9 January 2024

Local environmental nuances make all the difference in adaptation to rising sea levels. That's why the tails of local marsh mice aren't all the same length and why scientists are trying out new sediment placement techniques.

Marsh Mice Come in Two Flavors

For more than a century, scientists have asserted that the salt marsh harvest mouse comes in two flavors. Mice from the North Bay tend to have longer tails and pale belly fur, while those from the South Bay have shorter tails and reddish tummies. The geographic dividing line between the two subspecies, however, was as muddy as the mouse’s environs. Photo: UC Davis

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Moving Sediment onto the Marsh with Natural Muscle

On a hazy winter day this past December two tugs pushed two scows back and forth across the glassy bay between the Redwood City shipping channel and the shallows off Eden Landing. What looked like your ordinary harbor dredging project, with an orange clamshell clawing up mud to make way for deep-drafting ships, was actually quite extraordinary. That’s because the destination of the mud-loaded scows was not a disposal site but a mile-long, 138-acre patch of shallow water near Whale's Tail marsh.  Photo: Brandon Beach, USCOE

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