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California WaterBlog

Previous Posts

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  • Have our salmon and eat them too: Re-thinking Central Valley salmon hatcheries

    By Jacob Katz and Peter Moyle In the previous blog, Jay Lund argued that wide-scale, integrated management of California’s water system will better balance water needs of the environment and water demands by humans.  Here we expand on the need for fundamental shifts in policy to recover populations of Central Valley salmon using integrated management…

  • Expanding water storage capacity in California

    Jay R. Lund, The Ray B. Krone Chair of Environmental Engineering, University of California – Davis “The old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be.” The recent report from the US Bureau of Reclamation on the economic feasibility of raising Shasta Dam illustrates that we are in a new era for considering water…

  • Insights for California water policy from computer modeling

    “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” G.E.P. Box By Jay R. Lund California has a very complex water system which is important to many often competing interests and purposes. Because of this, California’s water system will always be controversial. Nevertheless, decisions about managing California’s water system will be made. How can we understand…

  • Extinction is a sustainable condition

    Jay R. Lund, The Ray B. Krone Chair of Environmental Engineering, University of California – Davis Sustainability is favored by everyone, but, people and groups view and use sustainability differently.  Alas, as Keynes observed, “In the long run we are all dead,” and achieve the same sustainable end. As illustrated above, the word “sustainable” seems…

  • A tribute to Alex Hildebrand

    One of the best minds of the Delta and its most devoted advocate has left us.  Alex Hildebrand passed away Monday at the venerable age of 98. Alex cared deeply for the land and the water of the South Delta, living his life and tending his farm in sync with the rise and fall of…

  • Whither the Delta economy?

    Josue Medellín-Azuara, Richard Howitt, Jay Lund – University of California, Davis Ellen Hanak – Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco Today, PPIC and UC Davis released a new report on the economy of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.  “Transitions for the Delta Economy” explores how the Delta’s economy has evolved since the early 1990s and…

  • Israel’s Delta – The Hula Valley

    Jay R. Lund, The Ray B. Krone Chair of Environmental Engineering, University of California – Davis History has many cases of deltas, lakes, and marshlands which have been “reclaimed” for agriculture, then as agriculture became uneconomical, have been returned to the environment (Mostert 2011). In far northern Israel is Hula Valley, about 44,000 acres of…

  • Has human water use peaked in California?

    Jay R. Lund, The Ray B. Krone Chair of Environmental Engineering, University of California – Davis Ellen Hanak, Senior Policy Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco For over a century, water planning and policy in California assumed perpetual increases in water demands for agricultural and urban uses.  Of course, nothing can…

  • 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…

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