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California WaterBlog

Previous Posts

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  • Resilient California Fishes: Sacramento Pikeminnow

    By Peter B. Moyle and Thomas L. Taylor . . . The fresh waters of California support a diverse, highly endemic fish fauna. Many of them are on extinction trajectories. In this “Resilient California Fishes” blog series, we discuss native species that have sufficient resiliency to keep populations large and sustainable, even in highly altered…

  • Getting Our Feet Wet: Bringing Photography Students into the Yolo Bypass 

    By Eliza Gregory  . . .   The first time I heard the phrase “flood-based ecosystem,” I was in New South Wales, and I was confused.   I was on a 4000 km drive around the Murray Darling Basin, the largest watershed in Australia. I was with a group from Engineers Without Borders Australia, who luckily had an expansive idea of who would be fun to have along (shout out to Claire…

  • Lessons Learned Measuring and Modeling Evaporation across California

    By Dennis Baldocchi and Carlos Wang . . . Rainfall and snow falling across the state have several fates. One is runoff to rivers, reservoirs and the ocean. Another is storage in the snowpack, soil and groundwater. The third is evaporation from vegetation, soil and open water bodies. Historically, the rates and amounts of evaporation…

  • The truth is NOT in the eye of the beholder!

    By Alexandra Chu and Danhong Ally Li . . . For those familiar with fish archival tissues, fish otoliths are likely one of the first things that come to mind. Otoliths are indeed remarkable tools, offering insights into the water chemistry and trace elements the fish encountered while they were alive. However, we want to…

  • A Flood of Hope

     By Ted Sommer . . . My most inspiring bike ride this past year was not on a mountain or in some exotic destination. It was sixteen flat and muddy valley miles under overcast skies. My destination was a new concrete structure designed to reconnect the Sacramento River with its adjacent floodplain, the Yolo Bypass.…

  • 2025 Annual Report: Highlights from the Center for Watershed Sciences 

    The Center for Watershed Sciences unveils its inaugural annual report, featuring a letter from Director Dr. Karrigan Börk, insights into ongoing research, summaries of events, and the 2025 Strategic Plan. The report also highlights popular blogs, significant grants, and the California WaterBlog’s 15th anniversary.

  • Students Take the Stage at the Spinning Salmon Showcase

    By Becca VanArnam, Peggy Harte, Rachel Johnson, Carson Jeffres, and Miranda A. Lowe-Webb . . . Spinning Salmon Program California’s Chinook salmon face all kinds of challenges, from drought and warming to blocked migration routes. But in recent years, scientists have also been tracking a quieter threat: thiamine deficiency. This condition, caused by low levels…

  • Not dry, but drought remains an issue, mid-wet season 2026

    By Jay Lund . . . People in and out of California love the attention that comes with declaring droughts and the end of droughts. Given the many types and locations of droughts in California, it is rare to have no drought anywhere in the state. Yet, for the last two weeks, the UC Drought…

  • Resilient California Fishes: Tule Perch

    By Peter B. Moyle and Tom L. Taylor . . . This is the second blog in a series on native California fishes that seem to be doing well despite multiple threats. They are still common and widely distributed, despite major changes to their habitats. The Tule Perch (Hysterocarpaus traskii) is an interesting species to…

  • Three Generations of Stewardship: Exploring the Legacy of Environmental Protection on Putah Creek

    By Petrea Moyle Marchand . . . This is a cross-post from a blog featured on Consero Solutions. After the indefinite cancellation of school at the start of the Covid-19 quarantine, my Dad, Peter Moyle, offered to teach my kids about Putah Creek. A fish biologist and University of California, Davis professor who started studying the…

  • Where are they now: Dana Myers

    . . . “Where are they now” is a series on the California WaterBlog. The series will celebrate the many alumni who got their start at the Center for Watershed Sciences (CWS) and have now gone on to bigger and better things. Blog posts from the “Where are they now” series will be peppered throughout…

  • Future Ancestors of Freshwater Fishes in California

    By Peter B. Moyle . . . * This is a re-post of a blog originally published 09/17/2023. The Challenge We are living in the Anthropocene, an era being defined by global mass extinctions caused by humanity. While on-going and impending extinctions of birds and other terrestrial vertebrates gain the most attention, the situation with…

  • Day 12 – California Water: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

    By Karrigan Börk and Jay Lund . . . California is full of gifts that keep on giving. California water provides for a bounty of social, environmental, economic, and cultural benefits. Water is the lifeblood of California farms, which have created one of the world’s great agricultural economies. Water carves our state’s beautiful landscapes and…

  • Day 11 – The Gift of Students

    By Karrigan Börk . . . You might think that teaching the same thing again every year would get old, or that taking field trips to the same location year after year would be repetitive. And, sure, gearing up to teach landlord-tenant law for the nth time can be a bit daunting.  But I’ve found…

  • Day 10 – One lucky penny

    By Christine A. Parisek . . . Imagine a time you were standing at the edge of a creek – perhaps small pebbles and cobblestone were stacked along the shallow water edge, aquatic vegetation pushed its way in between, and a light breeze rustled the trees around you as the water swirled and lapped playfully…

  • Day 9 – A Visit From S.T. Nicholas

    By Kimberly Evans . . . ‘Twas a morning of field work, when all through our vanNot a researcher was sleeping, and to Suisun Marsh we ran;Our waders and boots folded, all tucked in with care,In hopes that bountiful fish, in our seines, would be there; The researchers were nestled all snug on our boat…

  • Day 8 – Haikus

    We invited haiku submissions from CWS members and friends to be a part of the 8th day of our California WaterBlog series, “12 Days of CWS“. A haiku is a traditional Japanese three-line poem (5-7-5 syllables) that focuses on capturing a moment, feeling, or image. We hope you enjoy… and leave us your own haiku in the…

  • Day 7 – Pickles and Hidden Gems: The UC Davis Fish Collection

    By Rachel Alsheikh . . . On the UC Davis campus, past the Watershed Sciences Building, past the cows and the Arboretum, there’s a nondescript building with a locked room. It’s a secret treasure trove: shelves upon shelves stacked with more than 8,000 jars of fish specimens preserved in ethanol. At over 30,000 fishes, it’s…

  • Day 6 – Recharging Resilience: Balancing climate grief with curiosity and purpose

    By Kira Zalis Waldman  . . . Teaching hydrology means teaching in a world where climate awareness, and inherently climate grief, often walk into the classroom before I do. Our lectures revisit now familiar concerns: shrinking snowpack, overdrafted aquifers, and the uneven and unjust burdens so many California communities carry. The weight of that knowledge…

  • Day 5 – A Day in the Life of an Indoor Ecologist

    By Jonathan Walter . . . Many ecologists spend substantial time conducting research in the field – but for some of us, our skillsets (e.g., statistics, mathematical models, data science) lend themselves to a different, more indoor career. Here’s what a typical workday might look like: 6:00 AM: Start the day with coffee on the…

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