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California WaterBlog

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  • What lies behind the dam? In some cases, self-sustaining salmon

    By K. Martin Perales Chinook salmon are a remarkably adaptable species. There is good reason to believe there are multiple populations of landlocked Chinook salmon completing their entire life cycle above Central Valley dams. We recently documented spawning above six of thirteen reservoirs that have been stocked with Chinook. In some cases, populations have persisted for…

  • Wanted: student scientists looking for inspiration and adventure

    By Sarah Yarnell and Ann Willis Every spring for the past 12 years, a class of a dozen or so UC Davis undergraduates ride a river in the American West for a learning adventure like none other in their college life. Whether rafting the Colorado through the Grand Canyon, plying the undammed Skeena in British…

  • ENSO it’s raining. The 2016 Drought so far – February 1

    by Jay Lund Summary of conditions January 2016 has been much wetter than the previous Januaries during this drought. Precipitation is modestly above average, as is snowpack, and climatic conditions remain promising. The largest reservoirs are mostly fuller than a year ago, although not nearly to average conditions for this time of year. Groundwater is…

  • Why care about native freshwater fish?

    By Jason Baumsteiger Even with a strong El Niño year, there are no assurances the drought is over. Clearly we need a better plan for future droughts and that plan needs to include provisions for native freshwater fish.  But why include native fish? There are many reasons.  Many feel that native fish have a right…

  • Eager for rain – and floods – on California’s floodplain playground: the lower Cosumnes River

    By Andrew Nichols California’s drought plays on, and a recent series of storms to start the New Year have done little to change this broken record.  However, promising weather conditions suggest a change of tune may be coming soon.  This is exciting news for drought-stricken California, bringing hope of full reservoirs and an extended spring…

  • Science takes flight: aerial imagery provides new opportunities and insights

    By Devon Lambert Remote sensing is all the rage as we start the New Year, largely due to its ability to exponentially increase our areas of analysis for research. What used to take us weeks to survey with traditional field methods can be done in as little as a few hours, sometimes without even leaving…

  • ENSO it Begins? The 2016 Drought – so far – January 3

    By Jay Lund “One afternoon they take me … to witness a great religious ceremony. It is the invocation to the gods for rain.” John Wesley Powell (1895, p. 338) 2016 starts with slightly above average precipitation and snowpack and promising climatic conditions, but a long way to go… Summary of conditions California remains in…

  • The Earth is Falling! – Land Subsidence and Water Management in California

    By Jay Lund, Thomas Harter, Rob Gailey, Rick Frank, and Graham Fogg Groundwater problems are mostly invisible.  However, as California has come to rely more on groundwater during the drought, land subsidence from groundwater drawdown and accumulating overdraft has become a visible concern in some areas. Some of this subsidence has been dramatic. Almost 4…

  • Comments to SWRCB: Regulation for Measuring and Reporting Water Diversion

    By Henry McCann, Elisa Blanco, Alvar Escriva-Bou, Ellen Hanak, Jay Lund, Bonnie Magnuson-Skeels, Andrew Tweet[1] Governor Brown signed Senate Bill 88 on June 24, 2015, adding provisions to the California Water Code for stricter measurement and reporting for surface water diverters. Last week, the State Water Resources Control Board published a draft Emergency Regulation for…

  • Improving mandatory State cutbacks of urban water use for a 5th year of drought

    By Jay R. Lund There is usually great uncertainty about when a drought will end, but certainty that longer droughts bring tougher economic and ecosystem conditions as water in aquifers and reservoirs is further depleted.  Long droughts, like the current one, also bring opportunities to use water more efficiently, based on lessons from the drought so…

  • California’s groundwater – basics, laws, and beyond

    By Chris Austin Groundwater has been receiving a lot of attention lately, and for good reason. California is the heaviest groundwater user in the nation, and our use is increasing after recent, multiple dry years. The Sustainable Groundwater Supply Act of 2014 set a fundamentally new state water policy to manage and monitor the state’s…

  • Rising to El Niño’s challenges – and opportunities

    By Nicholas Pinter The much-anticipated El Niño has now arrived, with increased potential for heavy rain and snowfall, including the possibility of localized flooding, mudslides and other hazards. While extreme storms, flooding and other natural disasters challenge society to protect life and property from damage, they also present opportunities. Floods in particular often catalyze positive…

  • Keep California’s water ‘Maven’ afloat

    The nonprofit Maven’s Notebook has become the daily go-to place for the latest California water news and information, including meeting summaries, keynote speeches and digests of ponderous documents. It’s a one-person operation, and that person, Chris Austin (aka “Maven”), needs your donations to stay afloat. Helping Maven’s Notebook stay nonprofit helps everyone in California water policy and…

  • Measuring the effectiveness of ‘environmental flows’

    By Ann Willis and Andrew Nichols In the early fall of 2012, an unusually large number of Chinook salmon were returning to the Klamath River, straddling the California-Oregon border. Many of those fish were expected to swim upstream to the Shasta River, prompting emergency actions to increase stream flows in the upstream tributary. When Chinook…

  • Finally, a one-stop shop for locating California’s fishes

    By Nick Santos “Where?” The question is foundational to conservation biology and policy. To take a conservation action, you need to know where to act. And, yet, for decades stewards and researchers of aquatic fauna have been sorely lacking in tools to systematically collect, store and map data on where California’s freshwater fishes are located.…

  • Watering up Halloween, California style

    By Ghost Writer What better way to spook Californians this Halloween than to appear as a slobbering “Godzilla El Niño.” Or draped in a bedsheet as Godzilla’s opponent, “The Blob,” the amoeba-shaped patch of unusually warm Pacific water blocking storms in California. Too scary? Not to worry. Researchers at UC Davis’ Center for Watershed Sciences…

  • An update on California fishes of ‘special concern’

    By Peter Moyle Three-fourths of California’s native fishes are now officially designated as being in trouble, or potentially so. The good news is that not all of these species – 93 of the total 123 native fishes today – have to go the way of winter-run Chinook salmon or delta smelt, which are verging on…

  • Capturing El Niño for the underground

    By Philip Bachand, Helen Dahlke, William Horwath, Thomas Harter and Toby O’Geen A much-anticipated “Godzilla” El Niño this winter may refill California’s drought-diminished reservoirs, but it won’t do much to restock the severely depleted aquifers we rely upon to get by during droughts. One reason for this is the sheer depth of California’s precipitation deficit…

  • Urban water conservation for the birds

    By Jay Lund People who save water like to know their conserving is doing some good, such as sustaining economic growth, building municipal reserves for longer droughts or supporting the environment. But many urban residents are concerned their water savings will go to uses they value less — such as supplying more wasteful customers, new…

  • Time-lapse river videos expose nature in the raw

    By Ryan Peek Thanks to its Mediterranean climate, California swings from one extreme to another — severe drought, raging wildfires, big floods. These forces often interact and amplify, as we saw all too well this past summer in the scorching of hundreds of thousands of extremely dry forested acres, with the loss of homes and lives.…

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