ARCHIVE
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AI explanations of California water management
By ChatGPT prompted by Jay Lund I was playing with ChatGPT and had some fun and insightful replies. (I’d interpret these insights, but I am no Professor of Literature, and it would probably get me into trouble. Please add your interpretations below in the replies.) 1) Prompt: Write a buzzword sentence on California water management. ChatGPT replied:…
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Where are they now: Mollie Ogaz
“Where are they now:” is the first in a new blog series on the California WaterBlog, written in the voices of our alumni. The series will celebrate the many alumni who got their start at the Center for Watershed Sciences (CWS) and have now gone on to bigger and better things. Blog posts from the…
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Build it, and they will come: Early evidence for establishment of Chinook salmon in Putah Creek, CA
By Lauren G. Hitt, Malte Willmes, Mackenzie C. Miner, Max Stevenson, Carson A. Jeffres, Robert A. Lusardi, Nann A. Fangue, and Andrew L. Rypel For the third year in a row, regulators have canceled California’s commercial Chinook salmon fishing season.Poor spawning salmon returns in 2024 and low predicted numbers of salmon in the ocean during 2025…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…