By Kelly Servick

 I liked music as a kid because it felt creative and spontaneous. Ideas for songs popped out of my brain and surprised me. But as I muddled through piano lessons, squinting at inky lines that read like formulas while my teacher tisked over my shoulder, I started to realize that music is about structure. Soon, all that structure was programmed into me. Certain notes belong together in a scale and certain chords are meant to follow one another. You can write something creative, but if you want it to sound good, better run it through the structure-o-meter first.

Composers throughout history have relied on patterns and rules as they write. But in an age of superfast technology and sophisticated computer algorithms, art and science are fusing to producing some very interesting music. I saw this firsthand at a performance by the students and faculty of UCSC’s Electronic Music Studios called “Making the Electrons Dance.” Read the full post »

Red-tide further down the coast from us, in La Jolla, CA. Credit: eutrophication&hypoxia, Flickr.

By Laura Poppick

We’re all enjoying these days leading up to summer, with the Monterey Bay shining clear and blue. But we know these times are fleeting. Come fall, algae will start to bloom. Clear blue waves will turn brown and red, seabirds and marine mammals will get sick, and swimming advisories could be put in place.

At least, this has become the recurring trend over the past 20 years.

Such “red tides” — also known as harmful algal blooms — are fairly common in coastal communities across the country, and result from changes in ocean currents and influxes of nutrients. Some blooms are harmful because they grow so thick that they they block out sunlight to life below, while others are harmful because they produce dangerous levels of naturally-occuring toxins.

Alanna Lecher, a third year PhD student in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department at UC Santa Cruz, is currently working to understand why the blooms happen when they do in the Monterey Bay. She knows that ocean currents tend to slow down and push algae toward Santa Cruz in late summer, but currents cannot explain the blooms entirely.

“You can pool all the algae you want, but if you don’t feed it, it doesn’t grow,” Lecher said during a poster presentation at the 9th Annual Graduate Research Symposium at UCSC. “So we’re trying to figure out what’s feeding it.”

Nutrients that feed algae — like nitrogen and phosphorous – enter bays in three main ways: river discharge, groundwater discharge, and in deep ocean currents that swell up to the surface through a process called upwelling.

While upwelling and river discharge are major drivers of blooms elsewhere, they are unlikely culprits in the Monterey Bay. By mid-fall — at the end of the dry season — rivers have usually dried down to a trickle and upwelling tends to be at its weakest.

Knowing this, Lecher has honed in on groundwater. With her advisor, Adina Paytan, she is testing whether local groundwater contains the right suite of nutrients required to instigate a harmful bloom. She has already conducted a series of preliminary experiments at Long Marine Lab in downtown Santa Cruz, where she grew algae in tanks containing different levels of groundwater and water from elsewhere in the bay.

Her results, so far, have shown that Pseudo-nitzschia — the dominant algae in Monterey Bay red-tides — does, indeed, grow best in tanks with high concentrations of local groundwater. Unlike water from further out in the bay, groundwater contains high levels of silica. Pseudo-nitzschia use silica to make tiny glass shells that protect their bodies. Lecher believes that silica from groundwater could accumulate in the bay in late summer when river discharge and upwelling waters are too sparse to dilute it.

Lecher’s next step, she says, is to collect more water samples from around the bay to better quantify the nutrient inputs at different sites. Ultimately, this could help pinpoint and mitigate the source of nutrients causing these harmful blooms, and extend the clear blue period of Monterey Bay further into the fall.

California Dept of Water’s website tries to answer a question on a lot of people’s minds right now: Are we in a drought?

By Rina Shaikh-Lesko

Several recent developments have gotten me thinking about water use in California — recent water shortages and the conversations about building desalination plants. Water scarcity will be a growing problem this century, mostly due to the world’s growing population. Drought-prone California’s plans to desalinate seawater is likely to have unintended consequences in the form of increased greenhouse gas emissions.

But our water use goes beyond the local water in our reservoirs and snowpacks. Products we import also have water costs that we don’t often think about and they add to our total “water footprint.” Our global economy means California’s water resources are intertwined with water resources around the world.

Locally, the picture isn’t pretty. The April reports on current water levels in California note that the first three months of 2013 have been the driest since 1920. A drought hasn’t been declared, but water officials have cut promised allocations to southern and central California water districts.

Earlier this month, a report by the Pacific Institute on desalination plants highlighted that energy costs might outweigh the benefits. Fifteen facilities are planned up and down the California coast with two more in Mexico.  Later this month, a much-delayed environmental impact report will be released on Santa Cruz’s own planned desal facility.

The inside of a reverse osmosis desalination plant. Photo by James Grellier via wikimedia commons

The planned facilities might alleviate the pressure on the state’s other water sources, but they’ll require huge amounts of electricity to desalinate seawater, despite recent improvements to the technology. Although some of that electricity can come from sustainable sources like wind and solar, not all of it will. Running the plant will indirectly mean more carbon emissions that will add to the warming climate. Like many other environmental dilemmas, any solution to California’s water shortage comes with a cost.

We can try to conserve water in our daily lives, but only four percent of California’s water footprint comes from household usage. According to an earlier report by the Pacific Institute, California’s water footprint is 20 trillion gallons per year – double what flows through the California’s two largest rivers, the San Joaquin and Sacramento. More than 90 percent of that footprint comes from agricultural use. That includes not only the food grown and eaten here, but also food grown here and exported, as well as food grown elsewhere and shipped to California. Producing meat and dairy has the highest cost, as is widely reported. But my beloved morning coffee is also terribly water-wasteful. It takes 35 gallons of water for a typical cup of coffee, enough to fill more than half my bathtub. (Curious about your own water use? Check out National Geographic’s water footprint calculator).

As the report notes, “California’s economic and social well-being is intimately connected with water resources beyond our borders.” At first glance, water resource issues are more constrained than, say, the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. But both problems need solutions that cross borders. Other countries with the funds may contemplate desalination as a solution for water shortages, as California is doing. But as the recent report makes clear, we’ll pay in other ways, with more greenhouse gas emissions.

There are ways to curb our water-extravagant ways that are more carbon neutral — and often cheaper, too — like recycling waste water or capturing rainwater runoff. We may also find other creative solutions that we can’t anticipate yet. But the trick will be to balance the monetary and environmental costs with a growing population that needs more and more water every day.

By Jessica Shugart

My favorite thing about living in Santa Cruz this year has been my proximity to the ocean. From my apartment, I can hear the sea lions barking at the wharf, and waves crashing at the beach. True, I also have to deal with the rhythmic screaming of rollercoaster riders at the Boardwalk, but it’s worth it.

Another day in paradise? It takes more than a little fecal indicator bacteria to stop people from surfing at Cowell’s.

Recently, my sister and I went surfing at Cowell’s Beach, famous for its smooth break and welcoming vibe for beginners. And we weren’t alone. Dozens of surfers — mostly beginners taking lessons — crowded into “party waves,” sometimes close enough to hold onto each other. Even though I suffered my fair share of wipeouts and swallowed a few mouthfuls of seawater, I felt invigorated in my connection with the ocean.

That is, until I learned what many have known for years: Cowell’s Beach is one of the most poo-polluted beaches in the state of California. The levels of fecal indicator bacteria found at the beach have earned it the distinction of multiple failing grades from Heal the Bay, a nonprofit organization that keeps tabs on coastal water quality. Last year, Cowell’s ranked No. 2 on the organization’s “Beach Bummer List,” which includes the top 10 most polluted beaches in the state. It was the only beach in the greater Bay Area region to make that list.

So where is all of the pollution coming from? It turns out the answer isn’t so simple. There are many possible culprits — ranging from seabird droppings to rotting kelp to leaky sewer pipes to stagnant lagoon water. Tracking down the main source of the contamination has stumped the city for years, but now a team of water quality experts from Stanford University is hot on the scent. Read the full post »

by Chris Palmer

Last week, to celebrate Earth Day, volunteers around the globe trekked out to forests in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, Canada and the U.S. to plant 18-inch tall clones of ancient redwood trees in an effort to forestall global warming by reforesting the Earth with the iconic forest dwellers.

Redwood National Park (image courtesy of Wikimedia commons: credit Michael Schweppe)

More than a century ago, three redwood trees, each the size of a 40-story building, were felled in the dank emerald forests of Humboldt County in northern California. The stumps of the trees, believed to be 2,000 to 4,000 years old, still emanate from the forest floor. To this day, “basal sprouts” shoot out of the stumps, the largest of which, the famed “Fieldbrook Stump”, measures 32.5 feet across.

Over the years, a small group of dedicated volunteers coordinated by the non-profit Archangel Ancient Tree Archive have collected a handful of those basal sprouts along with branch clippings from the tops of some of the most impressive living redwood specimens on the West Coast. Archangel used those samples to make the world’s first redwood clones, a process that ultimately took four years and $2 million.

Read the full post »

By Laura Poppick

Mark Zoback, geophysicist at Stanford University. Photo Credit: Stanford University.

Mark Zoback, a geophysicist at Stanford University, cringes at the word “fracking”. He doesn’t oppose this controversial process of extracting fossil fuels from shale rock, or hydraulic fracturing. He just laments the stigma of its nickname.

“I am a very strong believer that shale gas can be produced in an environmentally responsible way, and it’s extremely important that we do so,” Zoback said during a lecture held by the Northern California Science Writer’s Association in San Francisco on April 17th. “It’s an essential component of our energy mix for the first half of this century before we can hopefully get away from fossil fuels altogether.”

Zoback’s optimism did not seem to immediately resonate with his Bay Area audience. Californians, like many citizens across the country, are increasingly wary of the push to extract untapped gas and oil in this way, particularly within their already water-stressed land. They fear the pollution associated with fracking, and its potential threat to their health and to the state’s agricultural economy.

But Zoback dismisses these apprehensions as ill-informed. He has studied geophysics with an emphasis on shale gas and oil production for more than 30 years and, in 2011, sat on a committee appointed by U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu to inform President Obama of the environmental risks associated with fracking. The committee concluded that, with thoughtful engineering and robust regulations, fracking can, indeed, be done safely.

“The three keys to developing shale gas in an environmentally responsible manner are well construction, well construction, and well construction,” Zoback said.

Some Californians worry that toxic fracking fluid could leak out of deep cracks and contaminate drinking water, regardless of how the wells are constructed higher up. But Zoback argued that, while this may be a risk elsewhere in the world, it is not a serious threat in the U.S.. Our frackable shale lies about one mile underground. This provides a safe buffer between the toxic fluids and aquifer water, he said.

Still, problems can — and do — occur closer to the surface. If companies don’t line their well-heads properly, gas and toxic liquids can leak out of the casing and travel upward into groundwater. The American Petroleum Institute acknowledges this, and recommends that companies line the upper portion of their wells with steel casing and a 500-foot-long layer of cement. Zoback thinks additional steel layers, and up to 2,000 feet of cement, would be even better. The API, however, has not yet made an effort to improve regulations, for what Zoback considers to be economic reasons.

“It’s really unfortunate,” Zoback said during his talk. “[Fracking] is a complicated process, and it needs to be done properly and needs to be regulated properly.”

In California, the Senate is currently considering a bill that would create new state fracking regulations, including restrictions on water use and disposal. And, earlier this month, the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity — an Arizona-based environmental law nonprofit with an office in San Francisco — won a lawsuit against the federal Bureau of Land Management for failing to adequately assess the environmental impacts of leasing land to oil and gas companies planning to hydraulically fracture California plots in 2011.

Finding neither those movements nor Zoback’s optimism reassuring, some skeptics in the audience last week challenged the speaker’s reasoning. The speed and magnitude of the expected surge in California fracking could pose unforeseen environmental issues, one audience member pointed out. Others doubted that new regulations would be as robust as they need to be.

Zoback remained resolutely optimistic.

“I think like an engineer,” he said. “I look at a system, identify the problems, and then I try to find solutions to the problems. If there are problems associated with hydraulic fracturing, I will seek solutions.”

By Kelly Servick

photo: Thomas Lersch/Wikimedia commons

Lately, I’ve had great apes on my mind. Psychiatrist Martin Brüne’s work treating psychopathy in retired laboratory chimps – the topic of my Q&A article – got me thinking about some even slipperier issues. Brüne opened his talk at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in February with what he called a “Freudian statement:” Our growing knowledge of the similarities between apes and ourselves comes as “a blow to human self-centeredness,” he said. Our closest living relative, it turns out, has many of the qualities we once considered uniquely human. Chimps use tools, recognize themselves in mirrors and even wage war. “Do we need to add another blow by claiming not even mental illness and suffering is reserved for our own species?” Brüne asked.

It’s a big question. And while Dr. Brune’s time at the AAP chimpanzee sanctuary in the Netherlands might make him more qualified than the average bipedal primate to speculate about our evolutionary uniqueness (or lack thereof), observational study isn’t enough. The scientific study of human uniqueness must go to the source: DNA. Read the full post »

Franciscan wallflowers ((Erysimum franciscanum), a rare native plant that grows along the coast between Sonoma and Santa Cruz

Although the term “biodiversity hotspot” conjures up images of steamy rain forests and exotic South Pacific islands, if you live in California, you have one right outside your door. California is the most biodiverse state in the U.S, ahead of even Hawaii. Biodiversity isn’t just a count of the number of species — it also reflects the abundance of those plants.

We have somewhere around 6,000 documented native plants. Many of those are rare plants, some with less than a dozen known specimens. With human development taking big bites out of the landscape, much of that biodiversity is threatened. More than 75 percent of the state’s habitat has already been lost.

The California Native Plant Society is working to protect what’s left of the plants, but in order to do that, its members have to catalogue them — describe their lifecycle, range and growing conditions – and keep the information current. For the 3,500 records in CNPS’s database, more than half of them have records more than 20 years old. In order to speed up that process, CNPS started the California Rare Plant Treasure Hunt four years ago, in 2010. This time of year, the treasure hunters are gearing up for their busy field season, taking advantage of the burgeoning plants that pop up in spring display after the winter rains. Although it was a dry winter, they’re still documenting as many plants as possible.

Don Mayall records GPS data for Franciscan wallflowers at Rockaway Headlands

Expert botanists lead teams of volunteers to document rare, often threatened and endangered plants. The botanists who lead the expeditions can train volunteers to recognize rare plants and help with tricky identifications. Volunteers are as varied as the plants they’re studying. They include retirees, outdoor enthusiasts and people who want to learn more about botany. There are day hikes within a short drive of cities and two- and three-day overnight camping trips to more remote areas.

They’re hoping to map the enormous swaths of the state that haven’t been well studied. Sometimes it takes professional botanists working for national, state and regional parks decades to get back to a specific spot to see how the plant life has fared over the years. Experts estimate that some areas, like the southeastern deserts, have only had about 10 percent of their plant life remains undescribed, meaning they don’t have a name yet.  Plans for solar and wind farms threaten to wipe out acres of those plants before they can be named and counted.  That threat was a part of the motivation to start the RPTH in 2010. “They really can’t get protection as a rare spcies if they’re not described,” points out Danny Slateky, project coordinator for the Rare Plant Treasure Hunt. “The rate at which they’re proposing development is astounding,” he said.

The program is funded by various grants, the newest of which is a Wilderness Stewardship Challenge grant from the National Forest Foundation to catalog plants in the Ventana Wilderness in Monterey County. The area is part of the Los Padres National Forest, a nearly 3,000-square-mile forest that reaches from Ventura County in the south to Monterey County in the north. The forest has only one botanist —who lives in the southern region and rarely makes it up to Monterey and the Ventana Wilderness.

The Treasure Hunt teams will be focusing on the part of the forest that suffered massive fires in 2008. Even five years later, the area is still feeling the repercussions. The botanical teams will not only document rare plants in the area, they’ll be observing how plants in the area responded to the fire. Botanists know many native plants thrive in response to the fire and they want to use this large fire to document this fact. “We want to get a handle on how the fire is affecting the rare plants,” said Slakey.

Toni Corelli explains the region’s native plants to hikers

I joined one of the treasure hunts in the Bay Area on a blustery Saturday earlier this month. We hopscotched between three different sites along the San Mateo Coast. The Santa Clara Valley Chapter of CNPS often folds in rare plant surveys into larger field trips meant to introduce people to native plants. Toni Corelli, botanist and Rare Plant Chair for San Mateo County, led a troupe of about 20 hikers, but at key points at each site, a crew of 3 or 4 treasure hunters peeled off and documented several rare plants: Franciscan wallflowers (Erysimum franciscanum) at Rockaway Headlands, Harlequin Lotus (Hosackia gracilis) and Coast Yellow Leptosiphon (Leptosiphon croceus) in Moss Beach and Rose Leptosiphon (Leptosiphon rosaceus) at Pillar Point Bluff. The documented three of the four, but will have to return to survey the rarest of them, the Coast Yellow Leptosiphon. The last remaining cluster only grows in a small patch of grass in Moss Beach about the size of a one-car garage. Corelli’s flickr stream has gorgeous photos of all of four plants.

Other areas where Rare Plant Treasure Hunts are planned this year include the Bay Area, San Diego and San Bernardino Counties. In the shadow of the spectacular wildflower displays on California’s rolling hills and meadows this spring, the volunteers of the Rare Plant Treasure Hunt are racing against the clock to get a count of as many as they while they still can. If you’re interested in joining the search, check out the group’s website here: http://www.cnps.org/cnps/rareplants/treasurehunt/

Stay tuned for a slideshow of my day looking for rare native plants on the San Mateo Coast!

By Ryder Diaz

Image: Ryder Diaz. Modified from Adam Arredondo, via Wikimedia Commons

As I walked down a path at the UC Santa Cruz arboretum, I heard them.

The buzz was distinct. It wasn’t the thin sound of a common housefly or the high-pitched trill of a mosquito. This vibration had some weight behind it.

I knew it was a bumblebee before I saw it. Years of studying these hefty, fuzzy bees had trained my ears to recognize their buzz. Read the full post »

Patrick Daniel, of Squids4Kids, dissects a Humboldt squid at the 2012 Bay Area Science Festival. Photo by Ken Baltz

By Paul Gabrielsen

Marine biologist Bill Gilly wasn’t prepared for the greeting he received from St. Andrew’s Episcopal school in 2008. He’d come to the Saratoga, Calif. school to teach a special lesson on the Humboldt squid, complete with a dissection. Gilly approached the school and saw a line of ten-year-olds stretching out the door of his classroom. They jumped up and down, chanting.

“Squid! Squid! Squid!”

In the last five years, Gilly’s seen similar responses from hundreds of kids.

Read the full post »