Thursday February 24, 2022
Bay Nature –
On a rainy fall morning, a pair of research technicians from the Berkeley Biometeorology Lab travel in a white pickup truck along a tongue of land where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers converge and then finally join. Even though the road is paved with gravel, the tires kick up dust and mix with the scent of wild fennel. At a nearby pasture, cows chew cud unfazed by the sound of the rattling truck bed or river otters splashing. Sandhill cranes soar above crackling high-tension power lines. Once threatened American white pelicans fly in formation against the backdrop of slow turning wind turbines.
By the time the pickup reaches the 307-acre Mayberry Wetland, the rain lightens to a drizzle and the noise from nearby State Route 160 dissipates. Joe Verfaillie and Daphne Szutu grab their backpacks and toolkits, and walk towards the water’s edge. Here, in a flooded area once dominated by pepperweed and upland grasses, the researchers have constructed a tower, a bristling array of instruments zip-tied to metal scaffolding. “This is basically a fancy weather station,” Verfaillie says. He wears oval clip-on sunglasses and an aged brimmer hat that tames his shoulder-length hair. “It measures relative humidity, air and water temperature, rain, air pressure, salinity, and methane.” The wetlands are constantly exchanging gases, like breathing. Verfaillie and Szutu are here to measure the breath of the wetland.
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