By Christine Parisek
The California WaterBlog is completing its 11th year. As we enter 2023, we take a moment to to thank our many readers, partners, authors, and friends. The California WaterBlog’s central mission is to provide stimulating ideas and commentary on critical challenges of water issues, resource management, and ecosystem restoration, in a digestible form.

themes in 2022 WaterBlog titles.
In 2022, California WaterBlog published 49 blogs. This year, 64 unique authors contributed to California WaterBlog (an increase from last year), and on July 10th we surpassed our 500th blog post! The blog currently reaches readers in 74 countries worldwide with almost 14,000 subscribers and over 103,000 visitors this year. As usual, blog posts covered a breadth of themes, including Watershed outreach, the recent mass local die-off of white sturgeon, effect of drought on California’s intermittent streams, thiamine deficiency in salmon, native fishes and reservoirs, and being patient and persistent with nature.
Especially popular topics included California’s drought status and drinking water systems, environmental water rights, what to do when shift happens, a conservation bill you’ve never heard of [that] may be the most important in a generation (the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act), an exposé on the silent extinction of freshwater mussels, and farmer-researcher team science initiatives. We hope you continue enjoying CaliforniaWaterBlog and that the list below helps if you missed any blogposts.
Christine Parisek is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Group in Ecology at UC Davis and a science communications fellow at the Center for Watershed Sciences.
Table 1 (Further Reading). Top 17 blog posts in 2022, as ranked by “View” statistics.
Views | Title | Author |
6,128 | California’s 2022 Water Year – Both Wet and Dry | Jay Lund |
5,674 | Saving Clear Lake’s Endangered Chi | Peter Moyle and Thomas Taylor |
2,879 | Considerations for Developing An Environmental Water Right in California | Karrigan Börk, Andrew Rypel, Sarah Yarnell, Ann Willis, Peter Moyle, Josué Medellín-Azuara, Jay Lund, and Robert Lusardi |
2,820 | Drought Year Three in California, 2022 | Jay Lund |
2,746 | Who governs California’s drinking water systems? | Kristin Dobbin and Amanda Fencl |
2,580 | Continued drought early in a possibly wet year | Jay Lund |
2,283 | The Failed Recovery Plan for the Delta and Delta Smelt | Peter Moyle |
2,232 | Shift happens | Miranda Bell-Tilcock, Rachel Alsheikh, and Malte Willmes |
2,147 | A conservation bill you’ve never heard of may be the most important in a generation | Andrew Rypel |
1,957 | Follow the Water! | Jay Lund |
1,936 | Nature has solutions…What are they? And why do they matter? | Andrew Rypel |
1,758 | The Putah Creek Fish Kill: Learning from a Local Disaster | Alex Rabidoux, Max Stevenson, Peter Moyle, Mackenzie Miner, Lauren Hitt, Dennis Cocherell, Nann Fangue, and Andrew Rypel |
1,697 | Approaches to Water Planning | Jay Lund |
1,589 | Losing mussel mass – the silent extinction of freshwater mussels | Andrew Rypel |
1,483 | Five “F”unctions of the Central Valley Floodplain | Francheska Torres, Miranda Tilcock, Alexandra Chu, and Sarah Yarnell |
1,434 | Unlocking how juvenile Chinook salmon swim in California rivers | Rusty Holleman, Nann Fangue, Edward Gross, Michael Thomas, and Andrew Rypel |
1,434 | Rice & salmon, what a match! | Andrew Rypel, Derrick Alcott, Paul Buttner, Alex Wampler, Jordan Colby, Parsa Saffarinia, Nann Fangue, and Carson Jeffres |