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California WaterBlog

Previous Posts

1–2 minutes

  • Conserving California’s Freshwater Biodiversity Under Climate Change

    By Ted Sommer and Jeffrey Mount Introduction The conservation of freshwater biodiversity has emerged as a global challenge. The loss of habitat and the changing climate are reducing the viability of native freshwater species worldwide—and California is no exception to this. For decades the state has struggled to protect its native species.  Today, roughly half of California’s native…

  • Restoration of Tidal wetlands of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta – Where are we at?

    By Rosemary Hartman, Matt Young, Dylan Chapple, Stacy Sherman, Dave Ayers, Emma Mendonsa, Elizabeth Brusati, and Louise Conrad Tidal wetlands in the Sacramento – San Joaquin Delta used to be vast. You may have seen artistic renditions of how the landscape may have looked with meandering channels weaving through a mosaic of land and water…

  • Amazing Invader: American Shad

    By Peter Moyle The California Fish Commission introduced American Shad into California in 1871 via milk crates shipped on the newly built transcontinental railroad (Dill and Cordone 1997). Shad, apparently the first non-native fish species (of 50) to become established in the state, were so well suited to California that in a few years, shad…

  • How well do you know California water?

    California has an extensive and complex water system. Can many people name all the waterways on this common California water map (with the names removed)? Give it a try. No cheating. (Unlike some map quizzes and the 1957 California Water Plan, this map has no imaginary features, except perhaps when some of the river channels run dry.)…

  • The Big Impact of Small Waters: Zooplankton Density Trends in the North Delta

    By Kim Luke & John Durand Zooplankton and their history in the San Francisco Estuary Zooplankton are tiny aquatic organisms unable to swim against currents; they include microscopic crustaceans, small jellyfish, and larval life stages of other organisms (Figure 1). Although zooplankton are small in size, they have a big impact on the food web…

  • Salmon and the Subsurface

    By David Dralle, Gabe Rossi, Phil Georgakakos, Jesse Hahm, Daniella Rempe, Monica Blanchard, Mary Power, Bill Dietrich, and Stephanie Carlson You’ve probably noticed that some streams flow year-round while others are seasonally dry, despite receiving similar amounts of rainfall. Through a recent NSF-funded effort (“Eel River Critical Zone Observatory”), we learned several things about how…

  • Adaptive Management Wheels

    by Jay Lund In practice, adaptive management wheels have squarish corners. In ideal adaptive management, there is a steady or periodic process for gathering performance and environmental data, analyzing that data in the context of an integrative computer model, discussions based on the analysis to determine the most promising adaptations of management to reflect this…

  • Water Right Exactions

    By Karrigan Börk Water right exactions are a proposed tool to mitigate costs associated with water rights and water infrastructure that would also help users make better decisions about how much water to use. But first, what are exactions? Exactions are a land use permitting tool used by cities and other permitting agencies to ensure developers…

  • Bill Bennett: friend of fish and fisheries in the San Francisco Estuary

    by Peter Moyle William A. Bennett (1955-2024)  was a top-notch scientist/biologist who spent much of his career improving our understanding of the ecology and management of native and non-native fishes in the SF Estuary (SFE) especially delta smelt and striped bass.  Those of us who had the good fortune to work with him knew Bill as an insightful…

  • Book Review: Seek Higher Ground

    by Peter Moyle Seek Higher Ground: The Natural Solution to Our Urgent Flooding Crisis, by Tim Palmer. University of California Press 2024.                                             Flooding is a natural phenomenon that we humans keep assuming can be controlled with enough effort and engineering.  But this simply is not possible, as floods across the globe repeatedly demonstrate. People continue to…

  • How to incentivize better groundwater use

    by Ellen Bruno, Molly Bruce, and Katrina Jessoe For more than a century, parts of California have been using groundwater faster than the resource can be replenished. As a result, aquifers are dwindling—a mounting challenge for irrigators, communities, and ecosystems.  The negative impacts of over-extraction include subsidence, shallower wells running dry, and water-quality deterioration. If overextraction remains…

  • Roaches of California: Hidden Biodiversity in a Native Minnow

    by Peter B. Moyle *This is a repost of a blog originally published in 2019. If you inspect small streams in northern California, including those that seem too small or warm for any fish, you will often see minnows swimming in the clear water. Chances are you are seeing a very distinctive native Californian, usually…

  • Support our Students and Engagement at the Center for Watershed Sciences

    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 19-20) we’re sharing a…

  • Mornings at the Duck Pond

    By Andrew L. Rypel Each morning is similar, but different. As we approach the pond on the wooden catwalk, you can hear the birds calling, eventually you start to smell the freshness of the ecosystem, the glitters and splashing ahead gives some indication of bird activity on the water. Sometimes an alligator lizard scoots past…

  • Spinning Salmon in the Classroom

    by Abigail Ward and Peggy Harte Salmon face many stressors that significantly reduce their survival. Persistent challenges include habitat degradation, predation, pollution, and climate change that threaten already at-risk populations. Conservation efforts in California engage with the complexity of these stressors, yet in recent years, a new threat has emerged to salmon restoration in the…

  • Manifesting Successful Aquatic Restoration

    by E.J. Baybe-Mahn Successful aquatic restoration traditionally comes from extensive research and knowledge of the system, collaboration among stakeholders, and thorough planning. But what if there was another way to ensure restorations are creating the results we want to see? With increasing effects of climate change, urbanization, and other anthropogenic factors, aquatic organisms, especially ones…

  • California’s March Water Madness

    by Jay Lund March is usually the last month in California’s mostly unpredictable wet season.  A dry March can make a promising water year disappointing.  A very wet March can make a potentially critically dry year be only mildly dry, like the “Miracle March” of 1991 (with three times average March precipitation).  Unlike basketball, nobody…

  • Love Alpaugh: Celebrating the life and legacy of Sandra Meraz

    By Kristin Dobbin “Some people say Alpaugh is the stepchild of Tulare County; I say we’re the forgotten ones. Rural families are an endangered species.” – Sandra Meraz, Dec 2014 in the LA Times When Alexandrina “Sandra” Meraz arrived in Alpaugh in the Spring of 1963 at the age of 22, one of the first…

  • A Functional Flows approach for Environmental Flows in Chile

    by Sarah Yarnell, Diego Rivera Salazar, Camila Boettiger, and Jay Lund Countries, regions, and river basins globally are struggling to provide and manage flows in rivers for ecosystems.  One approach, of many, is a Functional Flows approach, because it seeks to provide a range of streamflows over the year and between years to support fundamental…

  • Some curious things about water management

    By Jay R. Lund *This is a repost of a blog originally published in 2012. Water management is often very different from what we think intuitively, or what we have been taught. Here are some examples. 1. Most water decisions are local. Water policy and management discussions often seem to assume that state and federal…

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