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California WaterBlog

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  • Happy New Water Year 2027! – following three years of unusually average California hydrology

    By Jay Lund . . . October 1 marks the beginning of California’s new Water Year (WY). Water years here run from October 1 until September 30 of the next calendar year and are named for the calendar year of the bulk of the water year (January – October). October 1 is also the nominal…

  • Are you going to the 2026 Bay-Delta Science Conference?

    By CWS researchers . . .  From September 28–30, researchers from the Center for Watershed Sciences (CWS) will join colleagues from across California at the 2026 Bay-Delta Science Conference in Sacramento.  The conference brings together scientists, policymakers, engineers, resource managers, knowledge holders, community advocates, artists, and others to think about the future of California’s Bay-Delta.…

  • Old Readings on California Water

    By Jay Lund . . . An earlier version of this post was published on the California WaterBlog in 2020. . . .   Today’s water struggles have deep roots. Here is a small collection of older writings on California water, the youngest of which is still older than me.  Beyond historical interest, these early…

  • A Guide for New California Water Wonks

    by Jay Lund . . . An earlier version of this post was published on the California WaterBlog in 2023. . . . Water is a universal foundation for every problem and opportunity in California.  Most people use it every day, yet even experts with decades of experience don’t know it all.   (Alas, too many…

  • A secret to survival for California’s most endangered salmon

    By Michael Milstein . . . Editor’s note: This post was originally published at: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/secret-survival-californias-most-endangered-salmon . . . Traditional field research combined with new technology has revealed a secret to the survival of juvenile salmon as they form in their eggs, especially in low-water years when many do not survive, new research from NOAA Fisheries…

  • Tidal Restoration Round-Up: Insights from Two Studies in Suisun Marsh and the Delta

    By Elsie Platzer & Lynette Williams Duman . . . A friendship forged in mud On an unseasonably warm day in February of 2022, after being acquainted for approximately eight hours, we found ourselves canoeing across Big Break near Antioch, California. As we paddled against the wind we were busily dodging bass boats and floating…

  • Did the earliest human civilization have river basin management and reservoir operations? – Liangzhu Civilization of 3,100-2,300 BC

    By Jay Lund, Shumin Liang, and Tingju Zhu . . . Every civilization had to organize the management of water across diverse populations and generations.  Their histories offer perspective and relevance for water management today and in the future.  Achieving human health, wealth, social justice ideals, and ecological sustainability all depend on managing water for…

  • Meet California’s preeminent fish squeezer – Dr. Peter B. Moyle

    By Jeffrey Mount . . . [Editor’s note: This article first appeared on California Fly Fisher as “Profile: Dr. Peter B. Moyle — Meet California’s Preeminent Fish Squeezer.”] For those of us who work on rivers, we often have nicknames for each other’s professions. I’m a rock kicker (fluvial geomorphologist), for example. But let me introduce…

  • California’s “Lost Salmon” May Be Returning

    By Rachael E. Ryan, Cho R. Adolfo, Emily K. Chen, Stephanie M. Carlson . . . California’s “Uncommon” Salmonid Amidst the decline of California’s salmonid populations is an unexpected uptick of pink salmon. In recent years, biologists monitoring California waterways have been reporting sightings of pink salmon. We became curious about these observations; were they…

  • Where are they now: Francine De Castro

    By Francine De Castro . . . I worked in the Aquatic Research Collective (ARC) lab with Dr. John Durand from 2019–2021 as an undergrad student, and my duties mostly included zooplankton ID with the occasional foray into the field to assist with the long-term Suisun and Arc sampling projects. My favorite memory as a…

  • UC Davis Alumnus Kaveh Madani wins the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize

    By Jay Lund . . . Professor Kaveh Madani of United Nations University has won this year’s Stockholm Water Prize, often known as the “Nobel Prize for Water”. (The official announcement is here.) “The Stockholm Water Foundation and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recognise Professor Kaveh Madani for his groundbreaking research and global leadership…

  • Water extinguishes fire, but how does fire affect water? (Part 2 of 2)

    By Brandon Ertis . . . Last week, we introduced our research topic and question (i.e., how does fire impact water?), identified relevant data sources, and determined our pre- and post-fire precipitation events. Following that, we assembled hourly streamflow data from the USGS gages1 and aligned the flows to the start of each precipitation event…

  • Water extinguishes fire, but how does fire affect water? (Part 1 of 2)

    By Brandon Ertis . . . Wildfires in California are increasing in frequency and intensity, resulting in a greater extent of areas being directly burned or otherwise impacted in recent years. I work for a water resources consulting firm called Davids Engineering (DE), and we have an office in Chico in the beautiful Sacramento Valley.…

  • Wet Season’s end for Water Year 2026

    By Jay Lund . . . California’s Water Year runs from October 1 of the previous calendar year through September 30.  California’s “wet” season is traditionally October 1 – April 1.  The rest of the year (and often parts of the “wet” season) is usually dry.  We can get major storms into April, but often…

  • A Tributary Approach to Learning the Colorado River

    By Kira J.Z. Waldman, Daniel Rothberg, and Lindsay Murdoch . . . A groundwater researcher, a water modeler, and a policy nerd walk into a gravel bar (on the Yampa River)… and decide to facilitate a seminar (at UC Davis) . . . If watersheds are dynamic systems, changing in flow and form over time,…

  • Resilient California Fishes: Lahontan Redside Shiners

    By Peter B. Moyle and Thomas L. Taylor . . . The fresh waters of California support a diverse, highly endemic fish fauna. Many of the native fishes are on extinction trajectories. In this blog series, however, we discuss native fishes that are not considered to be in trouble. Instead, they are native species that…

  • The Scourge of the Delta: Dredge It Up!

    By Madison Dunlap, Aidan Rafols, and John Durand . . . Overbite clams (Potamocorbula amurensis) are a small species of bivalve native to Eastern Asia (Figure 1). They have been present in the San Francisco Bay estuary since 1986, and given their ability to quickly multiply and spread, are considered highly invasive within this range…

  • Rethinking Western Cities and Water

    By Dave Owen . . . The popular mythology of water management often treats cities as the bad guys. We tend to condemn those cities–often in colorful terms–for their avarice, arrogance, and power, and those narratives have policy consequences. But they often miss the mark.  One of the oldest truisms of western water is that…

  • What’s the logic of “hydrological” – One of science’s petty debates

    By Jay Lund . . . I have always wondered, but have been too embarrassed to ask, “Are there any formal or informal differences between “hydrologic” and “hydrological”?” So I asked one of the oracles of our age, ChatGPT. Edited for length, here is what I got back: “Short answer: no formal difference in meaning—but…

  • Where are they now: Dylan Stompe

    “Where are they now” is a series on the California WaterBlog that celebrates the 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 our regular blog lineup, highlighting both…

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