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California WaterBlog

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  • The Coming Droughts of California in 2017 – November 27, 2016

    By Jay Lund California is a big diverse place. California probably will experience droughts this year of different types in different places, and no drought at all in some places, simultaneously.  Even if conditions this year are very wet, with flooding, parts of California will have drought issues. (This is what makes California a great…

  • Human Use of Restored and Naturalized Delta Landscapes

    By Brett Milligan, Assistant Professor, UC Davis Landscape Architecture and Sustainable Environmental Design and Alejo Kraus-Polk, PhD Geography candidate, UC Davis Current legislation and plans for the California Delta call for restoring tens of thousands of acres of aquatic and terrestrial habitat, which will require large changes in land uses and cultural patterns.  In addition…

  • Allocating a Share of San Joaquin River Water to the Environment Shows Promise

    By Jeffrey Mount, Brian Gray, Ellen Hanak, PPIC Water Policy Center, Peter Moyle, UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences Introduction In September 2016, the State Water Board released its draft plan for new environmental flow requirements in the San Joaquin River watershed. The board’s proposal contains a novel—and controversial—recommendation. Instead of following the traditional approach…

  • The North Delta Habitat Arc: an Ecosystem Strategy for Saving Fish

    Peter Moyle, John Durand, Amber Manfree.  Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California, Davis. Delta native fishes are in desperate condition. Over 90% of fish sampled by diverse means belong to non-native species.  Native species such as delta smelt are on a trajectory to extinction.  If we are going to reverse this trend, we need…

  • The Horror of a Salmon’s Wheel of Misfortune

    By Miranda Tilcock Salmon in the Stream 10 little salmon eggs, resting in a redd 1 was covered in silt, now the egg is dead 9 little alevin, with their yolks attached, 1 was washed away, and never made it back 8 little salmon fry, looking for something to munch 1 wandered too far, now…

  • Evaluating California’s Adjudicated Groundwater Basins in the SGMA Era

    By Ruth Langridge, University of California – Santa Cruz [i] Groundwater is a critical resource in California. While the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) established new requirements and increased state oversight for many overdrafted basins,[ii] groundwater basins adjudicated before the passage of SGMA are exempt from the statute’s requirements[iii]. Groundwater adjudication is where water…

  • Water is for fighting over? – a review of John Fleck’s recent book

    By Jay Lund Most expressions on Western water issues are reflex or studied advocacy favoring a single viewpoint or opposing other viewpoints.  A minority provide thoughtful and reasonably balanced insights.  John Fleck’s new book, “Water is for fighting over” is at the 1% extreme of thoughtful readable pieces on western water.  The book is one…

  • Comparing Delta Consumptive Use: Preliminary Results from a Blind Model Comparison

    By Josué Medellín-Azuara, Kyaw Tha Paw U, Yufang Jin, Quinn Hart, Eric Kent, Jenae’ Clay, Andy Wong, Andrew Bell, Martha Anderson, Daniel Howes, Forrest Melton, Tariq Kadir, Morteza Orang, Michelle M. Leinfelder-Miles, J. Andres Morande, William Li, and Jay R. Lund As California works to improve its official accounting of water for a range of…

  • Drought Prospects in California for the New 2017 Water Year – October 1, 2016

    This blog post has been superseded by more recent storms this water year.  See the January 2017 Tails of California’s Drought.  This older post remains of some retrospective significance in how slow and fast drought conditions can change – Jay Lund By Jay Lund Happy New Water Year 2017! Hopefully everyone has recovered from their…

  • How much water was pumped from the Delta’s Banks Pumping Plant? A mystery.

    By Jay Lund As the old saying goes, “Someone with one watch knows what time it is, someone with two watches is never sure.” Water accounting is fundamental to water management, but is not easy.  But any accounting is more difficult and expensive if it is less organized.  To illustrate this point, let’s look at…

  • How ecogeomorphology changed my life

    by Tyler Goodearly For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to study fish. Like my idols, Jacques Cousteau, or Steve Irwin, or Jeff Corwin, I too had the “fish itch,” and I knew I must follow this passion. By the time I was in the seventh grade I had devised a 10-year plan…

  • Ecogeomorphology: A Transformative Expedition Education

    This week, the Center for Watershed Sciences is proud to feature our flagship education course, Ecogeomorphology. What began as a collaboration between then-Professors Jeffrey Mount and Peter Moyle to introduce students to cross-discipline thinking in expedition settings has developed into a transformative opportunity for the select graduate and undergraduate students to experience a range of settings…

  • California WaterBlog survey and recommended reads

    by Ann Willis Editor’s note: The survey link is now closed. Thank you to all who participated! If you have feedback, feel free to comment directly on this post. A. Willis 9/22/2016 As the water year comes to an end, we are curious about what topics California Waterblog readers would like to see addressed. Were…

  • New Baton Rouge flood map show limits of current risk and planning methods

    by Nicholas Pinter, Nicholas Santos, Rui Hui, Kathleen Schaefer The flooding in Baton Rouge and surrounding areas of Louisiana is a major disaster, claiming an estimated 13 lives and displacing more than 100,000 people from their homes. The National Weather Service reported that rainfall in Louisiana this past week reached up to a 1000-year event…

  • Scott Valley pioneers instream flow and groundwater management for reconciled water use

    by Gus Tolley The Scott River is one of California’s four major undammed streams and important spawning habitat for coho (a species listed as “threatened”) and Chinook salmon. This peaceful and pastoral agricultural valley is at the center of several water-related conflicts and lawsuits. However, it is also pioneering a range of instream flow and…

  • Economic Analysis of the 2016 California Drought for Agriculture

    by Josué Medellín-Azuara, Duncan MacEwan, Richard E. Howitt, Daniel A. Sumner, and Jay R. Lund The drought continues for California’s agriculture in 2016, but with much less severe and widespread impacts than in the two previous drought years, 2014 and 2015.  Winter and spring were wetter in the Sacramento Valley, to the extent of several…

  • Visualizing Flows – A Sandbox Experience with Modeling

    by Jeanette Newmiller In winter quarter 2016, Dr. Colleen Bronner of the UC Davis Department of Civil Engineering gathered a small group of graduate students and posed a challenge. To support new education standards involving teaching engineering methods throughout K-12 education, Dr. Bronner asked the graduate students design education outreach modules that reflected their research…

  • Local groundwater management in France and California

    by Corentin Girard   France and California have different environmental, agricultural, economic, institutional, and cultural contexts. However, both are moving to more local management of groundwater. In California, the 2014 Groundwater Sustainable Management Act required creation of  local Groundwater Sustainable Agencies (GSA) and Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSP) to end groundwater overdraft and other undesirable conditions…

  • Better accounting begets better water management

    by Jay Lund Sustainable use of groundwater in California will require major changes in groundwater management, use, and recharge.  Under the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, groundwater basins as a whole are responsible for sustainability.  But millions of people and thousands of governments and private land managers must recharge more water and pump less to…

  • St. Helena, California: Dealing with a Field-of-Dreams Levee, Residual Risk, and a Flood of Controversy

    by Nicholas Pinter A new $37.2[1] million levee in the town of St. Helena, on the floodplain of the Napa River, has a colorful history and has been stirring local acrimony since its inception.  This project illustrates both the attraction of levee protection, in this case protecting a low-income neighborhood (“low income” by Napa standards)…

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