Tim Pine of the Environment Health and Safety office at UCB and Tyler Grinberg, UCB student and creek restoration coordinator, discuss efforts to restore Strawberry Creek on the UC property. The creek restoration is a volunteer effort.
Transcript
Speaker 1: [inaudible].
Speaker 2: Welcome to spectrum the science [00:00:30] and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program with a local events calendar, news and interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists. My name is Brad Swift. Today's interview is with Tim Pine and Tyler Grinberg. They join us to talk about the efforts to restore strawberry creek at UC Berkeley. Tim Pine is a staff member of the environment health [00:01:00] and safety office at UC Berkeley. Tyler Grinberg is a UC Berkeley student and creek restoration coordinator and teacher of a Strawberry Creek decal class. The creek restoration is predominantly a volunteer effort by students, community members, staff and faculty. This interview is prerecorded and edited. First of all,
Speaker 3: welcome to US spectrum. Thanks for coming and go ahead, introduce yourselves. [00:01:30] Thanks for it for having me here. My name is Tim Pine. I am a, uh, officially a staff member here at cow and uh, I'm in the office of Environment, health and safety. I like to tell people that we put the e and e, h n s and that's the environmental protection group of which I am one of five for the university. And within that, that group, I'm officially the surface water quality coordinator for the campus. So simplification to be, I'm the creek guy.
Speaker 4: Uh, I'm Tyler Grinberg. [00:02:00] I'm a fourth year here at Cau, although I'm not quite graduating yet to next semester I'm studying environmental education and ecology. I'm also an education minor, so I'm getting my teaching credential at the same time as my bachelor's and first Aubrey Creek. I'm a restoration coordinator and a decal coordinator. So I kind of manage our, our class on the creek and restoration efforts. Great. And Tyler, can you explain Strawberry Creek to us? So for me, strawberry creeks [00:02:30] all around us on campus, if we're on Sproul plaza, it's in some pipes that are leading to the creek. Anything we do on the campus eventually leads the Strawberry Creek. So I think the creek is all around us. But where you see the creek is up in Strawberry Canyon, uh, if you go hiking up in the fire trail, you hear it running beneath you. If you're of the botanical garden, uh, you can see it and hear it as well.
Speaker 4: And then on campus specifically, we see it in several locations, you know, by the dialect scientists building in some ecological study areas on campus. And then eventually [00:03:00] if you want to go be really adventurous off campus, you can go down to university and Bonar Street and see Starboard Creek Park and there's some fun things to observe down there. And then if you really want to be adventurous, you'll go all the way down towards the bay at the end of university avenue and you see come out of a very large pipe in somewhat of an estuary. And it's a pretty big watershed too, right? That feeds it all. Not just the campus but up in the hills and exactly. I mean that's why I like to say it's all around us because anything we do [00:03:30] along campus will eventually find its way to somewhere in strawberry creek. So I only can think of it just as the water you see flowing, but also all the interactions are happening around the creek as well
Speaker 3: in terms of describing strawberry creek and the campus. You know, the very reason that UC Berkeley is here is because when the founding fathers of this university were looking around for a likely spot, having a water supply was a very, very important, but maybe the most important a requirement [00:04:00] for the location by the late sixties and early seventies. Water quality. It was just a bismal. I mean there was, you know, not just, um, you know, pollution coming off streets, things like that. But there were still operational discharges, there were still these legacy sewer pipes, it, and no one really knew where they went after they left the basement, you know, of dough library that were still actually, um, coming out into the creek. And it was about that time that some very critical pieces of legislation passed federally. And [00:04:30] then we're in in turn implemented at the state level.
Speaker 3: And that was the clean water act. You know, it was very, very big deal in terms of forcing, um, not just Berkeley, but all urban areas to start looking at, you know, what have we done to these watercourses? They were, um, a series of pretty dramatic discharges to the creek where it started to get the notice of local agencies, you know, the regional water quality control board, which was, you know, relatively new at that time. At the same time. [00:05:00] That was about when we had that very vibrant, you know, kind of the first modern ecology movement. And, uh, the camps community said, look, we can't let this continue. So it was a combination of regulation and also citizens desire to start doing something about this creek, you know, which definitely in need of some work. Uh, you know, I like to give a lot of credit to a fellow by the name of Bob Charbonneau, who actually still works for the UC. He works in the office of the president and he, uh, came to cau as a Grad student in the late eighties. [00:05:30] He decided to make it part of his graduate studies to put together this management plan. So, uh, the Strawberry Creek Management Plan new, which was officially adopted in 1987 is still our guiding document for my department's management and restoration of the creek. And it's really a wonderful document. It's actually been, um, copied or used as a template for other watersheds across the United States and I suspect in other countries. That's been
Speaker 4: a really fabulous document to keep looking [00:06:00] back at
Speaker 5: [inaudible]. You're listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley. We're talking with Tim pine and Tyler Greenberg, but the strawberry creek restoration.
Speaker 4: What's entailed with your restoration plan, so to speak? Well, what I really do is focus on the area around the creek [00:06:30] or their parents zone and look to restore a natural biodiversity to the area that's been lost through urbanization and invasive plant introduction. And really my, my mission, my plan is education. And I know Tim hears this a lot, but I, I feel that we can do all we want with limited resources. We have to make alterations, but unless we inform future generations of how important the creek is and how we can manage it, it's just good to go back in Arizona. Revert to this, [00:07:00] uh, never the terrible state that it has been in for the past 50, 60, a hundred years. And so unless you really take this current students, make them interested in the creek, take faculty a different colleges and make them invested in the creek or not really gonna see any major differences.
Speaker 4: Um, but what I'm doing actually hands on right now is taking students out, uh, to be creaking community members as well and physically removing invasive plants and introducing native ones to the nursery program we have on campus serious story about diversity [00:07:30] of plants, which will then introduce more wildlife to the area. And how do you characterize or measure where you are in that process? The goal is what and where do you think you are in that process? Uh, as far as water quality is concerned, I think that we're getting towards the end of where we want to be. From my point of view, there's still a few things I'm concerned about and that's a lot of discharges to the creek. Um, especially of political water [00:08:00] that has chlorine in it, which can imagine from an ecological standpoint kind of kills a lower trophic level of organisms that we're actually trying to preserve in the water.
Speaker 4: So funny thing, clean water going into the creek is actually detrimental to the entire system. So even this morning working on the creek, I saw a lot of discharges heading into the water. And then as far as invasive plants is concerned, I feel like we're really making headway. But I'd really like to get a lot of different people on campus, on board with what we're doing. And I feel like we only [00:08:30] tapping to a very small segment of the campus community. And so if I had to put a percent on it, I'd say we're at 50, 60% of where I want to be. Um, I really want to take on a lot of the campus. And right now we're confined to three ecological study areas on the campus to do our work and the immense invasive plants are moving or you know, very small ground cover species as opposed to revamping the entire system.
Speaker 4: And I know it's not really possible right now, but I feel if we get a lot of people on board we can really do more work than [00:09:00] simply remove ivy. And do you have a, an ongoing relationship with the landscaping group that tries to keep the campus tidy in a sense? You know, and and is responsible for a lot of the flora that's around it? Most definitely. Um, Jim Warner is the head landscape architect for that campus and we're constantly in meetings with him and talking to him about what we're doing, what he um, I mean sometimes we just agree on things but it's definitely an active communication going on between us and we've had very good feedback on what [00:09:30] we've been doing from him and he's been very helpful in our restoration efforts. Of course, there are some areas on campus that we aren't doing our work because they are landscaped.
Speaker 4: We are on a UC campus, but we understand that. And so we're just working wherever he can. And he's been very helpful. And I would add that the a campus grounds maintenance group, um, which is part of, of our physical planet campus services there have been really essential and it just a fabulous partner for what we've been doing. You know, they manage the grounds manager, they're in close, who's [00:10:00] very active in the sustainability community here on campus. He, uh, managed to scrounge up our very first lot of tools way back 10 years ago to kind of get us started, provided us with a gloves hand of his own stock to give to the volunteers. They coordinated with us just about every single uh, event we have. They bring us on green waste bin so that all of the vegetation that we remove goes into a composting system.
Speaker 4: So I, I would consider the grounds group here to be a very essential partner of ours. And [00:10:30] it's really been exciting to, and I think for them to, they've told me that they've been very excited to see the kind of the transformation that's occurred in some of these areas. What sort of data are you trying to gather, uh, from the creek and analyze this? That's a great question. Um, you know, I think as we're starting to do restoration, we're starting to go more into actually applying a science to these areas and really doing some research. Um, and before a restoration began, there wasn't that [00:11:00] much we can do in these areas. I mean, they're called ecological study areas for a reason and I think more and more people are using them now. So Stephanie Carlson, who's a fish biologist and he called us on campus, is now doing electro fishing in the creek itself to see what types of fish are out there.
Speaker 4: And she's found, uh, at least three variety of fish and some crawdads. Um, she studying flows as well, the seasonal fluxes and extreme velocity and habitat complexity. So she's doing some work there. I'm doing more work on [00:11:30] the flora around the creek for a current project to see, uh, which varieties of trees are growing next to the water. That's just a, you know, in addition to kind of the normal metrics we take, we do take regular water quality samples for things like coliform bacteria. We actually have three web enabled hydro stations on the campus, on the creeks, the south, the north fork and the
Speaker 3: main stem down there by Oxford. That measure consists, you know, constantly things like temperature, [00:12:00] um, flow turbidity and conductivity. That's been incredibly helpful in seeing when there's been, um, you know, illegal discharges to the creek as well as, uh, a valuable engineering tool to see how the creek behaves during storms. So yeah, there's actually a lot of data that's coming out now and I know as Tyler mentioned, that as we kind of improve access and safety in these areas where you need a lot more data coming back. A lot of students do their senior projects from the college of natural [00:12:30] resources and even integrated biology, um, using the creek as kind of the basis for their, their, their research project. It's been fabulous to see the data coming out of these. Quite a compendium where we're developing now.
Speaker 5: [inaudible] you're listening to spectrum on KALX Berkeley [00:13:00] talking with Tim Klein and Tyler Greenberg, but the strawberry creek restoration [inaudible].
Speaker 4: So of the invasive species that you're dealing with, is there a broad [00:13:30] spectrum of plants and bugs and things? What would they be? Invasive plants usually don't find a broad spectrum, which is the problem. You have a monoculture, generally one species of plant, which doesn't function well in a natural ecosystem where you want a wide diversity and species written it richness of plants and so on campus. I feel our two biggest problems for groundcover species are Ivey of both English and Algerian of varieties as well as Vinca, which is Perry Winkle. [00:14:00] Um, but I feel like those are two main ground cover plants. And then up in the canyon there's a lot of blackberry, but those are the plants who are primarily concerned with. They're moving on campus and they're actually fairly easy to remove. And once we explained to our students why we want to move these plants in, we really give them the reasons behind why we do it. They're actually very, um, encouraged to get out of be with the plants. I've seen my students not during class actually out there with their friends. We're moving plants on their own. Do you get to have any input [00:14:30] at all into the planning of the campus related to creek side changes or you know, building that might be happening are pending? Yeah, they do. They consult. That's a, a very, a fairly recent thing where
Speaker 3: my group does see a proposed projects at the early stages. If we do comment on the, not the, um, the conceptual plan, but also we get copies of the design plans as they're going through their stage to final design. And [00:15:00] those plans are reviewed by each member of my team for various impacts to water quality. A very good case in point, we'd be say a building, well there's a proposed replacement for Eshelman coming up and we've been in very, very early abroad in on the design part to deal with any runoff from the rooftop, from the landscaped area and this is going to be a project and when it finally is done, that's going to [00:15:30] capture an infiltrate as much storm water run off as possible. And depending on what time of year it could be as high as a hundred percent capture and re infiltration and groundwater.
Speaker 3: Those considerations were never even anywhere on the radar as as little as 10 years ago. So that's just a perfect example of, you know how having the ability to comment on these days. Seeing projects early on has really helped out Morgan stadium to Morgan stadiums that really another really great example is [00:16:00] now I'm that water collecting in the stadium is going to go through a pretreatment system and an infiltration system to both trap pollutants and to try to put as much of that water back down on the groundwater table as possible. So it's been a really a neat thing to see. Those kinds of, some of those kinds of comments be incorporated into the design.
Speaker 4: And you mentioned a nursery as well. It's part of the, the whole process. Describe the nursery activity that you're doing. Yeah, and I really feel it's our third partner restoration [00:16:30] after um, assessing water quality, removing invasive plants, we finally have to reintroduce native plants. We can't just leave these areas bear. And so through a grant with the Green Initiative Fund TJF where students get a few dollars every semester voluntarily into this pool. We got a grant to build a native play nursery on campus and took about a year to build. It was finally done. We had our grand opening last Wednesday, so we had a good ceremony there. But we have one of our nursery coordinators or a restoration coordinator who also does nursery your work. David Pawn, [00:17:00] he's a third year here at cal studying environmental science and he propagates native plants right in the nursery on campus. And then once we grow this plant, students can then do the final step of restoration where they put these plants into the ground and monitor the area.
Speaker 4: Where is the nursery, the nurseries in the welding courtyards. So by Jean Nini and Wellman Hall and the college onto our resources. In terms of what volunteers can do, are there things, you know, if somebody wants to be involved [00:17:30] but doesn't want to go dig up Ivy, can they help? Uh, definitely. And we, we understand students have different levels of involvement, you know, of what they actually want to actually want to do. And I think everyone should be getting their hands dirty. That's just my opinion. But we have people work in our nursery. We don't really have our volunteers do other outreach work, although I guess it's something we can think about starting to do.
Speaker 3: I, you know, that's a great question because, um, you know, one of the criticisms [00:18:00] that I've been very kind of cognizant of is that we could do more in terms of the outreach part of this thing. You know, given that resources are going to be so critical to our continued, you know, health and functioning as a group. You know, I'll admit that we, we tend to put more time on the ground as Tyler mentioned because I think that's our focus. But we would love it if people who have an interest in marketing and outreach people in publication though. Absolutely. We would welcome any skillset. I'm sure we can apply it to um, [00:18:30] the restoration program and were born very inserted in hearing any ideas that people have. Is there any point that you guys wanted to make?
Speaker 4: Do either of you, one of the points I wanted to make, I'm not sure if I made it earlier, is that how important it is for us to take stewardship of our local environment. In my environmental science classes, I've actually learned a bit about how native Americans were stewards of their environments. That's really why California looks the way it does now. All these, what we call the native plants is because native Americans [00:19:00] tend to those plants and create a series of events that allowed those plants to be successful. And so when a student comes here as a freshman, I think that's just as important to learn about how to use telomeres as it is to learn about the native plants we have on campus. I know it sounds really corny, but after they work with us, they look at the creek a different way because when you work on the water, when you work in the right parents zone, something does change in you. You have a sense of ownership of the environment. That's what we need and so I think [00:19:30] as a campus we need to ensure at least after I'm gone and even while I'm here, that all students become stewards of Strawberry Creek and the local watershed. Thank you both for coming today and talking with us. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Which was my pleasure. I could talk about the creek all day long.
Speaker 1: [inaudible] [inaudible]
Speaker 6: [00:20:00] to contact or volunteer for the Strawberry Creek Restoration. Visit their website, Strawberry creek.berkeley.edu as always, you can contact spectrum if you want this contact information.
Speaker 1: [inaudible]
Speaker 6: [00:20:30] a regular feature of spectrum is to mention a few of the science and technology events happening locally over the next few weeks. The June Science at Cau lecture will given at 11:00 AM
Speaker 2: on June 18th in the genetics and plant biology building room 100 the June 18th talk will be given by Terry Johnson and is entitled synthetic biology [00:21:00] beating the cell at its own game. Bioengineering lecturer Terry Johnson received the Spring 2011 outstanding instructor award from the Bio Engineering Honor Society. He was also awarded the 2011 outstanding faculty of the Year award and named an eminent engineer by the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society. Join the center for Biological Diversity and the Ecology Center for a presentation on [00:21:30] the clean air act and how it may be our best hope against climate change. The title of the presentation is the clean air act and global warming, how it works, why we need it and what we can do to support it. This presentation is free. The presentation will be Wednesday, June 22nd 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the Ecology Center, which is at 25 30 San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute [00:22:00] or Ambari is holding an open house on Saturday, June 25th this event is free.
Speaker 2: The Ambari open house features science and technology exhibits deep sea videos, research presentations, robotic submarines, children's activities, ocean career information, and much more Ambari staff scientists and engineers will share their excitement about the institutes work. Visitors can view a remotely operated vehicle [00:22:30] and some of their autonomous underwater vehicles and Baris research vessels will also be on view at the dock with related displays. Visitors can also find out about the Monterey Bay aquarium's Seafood Watch program and a new marine environmental organization. The center for Ocean Solutions. The Open House is Saturday, June 25th from noon until 5:00 PM the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute is located at [00:23:00] 7,700 sand Holt road, moss landing, California. Their website is ambari.org the link to the open house is found under news briefs. Now some stories in the news. The journal Science has given its May science prize for online resources and education or spore award to the periodic table of videos.
Speaker 2: Science editorial fellow Melissa McCartney says the videos are an entertaining [00:23:30] mix of experiments and anecdotes and are aimed at anyone with a curiosity for chemistry. No prior knowledge on the part of the viewer as needed. The chemistry themed videos are produced by University of Nottingham Professor Martin Poliakoff, journalist Heron Chemist Pete licence, Steve Ladelle and Debbie ks and lab technician Neil Barnes. The periodic table of videos was conceived in 2008 after heron tape Poliakoff as part of another series [00:24:00] of videos called the test tube project. They decided to collaborate on the periodic table of elements and within about five weeks the videos for all 118 elements had been uploaded to youtube. The periodic table of videos continues to grow with videos about chemistry topics beyond the elements such as segments that play off the news. The site now hosts more than 300 videos. The videos can be viewed on youtube search for periodic table of videos.
Speaker 2: [00:24:30] They may also be viewed@thewebsiteperiodicvideos.com which is helpful at schools where youtube is blocked. The American Association for the Advancement of Science website reports that an American research team has succeeded in high tech grand survey of ancient Egyptian settlements, tombs and pyramids by analyzing high resolution satellite imagery covering all of Egypt. Researchers have reportedly discovered up to 17 lost pyramids, nearly 3000 ancient [00:25:00] settlements and 1000 tunes. The effort was led by archeologists, Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama Birmingham Parcak began her study 11 years ago searching for traces of ancient village walls buried under Egypt's fields and desert sands obtaining images from both NASA and quickbird satellites. She combined an analyze data from the visible imagery as well as from the infrared and thermal parts of the light spectrum. [00:25:30] Through trial and error, she discovered that the most informative images were taken during the relatively wet weeks of late winter. During this period, buried mud brick walls absorbed more moisture than usual producing a subtle chemical signature in the overlying soil that showed up in high resolution infrared satellite images to further test.
Speaker 2: Some of the most recent satellite finds. Park enlisted the help of a French archeological team already digging at the 3000 year old site [00:26:00] known as Tannis Park Act says they found an almost 100% correlation between what we see on the imagery and what we see on the ground. In the wake of the fines, the Egyptian government reached an agreement to work with Park and others, American researchers to develop a nationwide satellite imagery project to monitor archaeological sites from space and protect them from looting and illegal house construction and other encroachments park says of the agreement. We are going to be teaching [00:26:30] young Egyptians how to look at the satellite data and analyze it so they can keep an eye on the sites. She and her colleagues plan to raise funds privately to support the effort. This item from the UC Berkeley News Center website written by Robert Sanders, a new initiative for citizen scientists and the crowdsourcing of ecosystem observation has been launched named the global amphibian blitz.
Speaker 2: Any adventurer, hiker or backyard naturalist where the camera can help scientists survey [00:27:00] and hopefully save the world's amphibians. Thanks to a new social networking site that links citizen scientists with researchers tracking the decline of Amphibians around the globe. The global amphibian blitz is a new partnership between the University of California Berkeley's Amphibia web and six other amphibian groups. The new website is provided by I naturalist.org a bay area social network for naturalists. The website allows amateur naturalists from [00:27:30] around the world to submit their amphibian photographs along with dates and gps locations. The project is curated by a team of scientists who will identify and filter the submissions in search of rare species or out of range occurrences of interest to scientific and conservation communities in an effort to protect the data from commercial collectors and others who would exploit the information. The exact whereabouts are rare and endangered amphibians are obscured to all but the scientific community. [00:28:00] The website can be reached by going to eye naturalist.org/projects and click on the global amphibian blitz. That's I naturalist.org there is also a youtube video explaining the project to find it. Search for a global amphibian blitz
Speaker 1: [inaudible].
Speaker 6: [00:28:30] The music heard during the show is spineless. Donna David from his album, folk and acoustic, made available through a creative Commons license. 3.0 attribution editing assistance was provided by Judith White, Marcel [inaudible] and Gretchen Sanderson.
Speaker 1: [00:29:00] [inaudible].
Speaker 6: Thank you for listening to spectrum. We are happy to hear from our listeners. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email addresses spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks at the same time.
Speaker 1: [00:29:30] [inaudible].
Speaker 4: The abuse occurred during the show is by Listonic Donna David from his album folk and acoustic made [00:29:00] available by a creative Commons attribution only licensed 3.0 editing assistance was provided by Judith White Marceline and Gretchen Sanders. Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have any comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is spectrum dot k a l x@yahoo.com join us in two weeks [00:29:30] at the same time.
Speaker 5: [inaudible].
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