Apr 18th - Atlases of Bay Watersheds and Shorelines

[Adrian Cotter]

We are back in the city this coming talk. 

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APRIL LECTURE

Atlases of Bay Watersheds and Shorelines

Guest Speaker: Megan Prelinger 

7pm, Monday April 18th, 2016

FREE Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco, CA 

In 2010, Megan Prelinger and collaborators Rick Prelinger and Stacy Kozakavich were invited by the Exploratorium to develop exhibits for the Museum’s planned Bay Observatory gallery. Megan and her collaborators created a series of graphic atlases that explain that histories of the watersheds and the shorelines, both natural history and the built environment. Megan will show slides and discuss the research and outcomes behind the Watersheds atlas and the Shorelines atlas. Watersheds traces the flow of water from the mountains to the mouth of the Bay, and Shorelines traces the landscape of the water’s edge of both San Pablo Bay and San Francisco Bay. Shorelines co-author Rick Prelinger will be on hand to help answer questions.

Megan Prelinger is a cultural historian and naturalist. She is co-founder along with Rick Prelinger of the Prelinger Library and architect of its information design. The library is an independent landscape-based research library in San Francisco that has been open to the public since 2004. She is the author of several books, most recently Inside the Machine: Art and Invention in the Electronic Age (W.W. Norton, 2015), and the 2013 and 2014 Watersheds, Shorelines, and Islands historical atlases, all permanent exhibits in the Exploratorium’s Bay Observatory gallery.

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LAST MONTH's TALK - also at: 
http://sfnhs.com/2016/04/03/diversity-fire-aftereffects-mount-diablo/

Joan Hamilton joined us on March 22nd at The Rotary Nature Center in Oakland. You can read her article on the fire and its after effects on Bay Nature Magazine’s website andother related articles. All with more details and better pictures than my summary below.

Investigating the after effects of the Morgan fire on Mount Diablo was the best article assignment Hamilton said she has ever had. For two years (and another year on now) it brought her to Mount Diablo to witness what happens after a fire here in California. She had been working in Perkin’s Canyon on an audio guide, but now that project was literally toast. But Mount Diablo has a fire interval of 40 to 70 years, so this was pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study the effects of fire in-depth.

The fire started on September 8th 2013 when a young man doing target practice hit a rock which sparked a grass fire which then lit a grey pine and then from then took off through the mountain.

Joan visited a few days after the fire, and the ground was still smoking, oak leaves were toasted, meadows were black, and the chaparral burnt. They found themselves being bit on the necks and hands by beetles a species that firefighters know well. The beetles only show up after fire, looking to lay their eggs in the smoldering trees. Apparently, way back mid-20th-century, used to show up at Cal games, drawn to cigarette smoke.

The fire had gone clear to the top of the mountain. Fire fighters had dumped lots of fire retardant to keep it from going over the summit, but they spent much of their effort (hundreds of firefighters, 6 planes, and 25 bulldozers) protecting homes and communities outside the park. The state park wanted the fire to take its natural course inside the park.

On first look, it seemed like it might have been too much. Some oaks had burned down to the roots, and slopes seemed like they might erode away from lack of vegetation. But even that first visit they noticed that rodents were already at work disturbing the burnt soil.... read the full notes

http://sfnhs.com/2016/04/03/diversity-fire-aftereffects-mount-diablo/

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Future Talks

* May TBD, Restoration in the Presidio