Ecology of San Francisco Bay, Introduction and TOC

I'm taking a two-day ecology class this weekend through the City College of San Francisco. The topic is San Francisco Bay. We're going to visit the Bay Model, Bothin Marsh Open Space Preserve, China Camp State Park, Heron's Head Park [formerly Pier 98], Bayfront Park, and the Palo Alto Baylands Park.

I expect to download a lot of information here in the next few days... feel free to tag along.

Or not...

The class starts tomorrow, but I have a few things to post today:

Part One, I had to write a short paper about a Bay topic, and I picked "Salt production in the Bay (technique and history)". That paper (mostly quotes and links) is here.

Part Two, I paid a visit yesterday to the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge (link, link)--a salt pond restoration site that we will not be visiting during my weekend ecology course, but that I have always wanted to see. I took some pictures and posted them here.

Part 3, San Francisco Bay-Delta Model.

Also, I want to specifically link to this curious group blog Hidden Ecologies, administered by various faculty at UC Berkeley. I found this while researching my paper on salt production in the Bay.
"Our project looks at places -- starting with several transitional geographies along San Francisco Bay -- in ways that juxtapose scales, collect different points of view, and encourage the sharing of ideas."
I especially enjoyed this post by architecture professor Charles Benton on aerial kite photography--that is, taking pictures from your camera while it's tied to a flying kite.

"Given a chance I suspect that most of us would slip our earthly bonds and see the world from new heights. An aerial view offers a fresh perspective of familiar landscapes and in doing so challenges our spatial sensibilities, our grasp of relationships. This playful talk will chronicle ten years of aerial photography from kite-lofted cameras. Examples will be shown from California’s wetlands including the South San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds, Herons Head Park, and the Berkeley/Albany Codornices Creek restoration project. Along the way Professor Benton will touch on the history of early aerial photography as well as methods and motivations for using kites as a photographic platform in the current day. Simultaneously an art form and a remote sensing exercise Benton’s low-level approach yields photographs that can be beautiful, useful, or both."