Creekside Center for Earth Observation

Late Spring Rare Plant Monitoring

Lech — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:32:37 +0000

Christal and the Creekside staff on Coyote Ridge monitoring the federally endangered Santa Clara Valley Liveforever (Dudleya abramsii ssp. setchelli). Creekside is using a macroplot methodology and conducting a complete census in 4 permanent plots.

Wildlife at Work

Lech — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 01:40:37 +0000

Among other services, Creekside offers creating unique partnerships that help maintain wildlife and native plant resources while meeting the promulgated goals of the organization. Creekside has been working with Pacific Gas & Electric for quite some time, but we’ve formalized that relationship recently and now our collaborative project with PG&E is certified by the Wildlife Habitat Council as a Wildlife at Work project. If your company is a large landowner with unique habitats, please contact us to see if we can make the most of those resources and put that “wildlife to work”!

Santa Clara Valley Habitat Conservation Plan Passed

Lech — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:04:58 +0000

The staff of Creekside is very happy to report that the Santa Clara Valley HCP has been passed by the City of San Jose, the final signatory needed to enact this auspicious plan to help protect and restore habitat for 18 rare plants and animals including the Bay Checkerspot butterfly, Santa Clara Valley Dudleya and a few other species that Creekside currently works on conserving. We firmly believe that preserving and properly managing serpentine environments is critical for biodiversity in the Bay Area. Please contact us with any biological questions about the plan and/or species.

The final habitat plan can be found here.

Click here for a map of the HCP Plan area.

Thanks to the local partners who are critical in making the plan implementation a success:

Here’s the article from the San Jose Mercury news:

Native Prairie Restoration in Woodside

Lech — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 14:55:13 +0000

We have been working on quite a few sites on the San Francisco Peninsula over the years. Certainly, Bay Checkerspot Reintroduction work at Edgewood County Park and Natural Preserve anchors our resume, but we also have worked on a rich palette of other rare and endangered species associated with grassland/prairie sites. The following project represents the culmination of 5 years of trial and error, most of which has been filled with success, and of course, gregarious spring wildflowers (lupine – goldfields meadows with freshly germinating grasses.)

Our goal with this specific prairie restoration project is to reduce non-native thistle cover. The soil has also been amended over the years, so we are removing soil, and all its weed seeds, that has been piled up over the years.

We do use heavy equipment and scrape the ground at a depth of 3-6″. The bare soil is the scarified and sown with a native seed mix which includes material collected onsite. Finally the site is mulched lightly with a thin coat of weed-free rice straw and an assortment of straw wattles that will help reduce any potential erosion in the wet season before vegetation gets established.

Please contact us with any questions or if you’d like to see similar work done in your natural areas.

Restoration Volunteer Day in Woodside – December 8th 9:30am

Lech — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:04:56 +0000

Creekside will be coordinating a volunteer day on Saturday Dec 8th at 9:30 am at the Horse Park in Woodside. This fabulous site hosts native grassland, oak woodland, oak savanna, and a mix of other habitats. We will be working on helping maintain the soil integrity of a drainage by transplanting local native shrubs and grasses from another site on location. We will be concentrating on coyote brush and creeping wild rye as our two key native plants for soil stabilization.

Participants will learn about the restoration process, transplanting techniques, and get their hands dirty!

Please see more about the day in the flyer below. Please contact us at lech@creeksidescience.com with any questions.

Creekside Climate Change Work Reported in the San Francisco Chronicle

Lech — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 20:38:21 +0000

Dr. Stuart Weiss, Chief Scientist at Creekside, has been working on analysis of the impacts of climate change on the Bay Area ecosystems and crops. His collaborative work has Creekside Science partnering with other Bay Area agencies and organizations like the Bay Area Open Space Council, the Pepperwood Preserve, United States Geological Service, and the University of California Berkeley, to name a few. Below is a link to the published article as a PDF: Changing Calif Climate article SF Chron 9-28-2012

Dr. Weiss will also be on a panel discussing the Santa Clara Valley Habitat Conservation Plan on November 15th, 2012 at the Brower Center in Berkeley. Reservations required through the Bay Area Open Space Council - this is a free event which is part of the BAOSC seasonal gathering.

Where the wind blows

Lech — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 19:22:42 +0000

Creekside Science has been working with the Presidio Trust on a number of projects over the years. One current project will provide initial calibration of a local wind model, tied to existing wind readings on the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. The model will estimate winds at particular sites in the Presidio based on velocity (speed and direction) data from the anemometer on the bridge. The key part of the model is a calibration of wind attenuation with directional canopy cover from hemispherical photographs. The effect of wind funneling topography will also be investigated in open areas facing the ocean.

The model will inform the impacts of tree removal in dune areas (will tree removal alter sand movement?) and on remaining forest edges (will there be increased risk of blowdown?). Furthermore, the model will help determine where and how wind may affect potential monarch overwintering sites.

Creekside Restoration, literally, San Mateo County

Lech — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 22:55:40 +0000

Creekside has been working on rehabilitating a drainage in San Mateo county. Our project goals are to stabilize the slope the with a mix of woody perennials and mat-forming grasses. Here you can see our willows established and flourishing on site once we constructed some light duty cages to deter summer browsing. This was the first year these trees flowered.

Goatgrass Management on Coyote Ridge

Lech — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:12:51 +0000

Creekside Science has been working with a host of partners to control and in some cases eradicate barbed goat grass from key habitat areas on Coyote Ridge. This grass has proven to effectively invade and dominate serpentine soils presenting a notable impact to Bay Checkerspot habitat. Here is our team at work near a main access road (dispersal vector) at Coyote Ridge.

Mission Blue: Underway

Lech — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:43:48 +0000

Creekside Science has been coordinating with the San Francisco Parks Department, Liam O’Brien, and US Fish and Wildlife Service on an important reintroduction project that moves Mission blue butterflies from San Bruno Mountain to Twin Peaks. The goal of this project is to bolster the existing population at Twin Peaks by adding adult females and males in hopes that they will lay eggs locally. Here’s some news coverage from Channel 5 and the SF Chronicle regarding this project.