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California WaterBlog

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  • Funding sustainable groundwater management in California

    Ellen Hanak, Emma Freeman, Caitrin Chappelle, Brian Gray, Jay Lund, Dean Misczynski, Josué Medellín-Azuara, David Mitchell, Jeff Mount, James Nachbaur, Robyn Suddeth, Buzz Thompson One of the few current bright spots on California’s waterfront is that the drought seems to be spurring momentum to improve groundwater management in the state’s rural areas. Outside of a…

  • ‘Tahoe to tap’ could ease California’s water woes

    By Nestle J. Frobish A new study shows how Lake Tahoe might serve as a mammoth reservoir that could significantly mitigate California’s chronic water shortages without tarnishing the lake’s world-renowned beauty. The development, reported today (April 1) in the scientific journal Limnology Tomorrow, drew surprise and delight from California water interests who have long regarded…

  • Where did all that water go? Some dry numbers on today’s drought

    By Greg Gartrell Various water interests lately have been blaming operators of California’s state and federal water projects for worsening this year’s drought. The claims appearing in news stories run along these lines: They exported far more water than they said they would. They drained Northern California reservoirs to fill Southern California reservoirs. They should…

  • Funding water services in California

    By Ellen Hanak, Brian Gray, Jay Lund, David Mitchell, Caitrin Chappelle, Andrew Fahlund, Katrina Jessoe, Josué Medellín-Azuara, Dean Misczynski, James Nachbaur and Robyn Suddeth The current drought has brought renewed calls for more conservation, reservoirs, recycled water use, stormwater capture and desalination plants. But more than calls to action are needed to make these things happen.…

  • Yurok stewardship of Klamath’s Blue Creek bodes well for fish

    By Peter Moyle Last summer I had the privilege of camping overnight with members of the Yurok Tribe and Western Rivers Conservancy on Blue Creek, one of California’s loveliest streams and an important cold-water refuge for migrating salmon and steelhead. The creek tumbles down the misty Siskiyou Mountains not far from Redwood National Park. I…

  • Virtual Water vs. Real Water in California

    By Jay Lund There has been considerable kvetching during this drought about California exporting agricultural products overseas, with some saying that this implies we are virtually exporting water that we should be using in California. Those concerned should take comfort with California’s major imports of virtual water. Much of the food consumed here comes from…

  • Saving California’s salmon during a severe drought

    By Peter Moyle California is in one of the most severe droughts in recent years. This means water agencies are under great pressure to sacrifice river flows meant to sustain fish and wildlife for increased water delivery to farms and cities. Here are some questions decision-makers should consider in the tradeoff. Why save native fish?…

  • The ultimate California water cheat sheet

    There’s only so many acre-feet of water jargon the public can absorb during a drought. Here’s a primer that avoids wading into cubic-feet-per-second, appropriative water rights, overdraft, conjunctive water use and the like. Further reading http://CaliforniaWaterBlog.com Hanak, et al. 2011, Managing California’s Water: From Conflict to Reconciliation, Public Policy Institute of California http://mavensnotebook.com

  • California droughts precipitate innovation

    Percentage of average precipitation, Oct. 1, 2013 – Jan. 19, 2014. Source: National Weather Service “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste” – Paul Romer, Stanford University economist By Jay Lund The 2013 calendar year was the driest on record for much of California. There is almost no snow in the Sierra Nevada or…

  • Resistance is futile: Inevitable changes to water management in California

      “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt” — anonymous By Jay Lund and Ellen Hanak Water policy in California has always been about making and resisting change. The gold mining period, the growth of agriculture and cities, and today’s environmental priorities all led to fundamental changes in water and land management, law and regulation.…

  • The ESA, fish and me

    “Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed.”              — President Richard Nixon upon signing the Endangered Species Act on Dec. 28, 1973 By Peter Moyle The Endangered Species Act turns 40 this week, and I…

  • Are Central Valley steelhead really ‘threatened’?

    By Peter Moyle The primary goal of the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) is to shorten the government’s list of “endangered” and “threatened” species. The American Peregrine falcon, the brown pelican, the eastern Steller sea lion and California populations of the gray whale are among the iconic creatures that have recovered to large populations and…

  • Board game wakens Delta islanders on flood risks

    By Wouter Jan Klerk and Ties Rijcken The California Delta is one of the world’s most complex water systems. As a group of five Dutch students from Delft University of Technology, we were eager to visit the diked islands, or “polders,” as we call them in the Netherlands. We wanted to learn how California balances…

  • New suspense flick on Delta

    _____________ Postcard from the Sacramento Delta (2013) 5 min 40 sec — Rated G — Suspense Director: Todd Dayton Cast: Jay Lund, Daniel Wilson The sea is rising and the land is sinking. Aging levees are giving way. Island communities find themselves at the mercy of forces beyond their control. Produced by Fallout Pictures for Greenpeace’s Postcards…

  • Halloween horrors and machetes on the Butte

    By Chris Bowman Photos by Bill Husa, Chico Enterprise-Record They spook the faint-of-heart every Halloween. Ghoulish, hollow-eyed creatures stumble about like they’re half-dead. Their skin is mottled from open sores. Rotting lips peel back to reveal horrific grins. But enough about California’s spring-run Chinook salmon. Come autumn, these fish become the real-life living dead. Human…

  • ‘North Delta Arc’ lifts hope for recovery of native fish

    By John Durand Matt Young and Denise De Carion thought they had seen about all there is of fish communities in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. They had surveyed nearly the entire web of channels using electrofishing boats in their years of assisting environmental researchers at UC Davis. In all their dozens of sampling runs, the…

  • Innovations in floodplain modeling: A test-drive on the Yolo Bypass

    High-resolution simulation of 2006 flooding in Yolo Bypass Video shows a swollen Sacramento River spilling over the Fremont weir into the 57,000-acre floodway. Notice that the floodwaters spread through individual irrigation ditches and drains, the blue hues darkening as levels rise. Hydraulic models need such fine detail when the acreage at stake is relatively small –…

  • Groundwater and climate change in California

    By Andrew Fisher, Graham Fogg, Joshua Viers, Jay Lund, Ruth Langridge and Patricia Holden For all the talk of climate change adaptation, California has yet to comprehensively address the effects of warmer temperatures and changing weather patterns on the state’s limited groundwater resources. To start the process, several of the leading University of California faculty…

  • Environmental science students rise to storytelling challenge

    Trailer for “Stream Macroinvertebrates, A Love Story,” by UC Davis student Kyle Phillips By Sarah Yarnell 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…

  • Journey to the bottom of the Rim Fire

    Video: Researchers with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences describe their Sept. 20 hike through the apocalyptic terrain left by this summer’s Rim Fire. The U. S. Forest Service granted the researchers limited access on the still-closed and burning Stanislaus National Forest to retrieve their scientific monitoring equipment at the confluence of the Tuolumne…

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