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.

The California That Was: A Day in the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge

I've spent a good part of the last few months blogging about the "Hawai'i That Was", in which I have been exploring the bits and pieces of the original islands that existed before European/American incursion. I will even finish the series before long, but in the meantime I've been keeping up with the new semester (already a third of the way over), and the fall field trips. I had a break last Saturday and Mrs. Geotripper and I headed south to see if any of the migratory birds had arrived at our local refuges.

Tule Elk at the San Luis NWR

The first refuge, the Bear Creek unit of the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge was sort of a bust, as no water had been allocated to the pools there, but the Tule Elk autotour a little farther south afforded some neat photo opportunities. A huge Tule Elk buck rose out of the grassland, and I was suddenly reminded that there is a "California That Was" as well. I live in a huge prairie, the Great Valley of California, and even though most of it (95%) has been consumed by agricultural and urban development, there are still some pieces left here and there where one can be reminded of what a treasure this valley truly is (or was).

Can you see why I took this picture?

The prairie grasslands extended for four hundred miles from present day Bakersfield to Redding, and the valley averages forty or fifty miles across. Although it receives rainfall equivalent to a desert in the southern portion, rivers draining the Sierra Nevada provided plentiful water, so much so that a large part of the south valley was covered by shallow lakes (Buena Vista and Tulare). Those lakes disappeared during the last two centuries as streams were diverted for agricultural development.

The valley supported a rich ecosystem that included numerous grazing species such as the Tule Elk, deer, and pronghorn antelope, and predators that included wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and Grizzly Bears. Many of them are gone, but we were privileged to see the Tule Elk herd and a well camouflaged deer that made its way to the Salt Slough for a drink.

Salt Slough in the San Luis NWR

More than anything else, the "California That Was" was bird country. Millions upon millions of migratory geese, cranes, and ducks called the valley home during the winter months when the northlands were covered with ice and snow. The lakes, rivers, and wetlands provided food and shelter for the tired migrants. Although far less land is available to them today, hundreds of thousands of birds still spend the winter here, and that's what we were looking for on Saturday. We heard that some Sandhill Cranes had already arrived and we wanted to have a look.

Egrets and Sandhill Cranes at the Merced NWR

Hundreds of them had indeed arrived, but we were surprised by the number of egrets present in the refuge. It's strange how such birds can be clumsy looking and graceful at the same time.

Great Egret at the Merced NWR

The California prairie is perhaps the most altered landscape on planet Earth. It's nice to know that there are dedicated groups of people working to maintain some small corners of the valley for the birds and other wildlife. It's a real privilege to have a chance to see what was once here.

Sandhill Crane at the Merced NWR

Into the Great Unknown: We Interrupt This Scenery For a Very Recent Flash Flood and a Biological Disaster

After our fourth day on the Colorado River, we pulled into camp at Little Nankoweap Creek. The camp was in a beautiful location (as nearly all of our camps were), but as I selected a campsite, my attention was captured by an oddity. There was a huge splash of reddish brown mud laid across the sandy campsite like the edge of a lava flow. What was going on?

I realized I was looking at some of the very real results of the monsoon storms of the last five days. While Page was getting pounded and nearby Antelope Canyon getting flooded (events we didn't hear about until much later), numerous tributary canyons to the Colorado River were also being flooded. We were the first to see what happened at Little Nankoweap, as there were no footprints anywhere on the new flood deposits. It was no disaster in the big picture of things, but it was a marvelous small scale example of how the Grand Canyon got grand.

Flash floods and debris flows are the tools that erosion uses to deepen tributary canyons and widen the big canyon as a whole. Rock falls and avalanches choke the bottoms of gulches, and every decade or two a cloudburst sends torrents of water down the creeks, forming a slurry mix of mud and rock capable of transporting gigantic boulders. These masses of boulders get dumped in the Colorado and end up blocking parts of the channel, forming the characteristic pools and rapids. The spring floods that once surged through the big canyon would ferry the boulders downstream or grind them into sand and silt, and in this way, the Grand Canyon took shape.

 I had to take a closer look, knowing that the small mud deposit in camp was simply an overflow from the main channel. At the height of the storm, the mud was flowing over a wide area. The main channel (below) was being scoured, and rocky debris was flowing into the Colorado.

In the aftermath, a small rocky delta had formed, and the course of the river slightly changed. This particular event would soon be erased by the normal flow of the Colorado, as it was composed mostly of easily moved pebbles. I imagined the same event magnified several times, as in a once-in-a-century storm, and could see in my mind gigantic boulders changing the river on a larger scale. One of these events happened in 1966 at Crystal Rapids, turning a former riffle into the most terrifying rapid on the river (aside from Lava Falls).

We explored the channel for some distance, and found the Nankoweap Trail where it crossed the streambed. It wasn't there anymore.

The rocky steps the trail utilized to climb out of the channel had been removed by the flood (the trail is a bit left of center in the picture below).

We headed back to camp for a delicious meal of fish tacos, and hit the sack.

In the morning, I was covered with bugs. Or more properly, bug larvae. There were hundreds of them on my tarp. They were crawling all over the tamarisk tree I had camped under, and wriggling in the sand at my feet. I asked what they were, and our trip botanist pointed out that they were tamarisk beetles, and I immediately understood what was going on.

Tamarisk trees (also called salt cedar) are found all over the American southwest along river courses, but they aren't a native species. They come out of Eurasia, and having no natural enemies in their American environments, they have proliferated to the detriment of practically all competing species. They concentrate salt on their leaves which ends up in the soil, preventing the growth of other plants. They tend to form impenetrable thickets on river floodplains. They don't offer much in the way of food or shelter to most native species, and with deep taproots, they tend to transpirate vast amounts of precious groundwater into the atmosphere (some estimates put the water loss at 2 to 4.5 million acre feet per year across the southwest, enough to meet the needs of 20 million people, or to irrigate 1,000,000 acres). Some desert rivers stopped flowing on the surface after being invaded by the tree.

What's worse is that they are hard to kill. Cut them down and the taproot sprouts vigorously. Apply herbicides and many times they will sprout again anyway. A single plant might produce 500,000 seeds a year, and they can travel down the river, sprouting as they come to rest in wet sand.

I had noticed when we left Lee's Ferry that some of the tamarisks were looking a bit yellow (below), but didn't give much thought to it. It turns out that the Tamarisk Beetle loves tamarisk leaves and nothing else. After years of testing, the (also non-native) beetles were released into the wild, and they began an effective campaign of slowing the growth and spread of the tamarisk in the wild. And unlike some other such experiments, the bugs didn't start eating other native species. It is a reasonable hope that the bugs might one day lead to control (but probably never eradication) of the tree.

The trees actually provide some welcome shade in many of the river camps, but so would willows, cottonwoods, and mesquite trees if they weren't getting crowded out.

On the way back to camp, I spied an orange-breasted bird in the catsclaw acacia. I snapped a picture, and thought it might be a nice way to end a post that might seem a little depressing. But then...

 ...a rather majestic buck wandered through the edge of camp. So I will end with him instead.

In the next post, I get to see one of the incredible iconic sights of a Colorado River trip.

A Stroll Through the Gateway to the Narrows of the Virgin River

I bet no one has ever thought to take pictures of this place before! Or not. The Gateway to the Narrows trail is only the most popular trail in one of the most visited national parks in the system. I often try to describe places off the beaten path, but sometimes it's fun to catch these popular spots and be reminded why they are so famous in the first place.

Zion National Park is the ultimate exposure of the dramatic Navajo Sandstone, which formed in early Jurassic time as a widespread "sea" of sand dunes extending from Wyoming to Arizona and Nevada. The formation is more than 2,000 feet thick at Zion, where it forms vertical red and white cliffs.

The cliffs have been exposed by the rapid incision of the region by the forks of the Virgin River. Where the river has reached the underlying Kayenta Formation, mass wasting and erosion has caused rapid cliff retreat, forming a wider valley with a flat floor that allows for the development of tourist facilities (the campgrounds and visitor centers and such). Things change at the upper end of the valley where the river is flowing exclusively in the Navajo Sandstone. The canyon is 2,000 feet deep, but in places is only a few feet wide. The Narrows of the Virgin River is a stunningly beautiful place.

At road's end at the Temple of Sinewava, an easy 1 mile paved trail provides access to the narrows. That's where I was the other day.

It is one of the more crowded spots in the park, but the mess is mitigated somewhat by the wise decision of the park service a decade or so ago to ban cars from the upper canyon. Today, the only engine noise comes from a tram every ten minutes or so. The hikers jump out, disperse, and it is quiet again.

When the lower canyon is stewing in the desert heat, the Gateway is cool and shady (no wonder it is popular). Water seems to be everywhere, in the river itself, and dripping out of the canyon walls. The Navajo Sandstone is quite permeable, but the underlying Kayenta Formation is not. Springs are often found at the contact between the two, such as at the "swamp" (our friends on the trip from the southeastern states probably snickered a bit about the name; at least we didn't have to worry about crocodiles...).

The lush greenery attracts plenty of animals, including a national park deer (i.e., they graze right next to the trail and pose for pictures).

 The springs emerging from joints in the rock produce beautiful hanging gardens with flowers of all kinds.

 The columbines are my perennial favorites...

 As the sun climbs higher in the sky, the walls of the canyon are reflected off the Virgin River.

For all the crowds, it is a beautiful and serene place.The paved trail ends at the entrance to the Narrows of the Virgin River. One can don some water shoes and explore upstream for miles. Or take a road to the isolated north end of the park and backpack downstream through the narrows. Or one can just sit somewhere and listen to the river and the birds.

More on Zion in the next post!

How it was: Today in Yosemite Valley

It was one of those treasured kind of days, the chance to explore Yosemite Valley. I was on the road with my students, and we got a great day of sun and fall colors (and quite a bit of geology, too). I lead with a picture of Half Dome along with one of the most beautiful trees in the world, an old elm in the meadow between the visitor center and Lower Yosemite Falls.

On a geology field trip, one does not just march into Yosemite (shades of Sean Bean and Mordor?). One has to be properly prepared. A trip from the Great Valley to Yosemite Valley involves passage through the Sierra Nevada Metamorphic Belt and a journey through time, back as far as the latest Proterozoic. We stopped along the Merced River several times, first to look at gold dredging tailings (and an osprey tending to a nest), and then to look at some incredibly contorted ocean-floor cherts of the Calaveras Complex. What a great mapping exercise for structural geology students! Of course, accessibility is a problem...these rocks are completely underwater for most of the year.

Then a stop at the famed Tunnel View, which is close to the spot where the first European-Americans discovered the valley in 1851. The local Miwok people discovered the valley thousands of years ago, of course, but that somehow seems to escape the attention of the historians (and really, why do we still celebrate Columbus Day?).

 Fall is just getting going in Yosemite Valley. We had a rainstorm last week, so the air was clean and crisp. I often think that fall is my favorite time of year in Yosemite, with the vivid colors and sparse crowds (but then I visit in spring...or winter...or summer, and change my mind).

I gave the students a bit of free time with an appointment to meet at the upper end of the valley in a couple of hours. I set off across the meadows and over to the Merced River to have a look...

The Royal Arches and North Dome seemed little changed. This is not so true of Half Dome since the Ahwiyah Rock Fall in 2009 permanently changed the appearance of the iconic rock.

 The deer were out in force, distracting my students, and me too...

I walked across Sentinel Bridge to take in a view of Half Dome from a perspective that no one in the world has ever thought to photograph (ok, ok, everyone who visits Yosemite Valley takes this picture; but really, who can resist?). But it did give me an idea, after a moment's reflection. I set off towards Happy Isles along a new route...more on that next time.

It was a beautiful day.

The Other California: A Monday Mystery (and a gratuitous cute deer picture)

Today's entry into the Other California series lies in the Modoc Plateau/Cascade Provinces, and presents itself as a bit of a mystery...

How is it that this dry creekbed...

Becomes this river, less than 1/2 mile downstream?

There are no tributary streams. There aren't any storms in the area. The elevation is about 3,000 above sea level. An inadvertent clue of sorts is buried in an earlier post, found here.

This river is related to one of the prettiest sights in California that is not part of the National Park System, although a visiting president once called it one of the natural wonders of the world.

Oh, and here is your gratuitous furry creature picture for the day. I saw them along the upper dry creek while trying to avoid stepping into the prevalent poison oak.