Nature's Archive

One common theme of my podcasts is that everything in nature is interconnected in multiple ways. And today’s episode demonstrates that in some mind bending ways.

What’s the topic? Well, it’s an often overlooked subject. If it is handled well, it will sequester carbon, reduce the impacts of droughts, improve our water quality, and probably save you money. And if you need another hint, when it is healthy it also makes your food more nutritious. By now you probably guessed the topic - soil ecology and the soil food web.

My guest is Dr. Elaine Ingham. Dr. Ingham has over four decades of experience in soil biology, and is generally recognized as the foremost expert in the field. She is the primary author of the USDA Soil Biology Primer, and founder of Soil Food Web Inc, a group dedicated to empowering ordinary people to bring healthy soils back to life. Dr. Ingham has a B.A. in biology and chemistry from St. Olaf College, an M.S. in microbiology from Texas A&M University, and a Ph.D. in microbiology from Colorado State University.

Our wide-ranging conversation only scratched the surface of soil ecology. As I said, everything is interconnected, so it makes conversations like these somewhat challenging since everything inter-relates.

So what did we cover? Well, we talked about the difference between dirt and soil, which is an ecosystem unto itself, consisting of varying amounts of fungi, bacteria, predators, and parasites such as protozoa and nematodes.

Dr. Elaine discusses the entire process of how fungi, bacteria, and other organisms convert soil nutrients to forms readily available to plants, and how plants actually induce this behavior through chemical signaling. She discusses how plants trade sugars for nutrients from fungi, and how these trades are  constantly adjusting.

We dig deep into how to measure soil health, and surfaced from our microscopy deep dive to discuss shortcuts you can use to assess your own soil health and compost health without a microscope.

And we touched on many other topics, such as the impact of soil compaction, and the negative impacts of inorganic fertilizers.

Be sure to check out the show notes because some of the topics really require some visual aides. I’ve included a graphic provided by Dr. Elaine that summarizes the importance of soil health, as well as some videos showing Dr. Elaine’ technique for mixing your soil solution for the microscope, and a video of some spirilla bacteria - they’re pretty wild!

FULL SHOW NOTES

People and Organizations
Soil Food Web School - look for the resources and classes mentioned today
Soil Regen Summit 2022 

Books and Other Things
Teaming with Microbes, The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web,  Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis
USDA Soil Biology Primer - free book

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Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
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Discover the Jumpstart Nature Podcast - entertaining and immersive, it's the nature fix we all need.

Check past Nature's Archive episodes for amazing guests like Doug Tallamy, Elaine Ingham, and Rae Wynn-Grant, covering topics from bird migration to fungi to frogs and bats!

Highways, roadways, and railways isolate animals, prevent them from reaching needed food and water, causing genetic isolation, and make populations vulnerable to natural disasters. And as you’ll hear today, the impacts go much deeper, and sometimes in surprising directions.

My guest Beth Pratt of the National Wildlife Federation and Save LA Cougars tells the astonishing story of how a Los Angeles mountain lion named P-22 triggered a cascade of support leading to one of the most ambitious wildlife crossings ever conceived - the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing.

Beth tells how P-22 helped the second largest city in the USA wake up to the fact that we need to find ways to coexist with nature. We discuss some of the details of wildlife crossing design such as pros and cons of overpass crossings vs tunnels and culverts, and how design can be used to influence animals to use the crossings.

Beth also describes many surprising ways that wildlife crossings help improve ecosystems and the food web. Even plants need connectivity, and even some bird species are negatively impacted by highways.

Beth also authored the book “When Mountain Lions are Neighbors”, which was influential in my progression as a nature advocate.

You can find Beth online at bethpratt.com, Twitter, and Facebook. And of course, you can also find P-22, the talented mountain lion that he is, on Twitter and Facebook.

More links and photos in the FULL SHOW NOTES

Related Episodes and Content
#20 Dr. Yiwei Wang
#35 Ben Goldfarb
#37 Dr. Stuart Weiss
Dr. Merav Vonshak's newt roadkill awareness efforts

Books
Cougar: Ecology and Conservation by Maurice Hornocker, Sharon Negri
Heart of a Lion: A Lone Cat's Walk Across America by William Stolzenburg
When Mountain Lions are Neighbors by Beth Pratt

Other
Annenberg Foundation
Puma Profiles
SaveLACougers.org
The Badger and Coyote Video

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Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist site: https://brianholtzmusic.com

Discover the Jumpstart Nature Podcast - entertaining and immersive, it's the nature fix we all need.

Check past Nature's Archive episodes for amazing guests like Doug Tallamy, Elaine Ingham, and Rae Wynn-Grant, covering topics from bird migration to fungi to frogs and bats!

Today, Dr. Stuart Weiss unravels an amazing and unexpected series of discoveries that connect cows, cars, and conservation, all triggered by the study of the threatened Bay Checkerspot butterfly. These discoveries have had reverberations across ecological circles and have led to amazing conservation successes, despite a senior US Air Force official calling the tiny butterfly a national security threat.

Dr. Weiss has a PhD in Biological Sciences from Stanford University, and is the Founder and Chief Scientist at Creekside Science. He has 29 peer reviewed publications and has wide-ranging research experience in conservation and population biology, microclimate characterization, and statistical analysis.

To understand the checkerspot, we must understand the uniqueness of the land, so that's where we begin. The checkerspot had been in decline for decades, first due to direct reduction of habitat due to development and invasive non-native plants. But Dr. Weiss’s systematic study showed that something else was happening, leading him to unravel the mystery, revealing an unexpected relationship between cars, cows, and the checkerspot that we discuss today.

Dr. Weiss’s work also showed that landscape and population connectivity was a critical, and missing, component. This was at a time where connectivity was not well understood - and even today policymakers and the general public is often unaware of how important it is.

Ultimately, the story of the Bay Checkerspot and the cascade of conservation discoveries and actions is an amazing success story that continues to grow.

I hope you enjoy the discussion. I promise you’ll learn a bit about not only the checkerspot, but also soil ecology, the nitrogen cycle, the nuance of land management and grazing, tule elk, and much more.

Note that there was a bit of scratchy audio at a few spots, but stick with it because we did get it worked out.

FULL SHOW NOTES

Links
Bay Checkerspot
Bay Area Conservation Lands Network (CLN)
California Native Plant Society
California Rangeland Conservation Coalition
Committee for Green Foothills (now just Green Foothills)
Cows, Cars, and Checkerspot Butterflies - Dr. Weiss' 1999 Research Publication
Edith Allen at UC-Riverside
Howard Baker and the Snail Darter Controversy - wikipedia
The Moore Foundation
Valley Habitat Agency

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Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist site: https://brianholtzmusic.com

Discover the Jumpstart Nature Podcast - entertaining and immersive, it's the nature fix we all need.

Check past Nature's Archive episodes for amazing guests like Doug Tallamy, Elaine Ingham, and Rae Wynn-Grant, covering topics from bird migration to fungi to frogs and bats!

Regular episodes return next Monday with a fascinating interview that delves into an ecological mystery that unravels a connection between a threatened butterfly, cars, cows, and soil ecology. You don’t want to miss this one!

As for today, THANK YOU for a wonderful 2021. The podcast really took off this year, with each month surpassing the previous month, usually by hundreds of listens.

But I have a big announcement. Don't worry, the podcast will remain!

The short story: I'm leaving my Silicon Valley tech job in April so I can focus on conservation full time. My path isn't entirely clear, but I have some solid options and my next few steps are clear. I've developed a personal vision, and will start executing on that in 2022.

I'm ecstatic to pursue my dream, but leaving the salary, benefits, and certainty of my day job is uncomfortable, to say the least.

For that reason, I’ve launched a Patreon page to give you, my listeners, an opportunity to help me achieve this dream. If you choose, you can support the production costs of the show by becoming a monthly contributor.

There are four option levels, and each level offers fun perks, including access to exclusive content, die-cut stickers, special access to learn about future guests and ask questions in advance of episodes, and occasional AMAs (Ask Me Anything), where we can chat about anything - show ideas, questions about how I use iNaturalist, favorite nature encounters, the latest field guide I’ve added to my collection - whatever!

You can check out my patreon by either checking the show notes for the link, going to podcast.naturesarchive.com, or patreon.com/naturesarchive.

If you are unfamiliar with patreon, many creators use it to support content production. My goal right now is to simply cover my production costs. My costs are about $75 a month, and will grow to about $150 a month with my 2022 plans. You may wonder what costs go into producing audio content? Well, my recurring costs include paying a podcast hosting service, website hosting, domain names, and software licenses for editing and production. 

I hope you will consider becoming a patron!

And again, I want to thank everyone for their support in listening to and sharing the show. I am constantly surprised at the reach of the show. It’s been fun and surprising to get emails and DMs from strangers discussing episodes or suggesting topics. More and more I also encounter listeners at various nature events I attend! 

And if you don’t want to contribute through patreon, please take a moment and rate my podcast on apple podcasts, spotify, amazon, and/or podchaser. Better still, share your favorite episode with whichever nature groups you are part of. 

Thank you again for a wonderful 2021 and I look forward to even greater things in 2022.

Finally - a deep dive into the Fungi Kingdom thanks to Damon Tighe (instagram, iNaturalist)! Damon is a skilled naturalist, photographer, science communicator, and biotech educator. He has a biology and chemistry degree from Saint Mary’s college, and has years of professional experience in genomics and DNA sequencing, including with the Human Genome Project at the National Lab’s Joint Genome Institute.

Today, Damon describes the basics of fungi - what they are, and how they reproduce. Damon covers the three primary lifestyles that fungi take on - saprophytic, which like to eat dead stuff, parasitic, and mycorrhizal, where they team up with something else.

We discuss fungi and mushrooms that one might encounter, seasonality, how to read the landscape to find mushrooms, and how to identify them. Damon covers some common mushroom myths and whether it is OK to pick mushrooms for ID or general foraging.

He also tells us about some fascinating mushroom behaviors, such as how chicken of the woods fruit in anticipation of rain, and the story of the notorious Deathcap mushroom.

We wrap up with a discussion of DNA sequencing, which is achievable at home relatively inexpensively, and community scientists are driving new discoveries.

FULL SHOW NOTES - check for photos of species discussed today! The chanterelle is must-see!

Referenced Episodes
Magic of Lichens - Knudsen
Amazing World of Plant Galls - Kranz
Links
Entangled Life - Sheldrake
Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast - Siegel and Schwarz
Alan Rockefeller
Barcode the Lake at Lake Merritt
California Center for Natural History
How Many Fungal Spores Do We Breathe In? Source, Source2
SOMA Camp

Fungal DNA Barcoding Links
EverymanBio
Sigrid Jakob
Damon's overview of DNA sequencing
William Padilla-Brown - uses Oxford Nanopore sequencing

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Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist site: https://brianholtzmusic.com

Discover the Jumpstart Nature Podcast - entertaining and immersive, it's the nature fix we all need.

Check past Nature's Archive episodes for amazing guests like Doug Tallamy, Elaine Ingham, and Rae Wynn-Grant, covering topics from bird migration to fungi to frogs and bats!

Today you'll become a Beaver Believer thanks to my guest, Ben Goldfarb. Ben is the author of the book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, winner of the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Aside from being an author, Ben is an environmental journalist, with writing appearing in The Atlantic, Science, The Washington Post, and many other esteemed publications. Ben holds a Masters of Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Beavers truly are ecosystem engineers, capable of creating a series of habitats just by living their semi-aquatic lives. But did you know that not all beavers build dams and lodges? And in order to spend so much time in water, they have many amazing adaptations, such a a second set of lips behind their teeth that acts like a valve sealing off water.

And this is just the tip of the beaver lodge, so to speak. Ben tells us so many great facts about beavers and their ecology that I'm sure you'll walk away with an expanded respect for these animals. Ben tells us why beavers are perhaps the quintessential keystone species, creating a disproportionate impact on the land. For example, beavers may actually help salmon populations, reduce and slow wildfires, recharge groundwater supplies, and much more. They create ponds, dig creek channels, and trigger ecological succession. We also discuss how beavers fit into the classic Yellowstone trophic cascade. Maybe I could have had a shorter interview if I just asked Ben what beavers don't do?

Find Ben on his website, or on twitter.

FULL SHOW NOTES

People and Organizations
Emily Fairfax, PhD - Ecohydrologist who has researched how beavers make landscapes more fire resilient
Joe Wheaton - Fluvial Geomorphologist who has studied how beavers are restorative, and can be used like a restoration tool.
Sarah Koenigsberg - filmmaker for The Beaver Believers

Books and Other Things
Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter - by Ben Goldfarb

Support Us On Patreon!
Buy our Merch!

Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist site: https://brianholtzmusic.com

Discover the Jumpstart Nature Podcast - entertaining and immersive, it's the nature fix we all need.

Check past Nature's Archive episodes for amazing guests like Doug Tallamy, Elaine Ingham, and Rae Wynn-Grant, covering topics from bird migration to fungi to frogs and bats!

Today's episode could be broadly described as “how to maximize your time in the field”, whether it be casual hikes, random walks in nature, goal-driven hikes, or BioBlitzes.  

And our guests are Chloe and Trevor Van Loon. Chloe has a background in ecology and environmental science, and while Trevor’s educational background is in math and computer science, he’s also become a fanatical amateur naturalist. In fact, both Chloe and Trevor are highly skilled naturalists and prolific iNaturalist contributors. No biome or habitat is off limits for them, and they have an insatiable drive to learn more.

Chloe and Trevor offer tips and techniques to identify the plants, fungi, and insects you find, regardless of whether you are a budding nature lover or a seasoned naturalist. We discuss approaches to making new personal discoveries, using iNaturalist to locate nearby and interesting taxa, and many specific techniques, including using UV lights at night, using a sweep net, and challenging your own assumptions about where to find interesting things. Who knows - maybe you too can observe a nival aeolian fallout! Listen to learn exactly what that is!

There are so many actionable suggestions and ideas that I really just gave up on the idea that this intro would do the episode justice. And be sure to check the show notes at naturesarchive.com for links to the resources mentioned today. And find Chloe and Trevor on iNaturalist, instagram, or on Chloe's blog.

FULL SHOW NOTES

People and Organizations
Damon Tighe's Instagram and iNat
Marin Mushrooms (Alison Pollack) on Instagram

Books and Apps
Jepson Manual - classic for California plants
ROCKD app
Sibley Guide to Birds of the Western North America
Chloe's recent review of The Cougar Conundrum

Other Naturalist Tools Mentioned
Hand lens or loupe
Insect aspirator (aka pooter) - here's an example
Phone macro lenses - Make sure the lens you buy is compatible with your phone and case!
UV Lights: USB UV Kit for backpacking; High powered for general use; the "Gold Standard" LepiLED

Support Us On Patreon!
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Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist site: https://brianholtzmusic.com

Discover the Jumpstart Nature Podcast - entertaining and immersive, it's the nature fix we all need.

Check past Nature's Archive episodes for amazing guests like Doug Tallamy, Elaine Ingham, and Rae Wynn-Grant, covering topics from bird migration to fungi to frogs and bats!

My guest in this episode is Dr. Andrew Farnsworth.

Andrew is a Senior Research Associate in the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and has a BS in Natural Resources from Cornell University, MS in Zoology from Clemson University, and PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell.

Andrew started birding at age 5 and quickly developed a fascination with bird migration, which continues to this day. His research advances the use and application of multiple technologies to study bird movements on continental scales. This includes the use of weather surveillance radar, audio and video recording and monitoring tools, citizen science datasets, and machine learning techniques.

Today we discuss one of his primary projects, BirdCast. BirdCast presents near real time bird migration status, provides migration forecasts up to three days out, and provides local migration alerts to inform conservation action.

Creating BirdCast has required decades of research and a combination of many disciplines. Andrew discusses how ground-truth observations, acoustics, and radar data are correlated to weather data to produce a predictive model that accurately forecasts migration days in advance. Andrew discusses how advances in computing technology and machine learning have dramatically advanced model accuracy and accelerated progress.

We get into the details of the model, including why temperature is the most important factor in bird migration prediction, how tropical storms impact migration, and why migration and monitoring in the western USA is different from the eastern USA.

We also discuss how birders can use BirdCast for their interests, and the many ways that migration prediction helps with conservation efforts, such as Lights Out Texas.

You can see the forecasts and a lot of research and technical data at birdcast.info, or follow the team @DrBirdCast, on twitter.

FULL SHOW NOTES

Links to People and Topics Discussed
The Academy of Natural Sciences
Adriaan Doktor, Benjamin Van Doren and Kyle Horton from the birdcast team
Dr. Sidney Gauthreaux - Dr. Farnsworth's advisor at Clemson University, and a pioneer in the field.
How radar detects birds (from birdcast.info)
Lights Out Texas from Texan By Nature
WSR 88D (aka NexRAD) - the US National Weather Service overview of the technology

Links to Related Episodes
Brian Sullivan - Brian is a former project lead for eBird, also from the Cornell Lab. This episode discusses that, as well are many technological opportunities to better understand birds
Project Terra - learn more about bird telemetry, nocturnal flight calls, and associated tracking technologies 

This is an encore of my popular wildfire in the west interview with Rick Halsey of the California Chaparral Institute.

Don't worry, more great new episodes are coming.  Do you want to learn about bird migration forecasting? I’ve got you covered. And how about maximizing your nature observations when in the field? Covered again. And I have a bunch of other episodes and new projects in the works, too, from wild memes to beavers to mycelium - that confirms it! I’m really a fungi!

Onto the encore of episode 9. And if you enjoy the topic of wildfire, also check episode #24 with Justin Angle.

Rick Halsey is the author of “Fire, Chaparral, and Survival in Southern California”, and has a background in Environmental Studies, Anthropology, and Education, with degrees from University of California Santa Barbara and Cal State San Diego and UC Berkeley. 

He is the founder and director of the California Chaparral Institute, dedicated to preserving California’s chaparral through scientific research, nature education, and activism. Chaparral habitats are expansive and the most important habitat at the wildland/urban interface in California’s major cities. 

In this episode we discuss the myths and realities of wildfire. There are many eye opening insights that often get lost in our desire to have single, simple answers. That’s the theme of the episode - nuance. Causes and solutions vary by habitat and condition. And while we focus a lot on California, the principles apply to much of the west.

We discuss the ecosystems of the west, their historical fire behaviors and how that history was determined through charcoal records and tree ring analysis. We discuss the fact that huge, hot fires are not necessarily unnatural, and why the “fuel build up” narrative is often untrue, and when it makes sense. And the dramatic increase in human caused ignitions, which often occur at the more unnatural and dangerous times of the season. We discuss indigenous fire management and application and simple solutions for people living in the wildland-urban interface.

We also delve into Rick’s insights as an educator. His skill and dedication led to him receiving the McAuliffe Fellowship. Over the years he’s fine-tuned his delivery and we discuss his wonderful essay on his transformation from lecturer to the engage model.

Full Notes
Jack Cohen
Keith Lombardo
Rick's Book
Camp Fire Paradise, CA disaster
Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park disaster
Study shows improved hospital recovery for park-facing patients
Santa Monica NRA wildfire chaparral resources
ABA Podcast Steve Maguire’s high school ornithology class
The Nature Fix – Why Nature Makes us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative – Florence Williams
WASP sprinklers

My guest today is Cricket Raspet. Cricket is a Curatorial Assistant at the California Academy of Sciences, specializing in marine mammals.  She’s a passionate community scientist, raptor bander with GGRO and a rescue and animal care volunteer at the Marine Mammal Center. 

An interest (obsession?) with the colorful sea slugs of the pacific coast led her from the tidepools to the strange community of creatures that make floating docks their home. With a handful of like-minded explorers, she founded the Dockfoulers Union to educate people about this unique ecosystem and document its inhabitants through photography and iNaturalist observations. 

Dockfouling is like "biofouling", where marine organisms collect on submerged items. But with docks, you can easily observe this amazing array of organisms. Think of it like tidepooling, but with some distinct advantages. Unique and colorful creatures can be readily seen, and these areas are ripe for personal and scientific discovery. Simply put, dockfouling can be both a crash course and a masters course in marine ecology.

We discuss Cricket's amazing finds in these floating dock biomes, the emergence of a dock fouling community, and how you can observe these magnificent creatures next time you are near a floating dock. It turns out it is easy to get started - no equipment necessary! But if you want to start taking photos, Cricket offers suggestions as well.

Find Cricket on Instagram at chilipossum, dockfoulersunion, glamourslugs, and iNaturalist.

Full Show Notes

Links
Dock Fouling in California
Dock Fouling in Washington State
Doctober
Nature Lookings
Olympus TG-6 Waterproof Camera- recommended for underwater and terrestrial macro. And a tutorial to use the TG-6 for Tidepool Photography
The Light and Smith Manual: Intertidal Invertebrates from Central California to Oregon, by James T. Carlton
Seashore Life of the Northern Pacific, by Eugene Kozloff

People and Organizations Discussed
California Academy of Sciences
Damon Tighe - presentations on YouTube at Lake Merritt
Dockfoulers Union (instagram)
Luan Roberts (instagram)

Support Us On Patreon!
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Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist site: https://brianholtzmusic.com

Discover the Jumpstart Nature Podcast - entertaining and immersive, it's the nature fix we all need.

Check past Nature's Archive episodes for amazing guests like Doug Tallamy, Elaine Ingham, and Rae Wynn-Grant, covering topics from bird migration to fungi to frogs and bats!