The nature of Nature
Another guest blog entry by my husband, Alex Johnson 22 September 2020Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana Thirty four years ago I worked as a seasonal employee in Glacier National Park. My first job – and my most favorite – was Information Desk Clerk. I found I loved sharing my enthusiasm for the park with…
In this strange pandemic school year with classes online and student clubs not able to meet in person, the Natural History Club has been meeting virtually twice a week. We can’t go out as a group on any field trips, so the students have been sharing their nature journals online. Yesterday we played Jeopardy! I…
California has been burning for almost a month now. Wildfires rage up and down the state, and it seems that new ones pop up every day. I haven’t bothered looking up the latest stats on acreage destroyed because, frankly, it would be too depressing. All across social media today people posted photos of orange skies…
Today’s report was written by a guest blogger, Alex Johnson, who also happens to be my husband. 26 August 2020 In the late afternoon last Saturday, the wind shifted and we got our first breaths of fresh air all week. We even saw actual clouds and blue sky for the first time in 5 days!…
22 August 2020 As I write these words, a massive and powerful wildfire is raging through the Santa Cruz Mountains, approaching the city of Santa Cruz from the north and west. This morning’s stats: Much of the terrain burning is redwood forest. Big Basin Redwood State Park has burnt extensively. All park buildings and campgrounds…
On the afternoon of July 31, 2020 the world of invertebrate biology and marine ecology in California lost a giant in our field. Professor Emeritus John S. Pearse died after battling cancer and the aftereffects of a stroke. John was one of the very first people I met when I came to UC Santa Cruz….
Every summer, like clockwork, my big female whelk lays eggs. She is one of a pair of Kellett’s whelks (Kellettia kellettii) that I inherited from a labmate many years ago now. True whelks of the family Buccinidae are predatory or scavenging snails, and can get pretty big. The female, the larger of the two I…
My best shot of the comet that has been hanging out near Earth over the past week or so: Technical details, for those who care about such things:
Biology is a field of science with very few absolutes. For every rule that we teach, there seems to be at least one exception. I imagine this is very frustrating for students who want to know that Something = Something every single time. It certainly is easier to remember a few rules that apply to…
I’ve written before about the rocky intertidal as a habitat where livable space is in short supply. Even areas of apparently bare rock prove to be, upon closer inspection, “owned” by some inhabitant or inhabitants. That cleared area in the mussel bed? Look closely, and you’ll likely find an owl limpet lurking on the edge…