from NPR
Which moon is the most … moon-tastic? Popular Mechanics science writer Jennifer Leman has ranked all 158 moons in our solar system. The criteria? Interviews with NASA scientists, astronomers, and her own moonpinions. Leman talked to ShortWave host Maddie Sofia about some of her favorites and ranked the top 10. Click here to listen.
The San Francisco Chronicled has an article with some excellent photos of snow and fall color at When snow meets fall: Beautiful photos capture ‘snowliage’ in Yosemite
Snow is beautiful. So is technicolor fall foliage. Last week they occurred simultaneously in Yosemite National Park when the first snowstorm of the year came early, and there’s a really good word for the results: “snowliage.”
Posted in Park, Photography | Tags: Fall Color Photography, Yosemite
ScienceDaily reports on
New research identifies a protein that controls plant growth — good news for an era in which crops can get crushed by climate change. When the protein, IRK, is present, the root perceives a signal telling cells not to divide.
Read article at Research identifies possible on/off switch for plant growth: Protein could be key to saving crops endangered by extreme weather — ScienceDaily
Posted in Wildflowers and Other Plants | Tags: on/off switch for plant growth
Xerces Society has a series of webinars in the coming months on “Building Pollinator Habitat in Towns and Cities” at Xerces Society Webinars Each seminar focused on a different geographical region.
We also encourage you to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Webinars put on by Xerces will be uploaded here after their stated calendar date, and there are many other resources available on our channel, including the Xerces Classroom Series.
Posted in Drives | Tags: Mormon Emigrant Trail
from Golden Gate Audubon
This month’s feature: Exploring Culturally Relevant Education and Climate Smart Restoration
When: This Thursday, November 19, 2020 at 7 pm PST
How To Sign In: Our free Speaker Series webinar is available on a first come, first serve basis with capacity for up to 500 participants. We currently do not have the capacity to register or sign up participants before the event. Please make sure to download the Zoom app before the Speaker Series begins. You will need a passcode to sign into the event. Links and passcode are provided below.
Please click this URL to join. https://zoom.us/j/99089322418?pwd=RUplMG5ya2J1c1Jxd2R4ZWxUSnpYZz09
Passcode: 258264
Read more about presentation at This Thursday, November 19th: GGAS’s Speaker Series
Posted in Environment, Talks | Tags: Culturally Relevant Education & Climate Smart Restoration
Los Angeles Times
Sequoia experts may never know how many of the world’s most massive trees died in the Castle fire, but judging by what they have seen so far, they say the number is certainly in the hundreds — and could easily top 1,000.
Read full story at Hundreds of giant sequoias killed by California’s Castle fire – Los Angeles Times
Posted in Environment, Park | Tags: Castle Fire, Giant Sequoias
The Mercury News Reports
Wildfires this summer devastated California’s historic first state park, Big Basin Redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains. But just 35 miles away, where another blaze burned a state park in the Bay Area, the results were dramatically different.
Roughly 55,000 acres — an area nearly twice the size of San Francisco — burned at Henry W. Coe State Park near Morgan Hill in August and September. But while California’s record summer of wildfires blackened Big Basin’s beloved redwoods and destroyed its historic visitor center, gift shop and campgrounds, a fire that charred nearly two-thirds of Coe park spared its buildings. In the end, the fire was an overwhelmingly positive event for California’s second-largest state park, biologists say, one the best things to happen to its landscape in years.
The mostly slow-moving flames cleared out enormous amounts of dead grass and brush across spacious valleys, ridges and hillsides. If there are decent rains this winter, the rejuvenation could sprout wildflowers all across the park and in other areas in the Diablo Range that burned
Read more at How one Bay Area park benefited from this summer’s big fires
Posted in Park, Wildflowers and Other Plants | Tags: Henry Coe, Wildfires and Wildflowers
ABDNHA Desert Lecture Series: Amazing Desert Animals (Webinar) Nov. 20, Fri., 6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Speaker: James Cornett, Ecologist & Author
The most fascinating creatures are often the most unknown. Learn about twelve of the strangest creatures that call our local desert home. After exposure to the smallest, the hottest, and strangest animals around, the desert may never seem the same again. James W. Cornett is a desert ecologist living in Palm Springs, California. He is one of the Southwest’s most prolific writers with more than 42 of his books published as of 2020. He is a popular speaker at ABDNHA and always enjoys sharing his love of desert natural history through writing, teaching, and lecturing. No charge, but donations requested.
Space is filling up fast, so register now to secure your spot! Register
Posted in Talks | Tags: Desert Animals
The West Marin Environmental Action Committee has posted a series of past webinars at https://eacmarin.salsalabs.org/eacfallnews?wvpId=836700da-e9c0-497b-8b26-44d5a2d241ea (go to bottom of page to find seminar links)
Seminars include:
Posted in Animals, Birds, Talks | Tags: Nature Webinars
Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park reported
At noon today, the road into Cedar Grove officially closed for the winter!
Posted in Drives, Park | Tags: Cedar Grove, Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park
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Posted in Birds | Tags: Bird feeding
EarthSky reports
November’s wonderful Leonid meteor shower is active from about November 6 to 30 each year. The peak is expected in 2020 on the morning of November 17. The shower happens as our world crosses the orbital path of Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. Like many comets, Tempel-Tuttle litters its orbit with bits of debris. It’s when this cometary debris enters Earth’s atmosphere and vaporizes that we see the Leonid meteor shower. In 2020, the moon – in a waxing crescent phase – will set in early evening, to provide moon-free skies after midnight when the most meteors typically fall. In a dark sky, with no moon, you can see up to 10 to 15 meteors per hour at the peak.
Read more: All you need to know: 2020’s Leonid meteor shower | Astronomy Essentials | EarthSky
Posted in Astronomy | Tags: Leonid Meteor Shower
Photos from a visit to the Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park in Berkeley on November 15,2020
The Regional Parks Botanic Garden is a botanic garden of California native plants. The garden is open for visitors Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Admission is free but reservations are required. For reservations click here.
You can see other photos from the Regional Parks Botanic Garden on the garden’s Flickr group page at Regional Parks Botanic Garden.
ScienceDaily reports
Current species loss also affects our food, water supply, building materials and energy sources. This is confirmed by one of the biggest biodiversity experiments. Researchers found that ecosystem functions cannot only be predicted from the properties of plants, but that the entire complexity of biotic and abiotic interactions has to be considered.
Read more at Species loss affects basis of life of humans — ScienceDaily
Posted in Animals, Environment | Tags: impact species loss on humans, Species Loss
Tom Chester reports
There are hardly any blooms at all in the Borrego Desert below 3000 feet now. We didn’t get any significant monsoonal rain this summer, which means that, as far as we know, there are no areas with good flower displays now. This is unusual; often, there are some limited areas that have good displays in the fall from monsoonal rainfall.
On most hikes, expect to see only a handful of plants with any blooms at all, from a very small number of species. Wet areas, like Coyote Creek Second and Third Crossing, probably have ten or twenty species in bloom, and are your best bet if you want to see some blooms.
The desert floor in and to the east of Borrego Springs has received essentially no rainfall yet. Borrego Springs at 500 feet elevation received just 0.04″ on 7 and 8 November 2020. Joe Woods dug into the sand in a number of areas of the desert floor and reported that the soil is dry.
Read more at Bloom Reports from the Anza-Borrego Desert: 2020-2021
Photographed in the North Berkeley Flatlands and Albany on November 14, 2020.
This is part of my continuing project, the “Stay at Home Photo Project”. It includes many street photos from Berkeley and Albany as well as photos from the UC Berkeley campus, my yard and neighbors’ yards You can see larger higher quality versions of many of the photos at Flickr in my collection Stay at Home Photo Project which includes the following albums
Posted in Photos (Sandy's) | Tags: Albany Street Photos, Berkeley Street Photos, Flowers
from Science at Cal
and
and ask them your questions on November 19th.
The Washington Post reports
Nature takes a beating from a different kind of tourist in Tahoe
Most summers, visitors to Lake Tahoe respect its beauty and its bears. This summer, however was different, resulting in an increase in trash and bear activity, and protests from some of the locals.
But the vacationers who arrived in droves were not Tahoe’s typical tourists, observers say. Some seemed unfamiliar with wilderness protocols, which include packing out trash, protecting pristine natural elements such as trees and boulders, and not feeding the bears.
Read more at Nature takes a beating from a different kind of tourist in Tahoe – The Washington Post
Posted in Park | Tags: Tahoe Tourism
from the Sonoma Land Trust
While we’ve missed bringing you out on the land this fall to observe raptors on the wing, let us bring you close-up views of birds of prey in the comfort of your own home. Join raptor enthusiast Larry Broderick online and experience the excitement of the fall hawk migration.
Posted in Butterflies, Talks | Tags: Monarchs
Register to attend (registration is required to receive instructions for joining the meeting)
Mountain lions occasionally cross the suburban-wildland interface into our neighborhoods, where they are encountered by residents or their pets. Doc Hale has been studying their presence (or absence) in Contra Costa County for over 48 years and will present survey monitoring results, personal observations, ecology (including the lions’ indirect impact on our plant communities), and images of these shy carnivores captured on wildlife cameras.
Posted in Animals, Talks | Tags: Mountain Lion Ecology
from Siskiyou Land Trust
Nov 17 – Lost Legacy – 180 years of the art of Mount Shasta with Bill Miesse
Siskiyou Land Trust kicks off its 2020 webinar series on Tuesday, November 17th, with guest presenter Bill Miesse, our local art history expert. He’ll share his passion and knowledge of Mount Shasta’s art history with a wide array of 19th and 20th century mountain art, created by explorers, artists and scientists.
For more than 150 years, Mount Shasta’s grand beauty has called to a myriad of artists, from early California painters Albert Bierstadt and William Keith, to modern masters of photography such as Imogen Cunningham and Ansel Adams.
Bill has spent years chasing down these artworks, discovering early paintings of Mount Shasta in the most extraordinary places. It’s a great detective story as well as a visual treat via the excellent Zoom interface.
Join us online at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, Nov. 17. Click the link above to register. There is no ticket to buy, but like our traditional slideshow series, we’ll encourage your generosity and provide links so you can support the fine work of the Siskiyou Land Trust. Help out if you can.
Posted in Talks | Tags: Mt. Shasta
from Santa Clara Valley CNPS
Recent headlines about global insect declines and three billion fewer birds in North America are a bleak reality check about how ineffective our current land management practices have been at sustaining the plants and animals that sustain us. Such losses are not an option if we wish to continue our current standard of living on Planet Earth. The good news is that none of this is inevitable. Doug Tallamy will discuss simple steps that each of us can and must ̶ take to reverse declining biodiversity and will explain why we, ourselves, are nature’s best hope.
Doug Tallamy is a professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, where he has authored 103 research publications and has taught insect related courses for 40 years. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities. His book Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens was published by Timber Press in 2007 and was awarded the 2008 Silver Medal by the Garden Writers’ Association. The Living Landscape, co-authored with Rick Darke, was published in 2014. Doug’s new book, Nature’s Best Hope, released by Timber Press in February 2020, is a New York Times Best Seller.
The general public is invited to watch on Youtube starting at 5pm November 14, 2020.
Posted in Environment, Talks | Tags: Doug Tallamy
The winners of Bay Nature’s Local Hero Awards
Read more about the winners at Bay Nature’s 2021 Local Hero Awards –
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: Bay Area Local Hero Awards
from eBird
On October Big Day more than 32,000 people from around the world submitted nearly 78,000 checklists and set a new world record for most species reported on a single day. This year’s October Big Day was also a part of the inaugural Global Bird Weekend—the biggest birding weekend in history. A massive thank you to the eBird community and our global network of partners and affiliates for making this record-breaking event possible. October Big Day 2020 Results
Posted in Birds | Tags: October Big Day
The Record Courier reports on Eastern Sierra Land Trust gettin a new conservation easement on the Hunewill Ranch.
Garnering the support of local, state and federal agencies over the course of years, the not-for-profit Eastern Sierra Land Trust secured a conservation easement in perpetuity for the historic Hunewill Ranch, which was established in 1861.
Read more at Trust secures easement on Hunewill Ranch | RecordCourier.com
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: Hunewill Ranch Easement
East Bay Mountain Lion Ecology November 18, 2020 7:30 pm Speaker: James “Doc” Hale
Register to attend (registration is required to receive instructions for joining the meeting)
Mountain lions occasionally cross the suburban-wildland interface into our neighborhoods, where they are encountered by residents or their pets. Doc Hale has been studying their presence (or absence) in Contra Costa County for over 48 years and will present survey monitoring results, personal observations, ecology (including the lions’ indirect impact on our plant communities), and images of these shy carnivores captured on wildlife cameras.
Read more at East Bay Mountain Lion Ecology
Posted in Animals, Talks | Tags: Mountain Lion Ecology
Posted in Astronomy, Photography | Tags: Deep Space Photography
Count birds in your yard and participate in citizen science through CornellLabs Project FeederWatch. Learn more about Project FeederWatch: how it started, how to participate, how to reach us, and our latest press release at Project FeederWatch
The first Daytonas count is November 14.
Posted in Birds | Tags: Project Feederwatch
Our Coastal Climate: Rising Waters in West Marin
Free event and online meeting details will be sent in an email upon registration.
DATE: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2020TIME: 12:00 PM – 1:30 PMFORMAT: ZOOM MEETING
Join us for our first free brown bag lunch exploring Our Coastal Climate: Rising Sea Levels in West Marin on Thursday, November 12th, 2020 from 12:00 – 1:30 pm. This online meeting format will explore rising sea levels, emergent groundwater, and ways to build coastal resilience through local action with keynote speakers Dr. Charles Lester, Dr. Kevin Befus and Dr. Patrick Barnard. RSVP today to get the Zoom link and event reminders.
Read more at Our Coastal Climate Online Educational Series — EAC
Posted in Environment, Talks | Tags: Rising Waters in W. Marin
Natural History Wanderings 