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California WaterBlog

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  • 21st Century Delta: Reconciling the desired with the possible

    This is this first in an intermittent series of articles on the future of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. By Steven Culberson Estuaries are hard places to understand and even harder to explain. Estuarine scientists, myself included, have struggled to learn how changes in the San Francisco Estuary led to declining fish populations and waning productivity,…

  • The romance of rain barrels

    By Jay Lund Imagine capturing some of the heavy rain that has been draining off Northern California roofs lately to water yards this summer, for what will likely be a fourth year of drought. The drought has generated interest in household cisterns commonly known as “rain barrels” that collect and store rooftop runoff for when…

  • The California Drought of 2015: February

    Feb. 4, 2015 drought update on Capital Public Radio By Jay Lund Odds are exceedingly good that February will top January’s contribution to precipitation in California. It’s hard to be drier than what was essentially zero rain and snowfall last month. The state’s driest January on record dropped the Northern Sierra Precipitation Index down from…

  • How dam operators can breathe more life into rivers

    By Sarah Yarnell Dams are no friend to biodiversity. Once impounded, a river answers first and foremost to human needs, be it water supply, energy production or flood protection. Releases are measured and timed to satisfy these demands. As a result, the river downstream loses much of its natural variability in timing, volume and spread of…

  • A salmon success story during the California drought

    Looking back on 2014, it’s hard not to feel despair for California salmon. With drought-stricken rivers running dangerously warm and slow for spring migration, the government was giving millions of young hatchery salmon a lift to the Pacific by truck and barge. Come August, several streams in the Central Valley were drying up. Native fish…

  • The California Drought of 2015: January

    By Jay Lund The California Department of Water Resources does a great job assembling data that can give insights on water conditions during the ongoing drought. They update the information daily (which can be addictive for some of us) on the California Data Exchange Center website. Here are highlights of water conditions as of January…

  • Drought a ghost of Christmas past — and present

    By Peter Moyle I love this cartoon because it says so much about water and droughts in California. Alan Marciochi drew this during the 1976-77 drought. He knew what he was drawing. A farm boy from Los Banos with a degree in biology, Alan worked for me studying endangered Modoc suckers in remote northeastern corner of…

  • New environmentalism needed for California water

    By Jay Lund California needs a new environmentalism to set a more effective and sustainable green bar for the nation and even the world. For decades, we have taken a “just say no” approach to stop, prevent or blunt human encroachments onto the natural world – often rightly so. Early environmentalism needed lines in the…

  • Reconciling fish and fowl with floods and farming

    By Robyn Suddeth Floodplains are extremely productive habitats for native fish and birds, yet floodplains in California are cut off from rivers by levees and development. The loss of this severed habitat threatens many native species that evolved to take advantage of seasonal flooding. Ecologists’ traditional approach to this problem would be to recreate some…

  • How engineers see the water glass in California

    How do engineers see the water glass in California? The same as they did two years ago when this blog was first posted, though with today’s drought the glass is perhaps down to a quarter full — or three-quarters empty.  By Jay R. Lund Depending on your outlook, the proverbial glass of water is either…

  • Shaping water storage in California

    By Jay Lund, Maurice Hall and Anthony Saracino With the continuation of California’s historic drought and the recent passage of Proposition 1, the potential value of additional water storage in the state is an area of vigorous discussion. In a new study released today, we look at the different roles of storage in California’s integrated water system and…

  • Aquatic plants: unsung but prime salmon habitat

    By Robert Lusardi and Ann Willis For decades, California’s management and restoration of salmon and trout populations have focused on principles rooted in coastal redwood streams, mostly fed by rainfall runoff. These concepts portray ideal salmonid habitat as deep pools, shallow riffles and “large woody debris,” such as fallen trees and limbs. Recent studies on…

  • Groundwater security, for the long term

    By Lauren Adams Under recently enacted legislation, local agencies in California are required for the first time to manage groundwater pumping and recharge sustainably. The law empowers local groundwater agencies to manage and use groundwater “without causing undesirable results,” leaving it up to them to determine how to best achieve this goal. Within the next…

  • Trick or treat? Aliens at the door

    By Chris Bowman Many of the alien species invading California’s lakes and streams would make for wickedly good Halloween costumes. Take the Shokihaze goby, Tridentiger barbatus (above and right), a native of Asian now common in Suisun Bay and the lower Sacramento River. Its spiky stubble of whisker-like barbels about the mouth and cheeks defines “ugly.” And…

  • Flagging problem dams for fish survival

    By Ted Grantham and Peter Moyle This drought year, as in those past, California water regulators have given away to cities and farms some river flows critical to fish and wildlife. It’s a dicey tradeoff considering most of our native fishes are in trouble even without the drought. There are, however, legal backstops to prevent…

  • Modernizing drought water allocations

    The State Water Resources Control Board recently solicited public comments on how to improve its drought curtailment of water rights. Here is a summary of insights and recommendations from a group of seven California water experts. By Ellen Hanak, Jeffrey Mount, Jay Lund, Greg Gartrell, Brian Gray, Richard Frank and Peter Moyle  This past year’s severe drought…

  • A tribute to California’s ‘First Lady of Water’

    By Tina Cannon Leahy As water policy consultant for the California Assembly, I occasionally research legislative history to iron out competing theories on a law’s meaning. So it was earlier this year when I visited the California State Archives to investigate the Davis-Dolwig Act of 1961. I took a manila folder from the nice clerk…

  • Drought Journal: Hope springs eternal

    Is the drought hastening the decline of California’s native fish? Will they be able to recolonize once normal conditions return? To help find out, a team of researchers with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences took the pulse of about 70 streams and rivers across northern and central California this summer, examining habitat conditions and recording the…

  • Hike Tuolumne Meadows — without breaking a sweat

      Opening scene of the Tuolumne Meadows Virtual Hike. Source: UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, Google Maps. Take the Tuolumne Meadows Virtual Hike By Sarah Yarnell To enjoy the full sweep of Yosemite’s lush and lovely Tuolumne Meadows, as shown above, you need to head for the high country on the national park’s north side…

  • Groundwater reform more important than water bond

    By Jay Lund and Thomas Harter California lawmakers recently found extraordinary consensus in approving a $7.5 billion water bond for the November election ballot. If the measure wins, however, future generations will not necessarily reap many of the promised water supply benefits without additional actions. To significantly improve its resilience to drought, California must quickly…

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