Our final issue of 2022, the fall issue, is only a bit late. Thanks to our switch of laying out the Journal in HTML instead of PDF, production has sped up significantly. This exciting change was for a number of important reasons:

• Increased accessibility for those with disabilities
• Easily translated into other languages
• Increased visibility, searchability, and navigability
• Mobile friendly
• Faster production due to less specialized training and skills needed for layout editors

The first article in the issue, from longtime author and Associate Editor, Dr. Robert Sullivan, evaluates spatial and temporal trends in rainfall and its effects on water elevation and breech events for some lagoon systems in northern California. The next article, from two CDFW researchers, focuses on the Fall Midwater Trawl Survey—a sampling effort that has occurred for the last 55 years to determine the abundance and distribution of pelagic fishes in the Bay Delta area of California. The researchers examined the impact of adding additional sampling stations to the Survey and found these stations to be important for capturing the dynamics of certain species and thus important for understanding the distribution of fish in the Bay Delta. The third article is another of Dr. Sullivan’s and his fourth published in CFWJ on the Trinity bristle snail; this one focuses on the impacts of fire on suitable habitat for the species using data from the recent Monument Fire. Dr. Sean Bignami from Concordia University Irvine authored the fourth article in the issue in which he provides current data on the density of Pismo clams in southern California. Pismo clams experienced significant population declines in the 1900s, and Dr. Bignami found that the species is persisting in many areas of southern California, albeit at low densities. The last research article, again authored by Dr. Sullivan, tackles a primary concern of climate change: sea level rise. His focus was on Humboldt County which has the highest rate of sea level rise of any area in California. The final article in this issue is a book review on an excellent new book titled The Klamath Mountains: A Natural History written by two Cal Poly San Luis Obispo professors.

I have four new editors to introduce in this issue. Dr. Shannon Skalos completed her PhD in Ecology at the University of California Davis (UC Davis) where she studied reproduction, migration, and habitat selection of northern harriers breeding and wintering in Suisun Marsh, CA. Prior to coming to CDFW, Dr. Skalos worked for the USGS Western Ecological Research Center in Dixon, CA for a decade focusing on ecology and behavior of several listed and sensitive species, including California Ridgway’s rails, greater sage grouse, giant gartersnakes, and salt marsh harvest mouse. Though Shannon has worked with various taxa, she primarily considers herself an ornithologist and has expertise with a variety of bird species, including hummingbirds, parrots, raptors, passerines, and waterbirds. Shannon is now the CDFW Statewide Conservation Coordinator for raptors and nongame birds in the Wildlife Branch’s Wildlife Diversity Program working on applied conservation and management of California’s native bird species. Dr. Skalos replaces Neil Clipperton and joins Matt Toenies as our bird specialists for the Journal.

Dr. Gabriel Singer received his B.S. in Marine Biology from the University of California Santa Cruz and his M.S. and PhD in Ecology from UC Davis. His graduate work focused on the movement, routing, and survival of juvenile fall and spring-run Chinook Salmon in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. He also spent time as a postdoctoral scholar in the Rypel lab at UC Davis working with an extensive set of acoustic telemetry data (>30 million detection records) from tagged fishes in the Sacramento and San Joaquin watersheds to study synchrony of movement. Dr. Singer has spent more than a decade conducting applied research with anadromous fishes (Chinook Salmon, Steelhead, Green and White Sturgeon and others) in California. He started with CDFW in 2020 working in the Inland Fisheries Assessment and Monitoring Program in Fisheries Branch, then moved to Water Branch before settling into his current position back in Fisheries Branch in the Heritage and Wild Trout Program. As the Statewide Coordinator for Native and Threatened Trout, he is thrilled to dedicate his career to protecting California’s diverse assemblage of native trout species and ensuring the resource is on the landscape for future generations.

Dr. Samreen Siddiqui is working with a salvage database in CDFW’s Bay Delta Region (Region 3). Before joining CDFW, she served as a Postdoctoral Scholar at Oregon State University (OSU). Her work at OSU involved coastal, estuarine, and marine systems modelling and through wet lab component looking at their interactions with physiology of invertebrate or vertebrate. Dr. Siddiqui has an interdisciplinary background including marine biology, analytical chemistry, big data analysis, modelling using R, and ArcGIS. Dr. Siddiqui earned her doctorate in Coastal and Marine system Sciences (PhD dissertation- Future Water Quality Challenges in USA and Influences on Product Safety- Peer review publication with AI- Neural network), two M.S. degrees, one in Biology (from the U.S.) and one in aquatic ecosystem management (from the United Kingdom) with a bachelor’s degree in fisheries science. Outside of her work, Dr. Siddiqui volunteers as an editorial board member of IEAM (Integrated environmental assessment and management- A quarterly publication of the society of environmental toxicology and chemistry (SETAC)) and International Journal of Environmental Sustainability and Green Technologies (IJESGT).

Lastly, we now have a third junior editor: Joshua Gruver. Joshua has a B.S. in Biology (with a marine emphasis) from Cal Poly Humboldt. Most of his professional work has been with salmonids on the north coast of California including juvenile snorkel dives, identification of all life stages of salmonids, spawning surveys, operating a DIDSON sonar on the Eel River, electrofishing, habitat typing, etc. Currently, he works in the Lake and Streambed Alteration Program conducting environmental review of the notifications and on-site inspections for cannabis-related activities.

Ange Darnell Baker, PhD
Editor-in-Chief
California Fish and Wildlife Journal