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California WaterBlog

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  • The Little Shasta River: A model for sustaining our national heritage

    by Ann Willis, Rob Lusardi, Alex Hart, Susan Hart, Blair Hart, Andrew Braugh, Amy Campbell, Ada Fowler Rancher: farms. Conservationist: fish. Researcher: science. Too often, identity is used to divide us. Stereotypes are used to stake out conflicting positions. It’s a zero-sum approach that ignores the commonality of our natural – and national – heritage.…

  • Preliminary Analysis of Hurricane Harvey Flooding in Harris County, Texas

    by Nicholas Pinter, Nicholas Santos, and Rui Hui Located in Harris County, Texas, Houston is the 4th most populous city in the US.  The flooding now unfolding in the Houston area is a human and economic disaster likely to rank with Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy among the worst in US history.  At the present moment,…

  • Trump Killed Obama’s Flood Protection Rule Two Weeks Ago

    by Nicholas Pinter This post was originally published as an op-ed in Fortune. Whether or not you like President Donald Trump, the current administration has not been gifted with great timing. Just 10 days before Hurricane Harvey made landfall, the White House rescinded one of the most progressive flood-risk management tools on the books, an…

  • We hold our convenient truths to be self-evident – Dangerous ideas in California water

    by Jay Lund Success in water management requires broad agreement and coalitions.  But people often seem to group themselves into communities of interests and ideology, which see complex water problems differently.  Each group tends to hold different truths to be self-evident, as outlined below. These beliefs, when firmly held, do not stand up to scientific…

  • Habitat Preferences of various Delta species

    Like fish, the different human professions involved in the Delta have different habitat preferences: Lawyers: high turbidity and fear, complex egosystems, either high and cynical levels of expectation, abundant funds Engineers: high clarity, data-rich nutrient sources, high expectation concentrations, abundant funds Biologists: thrives on uncertainty and inconclusiveness, extreme biodiversity, highly dynamic ecosystems with complex structure,…

  • California WaterFix and Delta Smelt

    by Peter Moyle and James Hobbs The delta smelt is on a trajectory towards extinction in the wild.  Heading into 2017, the spawning adult population was at an all-time low although this past wet winter has apparently seen a small resurgence.  However, increasingly warm summer temperatures in the Delta may dampen any upswing.  Given the…

  • Small, self-sufficient water systems continue to battle a hidden drought

    by Amanda Fencl and Meghan Klasic California’s drought appears over, at least above ground. As of April 2017, reservoirs were around 2 million acre feet above normal with record breaking snowpack . This is great news for the 75% of Californians that get their drinking water from large, urban surface water suppliers. Groundwater, however, takes longer to…

  • Fish, flows, and 5937 – legal challenges on the Santa Maria River

    by Karrigan Bork, JD, PhD Driving down the 101, you cross a half-mile long bridge over the Santa Maria River into the city of Santa Maria, California. It’s a large bridge, with big levees to constrain the river on either end. But the Santa Maria River, like many southern California rivers, is dry throughout much…

  • Water wasted to the sea?

    by James E. Cloern, Jane Kay, Wim Kimmerer, Jeffrey Mount, Peter B. Moyle, and Anke Mueller-Solger This article originally appeared in the journal San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science.   If we farmed the Central Valley or managed water supplies for San Francisco, San Jose or Los Angeles, we might think that fresh water flowing from…

  • A simplified method to classify streams and improve California’s water management

    by Belize Lane, Sam Sandoval, and Sarah Yarnell Alterations to the natural flow regime for human water management activities have degraded river ecosystems worldwide. Such alterations are particularly destructive in regions with highly variable climates like California, where native riverine species are highly adapted to natural flooding and drought disturbances. In California, less than 2%…

  • Reflections on Cadillac Desert

    by Jay Lund In 1986, when Mark Reisner published his book Cadillac Desert, I had just begun professing on water management. The book went “viral,” before the word viral had its present-day internet-intoxicated meaning.  The book offered a compelling revisionist history and understanding of water development in the American West, based on economic self-interest, ideology,…

  • San Joaquin Valley Water Supplies – Unavoidable Variability and Uncertainty

    by Brad Arnold1, Alvar Escriva-Bou2, and Jay Lund1 1 UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences 2 Public Policy Institute of California Passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) and the recent drought have brought attention to chronic shortages of water in the San Joaquin Valley. Although the portfolio of water flows available to the…

  • Irrigation Management in the Western States, seen from overseas

    by Fandi P. Nurzaman The transformation of the western United States by irrigation offers hope for developing countries looking for models to improve their irrigation system for food security or agricultural prosperity. The transformation of the American West from barren desert and low value grazing into one of the largest agriculture areas in the United…

  • Summer Snowmelt Safety – Know the Flow Before You Go

    By Megan Nguyen As recently as this weekend, winter storms have brought much snow to the Sierra Nevada after five years of drought. Warm temperatures have begun to melt the mountain snow that will flow down the valley through a network of rivers. The recreation opportunities seems endless: Mammoth Resort announced they plan to stay…

  • Blacklock Marsh: Tidal Habitat No Panacea for Thoughtful Restoration

    by John Durand and Peter Moyle Returning open tidal exchange to diked lands is a primary goal of Delta restoration, driven by the 2008 Biological Opinion from USFWS. This document requires 8000 acres of tidal and subtidal habitat to be created. California EcoRestore is coordinating with state and federal agencies to restore at least 30,000…

  • Better Information Can Help the Environment

    by Henry McCann and Alvar Escriva-Bou This blog was originally posted on the Public Policy Institute’s Viewpoints blog. We know that California’s aquatic species are at risk from a host of stressors and that drought pushes them closer to the brink. Yet there are significant gaps in our understanding of key factors affecting ecosystem health…

  • The Future of California’s Unique Salmon and Trout: Good News, Bad News

    by Robert Lusardi, Peter Moyle, Patrick Samuel, and Jacob Katz California is a hot spot for endemic species, those found nowhere else in the world.  Among these species are 20 kinds of salmon and trout. That is an astonishing number considering California is also literally a hot-spot in terms of summer temperatures and that these…

  • Facing Extinction II: Making hard decisions

    by Jason Baumsteiger and Peter Moyle In part I of our blog, we projected a bleak future for many freshwater fishes, especially in California. Some difficult decisions will need to be made to prevent extinctions or to verify them.  However these decisions will rely on answers to one sweeping question: When is a species, in…

  • Facing extinction: California fishes

    by Peter Moyle and Jason Baumsteiger At least two species of California fishes appear to be facing imminent extinction in the wild: delta smelt and winter-run Chinook salmon.  These species could join about 57 other North American fishes declared extinct. If we are fortunate, these species will continue to scrape by with small populations, maintained…

  • GRA’s Contemporary Groundwater Issues Council weighs in on BMPs for Groundwater Sustainability Plans

    by Thomas Harter, Vicki Kretsinger Grabert, Reid Bryson, and Tim Parker On May 26, 2016, eight days after the California Water Commission voted to approve emergency regulations for Groundwater Sustainability Plans, the Groundwater Resources Association (GRA) held the sixth annual workshop of the Contemporary Groundwater Issues Council (CGIC) to address a closely related component of Sustainable Groundwater…

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