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California WaterBlog

Previous Posts

1–2 minutes

  • 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…

  • Day 4 – The Ghost of Carp-mas Past!

    By Kim Luke . . . Back in 2019, I began a project called the Carp Dependent Ecosystem Urgent Management (Carp-DEUM) Project. I started this project as an undergraduate and continued it as a junior specialist and graduate student until 2022. The project was focused on the common carp (Cyprinus carpio) population in the UC…

  • Day 3 – An Ode to Gulls

    By Lynette Williams Duman . . . There is no better cure for the winter blues than looking at birds, and there is no better group of birds to look at in the winter than gulls. In California, winter is the time of massive gull flocks that will commute between landfills, beaches, rice fields, reservoirs,…

  • Day 2 – Fish Eye View

    By Miranda Bell-Tilcock . . . That’s no moon.  That is the lens of a fish eye. While it looms large in the photo, this lens is tiny, approximately 3-5mm in diameter, similar to a small bead on a friendship bracelet. How did we even capture such a zoomed in photo of a small lens?…

  • Day 1 – Introducing “12 Days of CWS”

    By Christine A. Parisek and Miranda Bell-Tilcock . . . The California WaterBlog celebrates its 15th anniversary this January 2026, and so we thought we’d try out something a little special and festive this month. This December, we’re piloting a new short-post format series that will open up a small window into a day in…

  • What’s next in river science? Takeaways from the International Symposium of River Science (ISRS) conference

    By Miranda Bell-Tilcock and Sarah Yarnell . . . A big thank you to everyone who attended the International Symposium of River Science (ISRS) conference, hosted by the Center for Watershed Sciences (CWS)!  The International Symposium of River Science (ISRS) conference took place October 6th–9th and featured 4 days of speakers hailing from across the…

  • Nine California Water Rites

    By Jay Lund . . . “Rite” noun:1. a religious or other solemn ceremony or act.2. a social custom, practice, or conventional act. California has complex and hallowed water rites.  Here are some: Perhaps Western water rhetoric might become more concise by referring to these now-numbered rites. About the Author Jay Lund is an Emeritus Distinguished Professor…

  • Announcing the International Fish Passage Conference 2026

    By Nann A. Fangue . . . UC Davis will host the International Fish Passage Conference on May 4-8, 2026. Please join us for this opportunity to engage with fish passage practitioners working across academia, government, utilities, consultancy, and other professional organizations while enjoying the beautiful springtime of Davis and the greater Sacramento region. The…

  • Physics and Chemistry of San Francisco Bay Sediments – Lectures by Professor Ray B. Krone, 1991

    By Jay Lund, Jamie Anderson, William Fleenor, and Fabián A. Bombardelli San Francisco Bay is a tidally-energetic estuary where clay muds are the dominant sediment building wetlands, depositing in channels and harbors, and responding to sea level rise since San Francisco Bay was most recently inundated about 8,000 years ago.  These sediments mainly come from…

  • Think Now about the Unthinkable in US Disaster Management

    By Nicholas Pinter and David Conrad In a turbulent year for US disaster management, changes that seemed unthinkable a few months ago are now coming to pass.  California leaders should be planning proactive responses now. The California Flood Future Panel is now assessing potential impacts of federal changes to US disaster management, particularly considering proposed…

  • The search for flow metrics that support fish success – case study in Scott River, Siskiyou County, California

    By Claire Kouba, Sarah Yarnell, Leland Scantlebury, and Thomas Harter How much water do fish really need, and is it possible to ask the fish? One approach to answering this question is to monitor the abundance of a local fish population over many years, and determine the degree to which observed streamflow correlates with fishery…

  • It’s Elementary My Dear Walleye

    By George Whitman, who is dressed as Dr. John Watson this Halloween While this Sherlockian mystery is fictional, it is inspired by a real event in which a Walleye was illegally introduced into Lake Cascade, Idaho. The events described below parallel the actual research conducted to uncover its origins.  Looking back over the notes of…

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