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California WaterBlog

Previous Posts

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  • Bull Trout and Other Endemic Fishes: McCloud River 

    By Peter B. Moyle There are about 130 fish species (as defined by the federal Endangered Species Act) native to the fresh waters of California. Most (80%) are arguably on trajectories to extinction. Seven species are already extirpated from the state (Thicktail Chub, Clear Lake Splittail, High Rock Springs Tui Chub, Bull Trout, Tecopa Pupfish,…

  • Remembering Professor Harrison (“Hap”) Dunning

    UC Davis Professor of Law Emeritus Harrison (“Hap”) Dunning passed away at the end of March 2025 at the age of 86. You can read the details of his life in the Davis Enterprise Obituary, including the story of his extensive work in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, but he is best known in…

  • Are spring-fed rivers key to long-term persistence of salmon and trout in California?

    By Nicholas Corline, Emilio Grande, Ate Visser, Jean Moran, Jory Lerback, Tyanna Blaschak, Damon Goodman, Jake Harm, Lauren Tolley-Mann, Dylan O’Ryan, Valerie Muenker, Rollie Nearhood, Amber Lukk, Sarah Howe, and Robert Lusardi Imagine a giant sponge made of volcanic rock. That’s what scientists have recently discovered in the central Cascades of Oregon, an aquifer that…

  • The Seven Circles of Jargon Hell

    By Jay Lund The circles of jargon hell move from “lazy and less effective communication of ideas” to a general audience, to a narrower already-expert audience, to a substitute for substantive communication, to intentionally harmful and pretentious obfuscation, all of which disrupt the reader’s comprehension and eventually destroy all interest in communication. Jay Lund is…

  • Managed Aquifer Recharge on Agriculture Lands: Infiltration Basins, Flood-MAR and Regional Variability

    By Sarah Sarfaty Epstein Groundwater has long been the unseen lifeblood of irrigators across the state, and some are now taking an active role in replenishing it. When and where surface water has been insufficient, Californians have drilled down, steadily depleting the aquifer, as shown in Figure 1. California’s cumulative groundwater overdraft is over 100…

  • How redefining just one word could strip the Endangered Species Act’s ability to protect vital habitat

    This blog is a cross-post from one featured on The Conversation on May 13, 2025. By Mariah Meek & Karrigan Börk It wouldn’t make much sense to prohibit people from shooting a threatened woodpecker while allowing its forest to be cut down, or to bar killing endangered salmon while allowing a dam to dry out their habitat. But that’s…

  • Trade-offs in California Water Discussions

    By Jay Lund In policy and management, we should always be interested in performance, both overall effectiveness and efficiency of solutions, as well as trade-offs across objectives.  These are often depicted on plots of Pareto-optimality, showing the relative performance of alternatives, the performance of efficient (Pareto-optimal) solutions, and trade-offs across these most efficient alternatives, often compared with…

  • The Power of Mimics in Aquatic Management and Beyond

    By Brandi Goss, Marissa L. Baskett, and Robert A. Lusardi Humans might be the ultimate ecosystem engineers in the sense that we constantly modify ecosystems and change the processes which drive them. In some cases, this can harm biodiversity by displacing native ecosystem engineers which deliver important benefits for other species and bolster both habitat…

  • Wet Season’s end for Water Year 2025

    By Jay Lund California’s Water Year runs from October 1 of the previous calendar year through September 30.  California’s “wet” season is traditionally October 1 – April 1.  The rest of the year (and often parts of the “wet” season) is usually dry.  We can get major storms into April, but often not. So almost all of this…

  • 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…

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