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California WaterBlog

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  • Delta science in a post-Wanger world

    Jeffrey F. Mount, Founding Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California – Davis The Chief Scientist for the Delta has retired.  No, not Cliff Dahm. He’s the Lead Scientist for the Delta Science Program (although he is returning to the University of New Mexico).  Rather, it is Oliver Wanger, the mercurial judge…

  • Sex, lies and videotape: Premature maturation of Chinook salmon on Shasta River

    Carson Jeffres, Senior Research Associate, Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California – Davis Migration to and from the sea (anadromy) is the iconic pattern we associate with Pacific salmon. They spend most of their life in the ocean, taking advantage of its productivity to grow and mature. These adults return upstream to spawn in…

  • Multiple stressors – funding the Delta like a public sewer

    Jay R. Lund, The Ray B. Krone Chair of Environmental Engineering, University of California – Davis “There once was a woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.” It has become trite to observe that many environmental problems are caused by “multiple stressors.”  Multiple historical and…

  • The UnDammed

    Jeffrey F. Mount, Founding Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California – Davis I had the great pleasure of being up in the Olympic Peninsula for the Elwha Dam removal ceremonies a few weeks ago.  With the Native American tribes singing songs to welcome the salmon back, and innumerable dignitaries pontificating and…

  • Boldly approach the Delta’s future

    By Jay R. Lund and Ellen Hanak Policy decisions on how to manage the lands and waters of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are unavoidably controversial.  The Delta Stewardship Council’s first Delta Plan, now under development, presents a rare opportunity to establish bold state policy directions on the Delta’s many controversies. Such bold action is needed…

  • Coho in Crisis, Part 2: Saving coho, saving salmon, restoring streams

    By Peter Moyle In my last blog, I provided evidence that coho salmon were headed for extinction in California.  Here I discuss why and what we can do about  it.  The over-riding cause of coho decline is 150 years of land abuse in fragile coastal watersheds.   This abuse is from logging, farming, grazing, mining, urbanization,…

  • Coho in Crisis, Part 1: The decline toward extinction in California

    By Peter Moyle In case you hadn’t noticed, one of California’s most spectacular fish is leaving us. The coho salmon, silvery favorites of fishermen and essential components of our coastal rainforest ecosystems, are headed for extinction in the state. This projection was made abundantly clear, at least to me, in a recent (August 16) State…

  • The Stockholm Syndrome in Water Planning in California

    Jeffrey F. Mount, Founding Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California – Davis “…plans are nothing, planning is indispensable” – Dwight D. Eisenhower “If planning is everything, maybe it’s nothing” – Aaron Wildofsky. We all know the Stockholm Syndrome: the hostage falls in love with the hostage taker.  Well, for those of…

  • Water Storage in California

    Jay R. Lund, The Ray B. Krone Chair of Environmental Engineering, University of California – Davis “With a larger reservoir, there is some increasing gain with further size, but in a diminishing ratio.” – Alan Hazen (1914) Water storage capacity is an important tool in California’s water system for capturing lower-value water for higher-value uses…

  • Conserving fish, conserving water, conserving California

    Peter Moyle, Professor of Fish Biology, UC Davis California has a remarkable collection of native freshwater fishes, many of them found only in the state.  To me, these native fishes define the unique regions of the California mosaic. Southern steelhead persist in the face of extreme urbanization in southern California.   Various pupfish species thrive in…

  • Adaptive management and experimental island flooding in the Delta

    Robyn J. Suddeth, Hydrology Graduate Student, UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences   Like many of the world’s deltas, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is in transition. A deteriorating native ecosystem, conflicting water quality objectives, and a fragile levee system are all threatened by climate change and potential levee failures from a major earthquake or flood.…

  • The benefits of floodplain reconnection

    By Jeffrey Mount For more than a century, California has sought to separate floodplains from rivers.  An elaborate array of levees and dams usually confine, divert or capture winter floods, supporting agriculture on rich floodplain soils and unreliably protecting urban growth in flood-prone areas. Nowhere is this approach more evident than the Central Valley.  One…

  • Benefits of growing up in a spring stream

      Juvenile coho salmon feeding on invertebrates drifting in the water column.  The material floating down also consists of plant material that invertebrates use as a food resource. Video by Carson Jeffres   By Carson Jeffres and Jeffrey Mount When ecologists talk about improving habitat for native fishes, they often focus on enhancing food webs…

  • The future of Suisun Marsh

    By Peter Moyle If you have taken Amtrak from Sacramento to the Bay Area, you have seen Suisun Marsh.  Going west, as the train pulls out of Suisun City, you are suddenly riding through a huge wetland, with ponds full of waterfowl.  If you are lucky, you will see a flight of white pelicans taking…

  • Adaptive management means never having to say you’re sorry

    Jay R. Lund, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California – Davis Ellen Hanak, Public Policy Institute of California Brian Gray, University of California – Hastings, College of the Law   The words “adaptive management” appear in almost every planning and policy document for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.  Indeed, under state law, habitat…

  • An uncertain future for whitewater boating under climate change

    Scott Ligare, Graduate Student Researcher, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, UC Davis Joshua Viers, Associate Research Scientist, Department of Environmental Science & Policy, UC Davis Summer arrived belatedly in northern California and high snowmelt runoff is attracting adrenaline junkies seeking to raft and kayak Sierra Nevada rivers. With its many large rivers, the west slope…

  • Managing for multiple stressors in the Delta

    Ellen Hanak1, Jay Lund2, Peter Moyle3, Jeffrey Mount4, Brian Gray5 and Barton “Buzz” Thompson6   Across California, native fish populations are in sharp decline, despite decades of well-intentioned efforts to reverse the effects of harmful water and land management policies (Hanak et al., 2011). As more fish species have been listed under the federal and…

  • Woodman, spare that levee?

    Jay Lund, the Ray B. Krone Professor of Environmental Engineering, University of California – Davis   Policy debates sometimes seem to tragically miss the big picture.  The current debate on levee vegetation in California is an example.  Both sides assert noble and worthy causes—environmental and recreation interests favor trees and bushes on levees and public…

  • No going back for the Delta, but which way forward?

    Jay Lund, Professor of Environmental Engineering, University of California – Davis Peter Moyle, Professor of Fish Biology, University of California – Davis Ellen Hanak, Senior Fellow, Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco Jeffrey Mount, Professor of Geology, University of California – Davis   “Restore” is a common cry for environmental problems.  For the Sacramento-San…

  • Suction dredging is bad for fish

    Peter B. Moyle, Professor of Fish Biology, UC Davis Suction dredging seems like a fairly innocent pastime.  A few folks go to a stream on a nice summer day with a portable device to suck tiny amounts of gold out of a stream bottom. The device basically is a floating sluice box equipped with a…

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