By

Ashleigh Papp
About the author

Ashleigh Papp is a science writer based in San Francisco. She has a background in animal science and biology, she enjoys writing about emerging environmental issues, our oceans, and conservation-related science. For ESTUARY, she often covers wildlife. When not reading or writing, she's playing outside with friends or inside with her cat, Sandy.

Articles by Ashleigh Papp

13
Apr

Science in Short: Daylighting Delta Data

Once you know how many fish are present in a particular part of a river, including additional details like the time of day and water temperature, what do you do with this information? For decades, Delta researchers have collected millions of similar data points from daily visits to the San Francisco Estuary, not all of which are available or immediately useful. How that information is then translated into a language relevant to water and conservation managers requires serious number, or data, crunching. Sam Bashevkin, senior environmental scientist at the Delta Science Program in the Delta Stewardship Council, is working to bring data science to the San Francisco Estuary and help to make sense of the overwhelming data troves generated by...
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23
Mar

Sub-Standard Snow

At a glance, the recent winter storms and inches of snow in the Sierra seem like a reassuring sign: more snow means more snow melt, which means more water moving through our freshwater systems during dry summer months. But it turns out that there are different types of snow with differing levels of moisture locked up inside — and the latest Sierra snowfall appears to be holding less water than usual. This means the Bay’s streams and estuaries could have drier conditions ahead, despite this winter’s semi-regular storms. Typically, snow that falls along the Sierra has a high moisture content because of the mountain range’s proximity to the Pacific Ocean, says Dan McEvoy, a regional climatologist with the Western Regional...
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19
Mar

Toxins Flock to Beads in a Scientific Tea Bag

By Ashleigh Papp When a New Zealand scientist shared a novel method to test water quality in the early 2000s that didn’t involve harvesting shellfish, UC Santa Cruz’ Raphael Kudela and his team of researchers quickly adopted the idea. After some fine-tuning, they named their new technique Solid Phase Adsorption Toxin Testing (SPATT, for short). The technique takes advantage of custom-built plastic, or resin, beads that are designed to absorb specific things. “It looks a lot like a tea bag,” says Kudela. So far, SPATT has been used to measure water quality from the Santa Cruz Wharf to the Berkeley Marina and at the mouths of the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers.
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19
Sep

Paddlers Monitor Plovers

By Ashleigh Papp “It sounds fun and glamorous to kayak to work, but it’s not always the case,” says Ben Pearl, plover program director for the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory. Pearl spends six months of the year in the field researching predator threats, habitat status, and breeding behavior of the local snowy plover population. “All of this habitat used to be tidal marsh and was converted to salt ponds, so the ground is sometimes soft and nearly impossible to walk through,” says Pearl. “At some breeding sites, a kayak is almost always required to reach the nests.” Protecting these areas for plovers and other species requires ongoing work, but the habitat improvements are worth the effort, even if the...
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08
Aug

Coyote Valley, an important wildlife corridor connecting the Santa Cruz and Diablo Mountain ranges, would receive new protections under state legislation introduced in April.

AB 948 would create a new Coyote Valley Conservation Program, to be administered by the Santa Clara Open Space Authority. The bill would expand the existing protected area from 7,400 acres to 17,000 acres, and boost new efforts to preserve its resources. Coyote Valley, which drains the ecologically rich upper watershed of Coyote Creek, has long faced development threats as surrounding South Bay communities expand. The area provides critical habitat for critters large and small, which use the valley—especially its waterways—to move between more remote areas in the two mountain ranges. The Valley also includes 2,500 acres of floodplains and sits atop half of Silicon Valley’s undeveloped aquifer recharge areas, making its protection even more important. “Coyote Valley’s very shallow...
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08
Aug

Invasive clams and freshwater exports from the Delta have created dramatic and unsustainable changes in the San Francisco Estuary’s foodweb over the past 50 years.

 A study by UC Davis researchers found a 97% decline in phytoplankton, the microscopic foundation of the food chain. “Understanding the causes for the decline in the pelagic [water column] community is essential so that efficient solutions can be implemented,” says Bruce Hammock, a research scientist at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s Aquatic Health Program. The invasive clams (Potamocorbula amurensis), originally from Asia, have been over-consuming phytoplankton and zooplankton for more than 30 years, and have long been understood to account for part of the fish population’s decline; the new study investigated the additional effects of exports. Beginning in the 1940s, fresh water from the Delta has been pumped by the federal Central Valley Project and the State...
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06
May

Dana Brechwald is trying to bring rising sea levels to the forefront of the conversation for Bay Area communities and their affiliated agencies.

Joining the Bay Conservation and Development Commission as Program Manager for the Adapting to Rising Tides ( ART) program last November, Brechwald oversees multiple projects assessing coastal areas that are vulnerable to sea level rise. “We’re working at every scale, from the federal level down to community members who will be affected by climate adaptation,” she explains. Brechwald and her team cover the gamut of a community’s assets — from transportation systems to areas set aside for more development or conservation — offering tools and guidance for how to prepare for specific local climate change challenges. “There are a number of factors that we look at to identify communities where people are less able to prepare, respond to, or recover...
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20
Mar

High Road or High Water for Wildlife

While we were cooped up inside waiting out February’s storms, many animals were on the move. Cameras positioned along a creek in the Pacheco Pass wildlife corridor captured footage of animals passing through a culvert under a bridge on SR-152 that crosses Pacheco Creek. “We caught a bobcat on camera walking through the creek,” says Tanya Diamond...
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13
Dec

Hauling Out on Higher Ground

Harbor Seals “have this dual existence,” says Sarah Allen, National Park Service ecologist. “They’re tied to the land physiologically and tied to the bay waters for food and travel.” From rocky islets to tidal marshes, the Bay shoreline offers respite to these native marine mammals. Rocky islets like the Castro Rocks, located near the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, are particularly important refuges -- but more than half the islets that exist throughout the Bay are likely to be erased by sea-level rise this century. Meanwhile, the ability of tidal marsh habitats to naturally respond to rising waters offers hope.
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26
Sep

Following the Water: Bobcats in Coyote Valley

From a bird’s eye view, the area between the Santa Cruz and Diablo mountain ranges looks like any typical valley. But the work being done by Tanya Diamond, a wildlife biologist with Pathways for Wildlife, shows that the Coyote Valley offers much more to native wildlife and conservationists than mere open space.
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