fat, oil and grease. Add a little chicken blood, cheese waste, restaurant leftovers and soda pop to a tank of sludge and you have EBMUD's new recipe for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption. On a grey morning this April, the East Bay Municipal Utility District fired up a new turbine that uses methane gas to generate electricity, and became the first wastewater treatment plant in the nation to produce more energy than it needs to operate...
The Bird Laboratory — Scientists know birds like to nest on islands, but they didn't know they would nest so quickly on the new man-made islands south of the Dumbarton Bridge. Less than a year after bulldozers scooped and shaped 30 little islands out of the Bay mud in an old salt pond called "SF2," scientists counted 193 avocet nests and five snowy plover nests. Nesters used all but two of the islands, surprising scientists who expected more migratory and wintering birds the first year than the more cautious nesters. They also noticed the birds built more nests on islands with a linear shape than those with a round shape...
Opinions: Wrestling with the Delta Plan — The Bay-Delta Conservation Plan, described by Deputy Secretary Jerry Meral of the California Natural Resources Agency as "a $250 million effort to get a permit [for water projects] to operate under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts," is both ambitious and controversial. Estuary News asked several scientists for their perspectives on the BDCP's recently-released effects analysis...
Review: History Detectives — The quality of the light can be a clue in the hunt for the history of a landscape. Sifting through old diaries, photographs and maps, authors of the newly published Napa Valley Historical Ecology Atlas found early descriptors like "scattered" oaks in a valley "dotted" with trees helpful...
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