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Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

San Francisco and Other Watersheds…

San Francisco! To be more precise, the San Francisco Bay. On Thursday, November 11, BotS took two very packed Suburbans across the Bay Bridge and into the city. First on our agenda was to visit with Dr. John Callaway (Environmental Science, University of San Francisco) at Chrissy Field, a restoration project within sight of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island. Originally a salt marsh rich in biodiversity, the site has seen a wide range of uses in the past century, but only now is it being restored to its natural condition. Western humans seem to have always taken […]

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Monday, November 15th, 2010

Marshes, vineyards and the universe

Mid-way between Sacramento/San Joaquin River Valley and the San Fransico Bay, the Suisun Marsh houses an intricate tidal ecosystem sensitive to extremely minute variations in biological and geomorphological conditions. Joining Dr. Josh Collins at Rush Ranch, our crew took a short trek into the marsh atop a small bedrock outcrop rising above the flat acres of pickleweed. From this vantage point underneath a flight path to a local airbase, Dr. Collins dove into fascinating detail of the tidal landscape spread out before us. Unlike the continental scale tectonic processes we have been observing in the faults of California, tidal systems […]

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Monday, November 15th, 2010

Water, water everywhere…

As the damage to New Orleans from Katrina all but fades from the consciousness of American society, there is a strikingly similar disaster impending on the West Coast, merely awaiting its own “perfect storm.” A sequence of unfortunate but not altogether unlikely events could easily unleash devastation upon hundreds of thousands of residents and millions of dollars of infrastructure below sea level in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river delta. The aging levee system between San Francisco and the state capital has prevented normal deposition of river and tidal sediment, while agriculture and development have drained the ground water and […]

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Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

Westward ho!

Bucknell on the Susquehanna is no longer on the East Coast. On Saturday morning, BotS’s fifth Bucknell bus departed from campus, headed for Harrisburg International Airport. A full day of traveling later, at about 6 p.m. local time, our aircraft touched down in San Francisco under clear skies. For the next two weeks, we will explore comparisons and contrasts between western watersheds, ecology, geology, resource management issues, and more. It has not been easy to get here. The better part of our previous week was spent discussing and preparing for this trip and a year of planning before that on […]

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Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

Hello California!

For the next two weeks, BotS will be traveling around the West Coast learning about watersheds and comparing them to the Susquehanna watershed. We started our trip in San Francisco where our hotel was located, literally, on the San Andreas Fault. It was relaxing to wake up and both see and hear the Pacific Ocean out our windows. On this rainy day we have scheduled a driving tour of the Sacramento River Delta, led by Bucknell Alum Adam Paris ’99. Adam has done some environmental restoration work in the San Francisco Bay Area and is well versed on the stops […]

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