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California WaterBlog

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  • Newly Listed Smelt in the Delta

    By Karrigan Börk, John Durand, Nann Fangue, and Levi Lewis Late last summer, on August 29th, 2024, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service listed the San Francisco Bay-Delta distinct population segment of longfin smelt (Spirinchus thaleichthys) as ‘endangered’ under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). With this decision, the Longfin Smelt joins the Delta…

  • UC Davis Give Day! Seeking Support for our Graduate Students

    California WaterBlog is a long-running outreach project from the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, a research center dedicated to interdisciplinary study of water challenges, particularly in California. We focus on environmentally and economically sustainable solutions for managing rivers, lakes, groundwater, and estuaries. This week, for UC Davis Give Day (April 11-12), we have a matching gift…

  • A Conservation Footprint for Multiple Species of Wildlife in California Rice

    By John M. Eadie, Daniel S. Karp, and Andrew L. Rypel Picture a farm. Only one crop type is grown over a vast field stretching to the horizon. Signs of modern agriculture are everywhere— tractors slowly driving by, fields engineered in neat squares, with millions of precisely spaced plants. All cues indicate much food will…

  • Scientists find connections between California fishes and astrology 

    By Abby Deen  Move over, Pisces, because you’re no longer the only astrological sign connected to fishes! Recent studies by fish ecologists have found links between the native and non-native fishes of California and astrological sun signs. The characteristics of the twelve zodiac signs align perfectly with those of particular inland fishes, measured through comparisons…

  • Overlooked choices shape research outcomes: what do “researcher degrees of freedom” mean for how science informs policy?

    By Jonathan A. Walter, UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences Research results can depend not only on the data itself, but on how they are analyzed.1 This is importantly different from how stakeholders with different interests may interpret results differently, perhaps (consciously or subconsciously) motivated by their interest in the outcome. A recent study “Same…

  • Glasses at 50% in California

    by Jay Lund How do California’s engineers see a partially-full water glass?  Mostly the same as they did in the original 2012 version of this post, but we’ve added a few more perspectives over the years. Depending on your outlook, the proverbial glass of water is either half full or half empty. Not so, for…

  • How Three (Fairly) Wet Winters Could Help California’s Salmon

    By Sarah Bardeen This piece originally appeared on the PPIC Blog, here. California has just experienced its third reasonably wet winter in as many years. How unusual is this? And how might three such winters in a row affect salmon? We interviewed Jeffrey Mount, senior fellow with the PPIC Water Policy Center, and Carson Jeffres, senior…

  • We’re Expanding! Follow the Center and WaterBlog on More Platforms

    Great news! The Center for Watershed Sciences has expanded its social media presence, giving you more ways to stay connected and engaged with California WaterBlogs and our other new content.  Take a look at all the places you can connect with us: https://linktr.ee/ucdaviswater The link includes our information for X/Twitter, Facebook, Mastodon, Bluesky, LinkedIn, YouTube,…

  • Functional Flows are Good for California’s Native Fishes

    By Sarah Yarnell, Ethan Baruch, Andrew L. Rypel, and Rob Lusardi As California grapples with ongoing water management challenges, the question of “how much water to leave in streams” to support native fishes and aquatic species often arises. There is no easy answer to this question, as evidenced by the more than 200 environmental flow assessment methods that exist…

  • How to give a profoundly boring technical talk

    by Jay Lund 1. The title should be packed with obscure acronyms that give no clue of the subject.  An exciting talk might disturb the audience’s ability to relax, look at their phones, or quietly work in the back of the room. 2. Introduce each co-author with long-winded and complete backgrounds.  Their lives and accomplishments…

  • How’s California’s water year developing? – early February 2025

    by Jay Lund The first four months of California’s water year, which started in October 2024, have been wildly variable over the months and in different parts of the state. Every year, we never know what to expect of California’s wet season until it ends, usually in late March or early April.  This year is…

  • Jimmy Carter and Floodplain Management

    by Michael Mierzwa It is the tradition upon the passing of a US President for Federal employees to get a day off in mourning, and later for the President to lie in state in the Capital. Many stories about President Carter will circulate in the coming weeks, but I wanted to briefly share his connection…

  • Anticipating Increases in Flood Risk for Yolo County and its Native Fishes

    by Peter Moyle  Close relatives of mine live in Asheville, North  Carolina.  Retired professors, they chose to move there in part because of its pleasant climate. This quiet community was hit hard by Hurricane Helene, on September 27, 2024. The path the hurricane took through Asheville was unprecedented and heavy rains and flooding resulted in widespread treefalls,…

  • California Water under a Trump Administration, Part 2 of 2

    By Karrigan Börk Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series of blogs that examines how the incoming Trump Administration may—or may not—be able to change how water is managed in California.  The first blog covered three issues: the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), updates of the Bay-Delta Water Quality Plans, and major infrastructure projects. The…

  • California Water under a Trump Administration, Part 1 of 2

    By Karrigan Börk Editor’s note: Interim Director Karrigan Börk appeared on the NPR show AirTalk a few weeks ago to address California water policy under a Trump administration; the segment starts at 18:00. This blogpost is the first of a 2 part series exploring the topic from a nonpartisan perspective with a goal of predicting likely outcomes…

  • Delta Ecosystem Threatened by Another Nonnative Mollusk

    By Andrew Cohen and Peter Moyle One of the world’s most invasive freshwater mussels has arrived in North America. The Golden Mussel (Limnoperna fortunei), discovered in the California Delta in October, is a voracious plankton feeder and may further reduce the food supply for Delta Smelt and other plankton-feeding fishes in low salinity environments. It…

  • Happy Holidays! 🎊

    The blog is taking a holiday break, but we’ll return next Sunday!  Don’t forget that we’ve added a new Guest Submissions Page, making sharing your ideas with us easier. If you’ve been thinking about contributing a post to the California WaterBlog, now is the perfect time to check it out!

  • Dear Santa: A California Water Holiday Wish List

    by folks at UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences: Karrigan Börk, John Durand, Jay Lund, Christine Parisek, Andrew Rypel, Kathleen Schaefer, Jonathan Walter (authors listed alphabetically, and all are now PhDs. Congratulations to Doctors Parisek and Schaefer!) ‘Tis the season of gift-giving (and gift-seeking).  So we thought a California Water Holiday wish list might be…

  • Growing food for ducks and fish in seasonally flooded managed wetlands

    By Kyle Phillips, Alice Tung, Teejay O’Rear, John Durand In a recent publication in Freshwater Biology, UC Davis researchers found that waterfowl food-plants in managed wetlands of Suisun Marsh can boost plankton production by an order of magnitude compared to plants in open tidal habitats. Suisun Marsh is one of the largest tidal wetlands on the west coast…

  • Not All Flood Maps are Created Equal

    By Indumati Roychowdhury, Kallee Bareket-Shavit, Ryan Miller, and Nicholas Pinter For assessing flood risk in California, not all flood maps are created equal. We compared FEMA’s flood maps to independent modeling, including climate-informed flood risk. This comparison illustrates very different pictures of flood risk, depending on the map used and how those maps were created,…

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