Natural History Wanderings

Butterflies of the Bay Area by Liam O’Brien

Wed, Oct 15  7 pm 
Berkeley Publick Library North Branch
1170 The Alameda, Berkeley, CA 94707, 

SF Gate  reported

The endangered species has been a permanent presence in the river, which empties into the ocean between Seal Beach and Long Beach, since at least 2008, when volunteers with the Aquarium of the Pacific first recorded that the sea turtles lived in the river year-round. It’s an unusual location to find the creatures, to say the least. The San Gabriel River now represents the northernmost habitat occupied by the Pacific green sea turtles anywhere in the eastern Pacific Ocean; before their discovery, the next closest population was believed to be 120 miles south near San Diego.

Read more at An endangered sea species is thriving in an urban SoCal river

European Space Agency reported

Hidden beneath the biggest ice mass on Earth, hundreds of subglacial lakes form a crucial part of Antarctica’s icy structure, affecting the movement and stability of glaciers, and consequentially influencing global sea level rise.

Thanks to a decade of data from the European Space Agency’s CryoSat satellite, researchers have identified 85 previously unknown lakes several kilometres under the frozen surface surrounding the South Pole. This increases the number of known active subglacial lakes below Antarctica by more than half to 231.

Read more  ESA – 85 new subglacial lakes detected below Antarctica