By

Robin Meadows
About the author

Robin Meadows is an independent science journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s a water reporter at Maven's Notebook, a California water news site, and contributor to Chemical & Engineering News, Ka Pili Kai, KneeDeep Times, and Scientific American. Robin is also a Pulitzer Center grantee, an Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources fellow, a contributor to The Craft of Science Writing, a mentor with The Open Notebook, and a UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program graduate. Find her on Tumblr and Twitter.

Articles by Robin Meadows

03
Mar

Bay Primed for Pea Soup?

Nutrients could be the next big problem for San Francisco Bay — or make that in the Bay, because they’re already here at levels high enough to have caused trouble elsewhere. But despite its excess nitrogen and phosphorus, the Bay has been free of harmful algal blooms and oxygen-depleted dead zones for decades. Indeed, we’ve been so sure of this immunity to nutrients that most wastewater treatment plants don’t even have to remove them before discharging into the Bay. Recent chinks in the Bay’s resistance to nutrients are now alerting us, however, to get ready in case there’s worse to come.
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31
Mar

Clams Muddle Delta Restoration

Robin Meadows Download: Estuary News, April 2013 PDF Boosting phytoplankton growth is a key part of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, as the supply of these tiny algae at the base of the Delta’s food web has plunged over the last few decades. According to conventional wisdom, the best way to increase phytoplankton is to create shallow, slow waters to give algae plenty of light, as well as the chance to build up over time. But recent research upends this approach for ecosystems that, like the Delta, have been invaded by exotic clams. “For many, this is a new way of thinking,” says US Geological Survey engineer Lisa Lucas, who reported this work with colleague Janet Thompson in the December...
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