As climate change creates a hotter and drier California, our native birds will relocate to more hospitable areas, and existing communities of species will recombine in new ways that may threaten their survival.

PRBO and their partners have developed  interactive maps showing the projected redistribution of bird species in California.

Common Yellowthroat

As is often the case, the initial findings of this study, published as “Reshuffling of Species with Climate Disruption:  A No-Analog Future for California Birds?” suggest several areas where additional research is warranted, says lead author Diana Strahlberg.

Tree swallow

Strahlberg also suggests that the approach taken in this study, of examining the interactive relationships between species as they respond to climate change, could also herald a new way of looking at wildlife management.

  Diana Strahlberg of the PRBO will be among the presenters at the annual State of the Laguna Conference on Wednesday at Sonoma Mountain Village in Rohnert Park.

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The pathogen that causes sudden oak death tends to spread during rainstorms, so with forecasts of a wet winter ahead, now is the time to apply a protective treatment to trees in high-risk areas.

According to Katie Palmieri, the public information officer for the California Oak Mortality Task Force at UC Berkeley, spraying the protective substance directly onto the trunk of vulnerable oaks is the easier method.

Injecting the spore-fighting material directly into the oaks is more complicated, in no small part because the process is a little different for each tree.

The California oak Mortality Task Force has developed guidelines and an instructional video to aid homeowners in the proper application of Agri-Fos as part of the resources available at their website. Below is an illustrated explanation of the pathogen that causes the disease, how it spreads, and the way it affects the trees that get infected.

The earliest known forms of written communication have now been traced to eastern Europe, from a long-standing agricultural society that predates the Greeks and Egyptians.

Joan Marler is Executive Director of the Institute of Archeomythology, an emerging field that integrates a broad array of academic disciplines.

The multi-disciplinary field was established byMarler's mentor, Marija Gumbutas (seen here in a 1987 photograph). Marler will talk more about archeomythology at the Science Buzz Café tonight at the youth annex of the Sebastopol Community Center at 7 pm.

The surviving artifacts from this ancient civilization, such as the vase below, suggest it was deeply ritualistic, and Marler believes those rites were enmeshed in their culture of sustainability.

The closely guarded internal financial workings of the Sonoma State Academic Foundation may be about to see the light of public review.

Robert Karlsrud, dean emeritus of the SSU School of Social Sciences, is concerned that the administration of the Sonoma State University Academic Foundation is concentrated in just a few top officials at the school, and particularly that the finances of the campus and its foundation are directed by the same individual:  Laurence Furukawa-Schleret, SSU's Vice President for Administration & Finance and Chief Financial Officer.

The high priority given to fund-raising for the construction of the Green Music Center by the Arminana administration has rankled many on campus, especially as the cost of the structure sopared to $120 million. The partially completed building, seen here earlier in the construction process, still needs around $20 million to be finished, and even then, says Karlsrud, it may be a fiscal drai for many years to follow.

SB 218, by San Francisco State Senator Leeland Yee, was prompted in part by the public disclosure of the SSU Foundation’s loans to a former board member. The bill has passed the state legislature and is now awaiting the governor’s signature to become law.  Dean Karlsrud says the campus community is also waiting to see if the measure has any real teeth.

Karlsrud's detailed critique of the Foundation's fiscal operations was published online by the  Empire Report.