Geotripper Missing in Action? Nah, Just on the Road.

If you've noticed a distinct lack of blog updates lately, it's not been for lack of creative ideas. I've actually been in the wild hinterlands of the eastern California desert, specifically Death Valley. We had a marvelous time, but we also experienced a bit of the harshness of the "Broken Land" as Frank DeCourten calls it. There's a bit more cellular and Wi-Fi access in recent years for better or worse, (better for emergency situations), but no time when dealing with a group of students (who were great). Besides, a desert night is meant to be experienced, not ignored in favor of a computer screen. The stars were beyond belief.

In any case, the stories will unfold in the next few blogs. There were some incredible sights, and I look forward to sharing them. Today's picture was a camp visitor on our first night of the trip on the Kern River near Bakersfield.

Birds Aren't the Only Thing to See at a Great Valley Wildlife Refuge

River Otter at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

California's Great Valley (called by some less proud people the Central Valley) is the most agriculturally productive place on the planet, producing something like a quarter of the nation's nuts, fruits and vegetables on about 2 percent of the land. The agricultural and accompanying urban development has altered 95% of the original savanna landscape. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the 1800s the valley was a vast prairie/grassland that stretched for 400 miles, broken up here and there by a vast network of rivers and wetland marshes fed by numerous streams flowing from the Sierra Nevada.

Raccoon at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

For several million years the valley was the wintering ground for millions, maybe billions of migratory birds that spent their summers breeding in the Arctic. The arrival of humans and their alteration of the landscape disrupted this intricate ecosystem. The birds continued to migrate in reduced numbers and with their natural food sources gone, they started going after the crops being grown by farmers. This became an untenable situation, and there were those who advocating shooting the birds to extinction, but cooler heads prevailed, and work began on establishing a chain of national and state bird refuges at strategic locations up and down the valley. These refuges provide us an idea of the primeval appearance of the valley.

Deer at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

It turns out of course that birds weren't the only creatures displaced by human development. The original valley was a savanna with multitudes of grazing animals and their predators. There were elk, deer, and pronghorns, along with wolves, coyotes, foxes, bobcats, mountain lions, and bears. Prior to 12,000 years ago, there were mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, saber-tooth cats, and giant short-faced bears. To a degree, the refuges that were originally meant for birds also provide shelter for the remnants of this incredible ecosystem. In my travels, I've seen the elk and deer pictured in this post along with river otters, raccoons, foxes, and coyotes.

Tule Elk at the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge

Today's post was prompted by my sighting yesterday of three River Otters crossing a road at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. They were moving so fast that by the time I was able to raise my camera, only one was left, and I got but a single shot.

California's Precious Disappearing Prairies: A trip to the Willms Road Pond

One of California's precious landscapes is being lost, again. The state once had a vast prairie extending for 400 miles from Redding to Bakersfield. The grasslands were of course put to the plow, and agriculture rules the environment today. Less than 5% of the original grasslands of the Great Valley remain, and they've been under renewed assault in just the past few years.

The problem is nuts, and specifically almonds. The valley and nearby hills produce 80% of the world's supply, and they constitute the largest agricultural export we produce right now. The trees use prodigious amounts of water, but that hasn't stopped a vast expansion of the orchards into the remaining prairies on the east side of the valley where the Sierra Nevada foothills begin. With a crippling drought and no reservoir irrigation possible, the landowners are simply drilling wells and pumping the water from the ground. The supply of groundwater is limited and in severe decline. I am pretty sure these wells cannot provide more than a few year's worth of water before they'll be dry.

Still, the prairies aren't gone yet, and I took a break from taxes this weekend to catch the sunset from Warnerville and Willms Roads east of Oakdale. We drove through miles of newly planted orchards, and into some of the grazing lands beyond. It was a stunning reversal from the appearance last year of dead grass and dry streambeds. We've had adequate amounts of rain on the valley floor, with upwards of 10 inches in December, and a few good storms in February to make up for a record dry January. The grass was green and growing, and the ephemeral streams and vernal pools were filled with water. We just need more snow higher up in the mountains to get well from the drought, as the snowpack is less than 20% of normal right now, with the end of the rainy season looming.

We were following on the heels of an unusually active thunderstorm system. Our weather is pretty benign most of the time, but this storm dropped upwards of a foot of snow in the high country. The clouds were an incredible sight in the last glow of the dying sunset.

There were animals out and about. The Western Meadowlarks were present in large numbers, trying to attract some mates. They have a most beautiful song, which I captured on a brief video that you can listen to at my Geotripper's California Birds site (click here).

The story was the same with the Red-winged Blackbirds. There were dozens, if not hundreds, at our favorite little stock pond on Willms Road. They were strutting about displaying their bright red and yellow shoulder patches.

If some of the smaller animals weren't paying careful attention, they might not have noticed the hawk lurking in the almond trees. I almost didn't see it myself as we passed.

The biggest surprise came as we passed the small cliff along the creek that crossed Warnerville Road. I was expecting or hoping to see some burrowing owls, but the biggest hole was occupied by the raccoon seen below. When it noticed us, it just up and disappeared into the burrow.

The remaining prairies have persisted because no one could think of how to make money from them other than grazing cows or sheep. Now that almonds are a lucrative source of money, there is a target painted on the ranchlands in the Sierra Nevada foothills. I hope the state gets around to writing the groundwater regulations so we can get a handle on the unrestrained development that is taking place right now. It's clearly unsustainable in the long run.

Checking Out Mount Diablo's Biologic Overburden

Mt. Diablo is one of California's most spectacular state parks. Rising 3,847 feet above the Bay Area, the mountain is one of the most prominent in the state. It served as the starting point for surveying property line across Central California and Nevada. And it has marvelous geology: thrust faults, ocean crust, Franciscan chert, thick sequences of sandstone and coal, and a rich paleontological record. It also has some living overburden as well.

"Overburden" is a term used for the dirt and rock that overlies some valuable mineral or ore, like coal. Such rock (and all the living stuff on it) is quarried away and discarded. We geologists (and me especially) can sometimes miss the stuff that gets between us and our rocks. On field trips sometimes, I chafe a little when the attention of my students is drawn towards a squirrel or a deer instead of the incredibly important rock exposure that I'm talking about. But sometimes I get distracted too.

I see raccoons fairly often as I drive home across the creek that runs north of my town, but usually at night. Before today I had only one decent photograph of one, but as we got out to explore the Rock City at Mount Diablo, some of our students spied one. He was clearly a camp raccoon, as he didn't seem to bothered by all the cameras that were snapping.

The semester is over at my college, but the Geology Club never managed to schedule a field trip during the semester as is our tradition. Now that finals are over, the stress levels dropped, and our geology students were ready to hit the road and have a bit of fun. We headed west into the Coast Ranges for a tour of California's largest coal mine (and think about that for a moment; did you know that California once had coal mines?). It's called the Black Diamond Mine, and is part of a regional park above the town of Antioch in the Sacramento Delta. That tour was spectacular, and will also be part of a future blog post.

We had time after the tour, so we headed up nearby Mount Diablo. Despite the incredibly dry conditions this year (the state is still suffering an exceptional and unprecedented drought), there were some gorgeous wildflowers around the summit trail.

I don't know wildflowers anything like I know minerals, but I can buy books in the park visitor center! The yellow flower above is endemic to Mt. Diablo, and not too surprisingly is called the the Mt. Diablo Globe Lily ( Calochortus pulchellus).

 The orange flower above is the Wind Poppy (Papaver heterophylla). Below is a Red Larkspur (Delphinium species).

The flower below really caught my eye. It's a Butterfly Tulip (Calochortus venustus). I realized today that I have been visiting Mount Diablo in the summer or fall, and I've been missing some real flower shows of species I've never seen before, including a number of those in the post

I think the one below is a Western Wallflower (Erysimum capitatum), but I accept corrections.

It was a beautiful day in the Coast Ranges!