ARCHIVE
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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…
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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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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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!
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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…
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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…
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Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃
The blog is taking a break for the holiday, but we’ll be back next Sunday! In exciting news, 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! Enjoy the holiday!
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Sacramento Perch: An Experiment in Unconventional Conservation?
By Lynette Williams Duman & Mason Rogers The forgotten panfish of the West Bluegill, redear sunfish, and largemouth bass: these species are familiar and, for many, elicit fond memories of fishing in warm waters on a hot summer’s day. It is for this reason, and others, that California has introduced these sportfishes, and a myriad…
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Pathways to research: An interview with Jon Walter
By Cathryn Lawrence This blog is the first in a series featuring interviews with scientists from the Center for Watershed Sciences to learn what sparked their passion to pursue a scientific research career. Kicking off the series we interview Jonathan Walter, a Senior Researcher and quantitative ecologist at CWS, who works on issues relating to the…
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October is Over – What it means for this water year and some other musings
by Jay R. Lund October 2024, the first month of the 2025 Water Year, has been dry, the 16th driest October in 103 years of Northern California precipitation records. And the forecast for the next 10 days shows little for most of California. DWR has a nice map of this (see figure 1 to see…
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Sό Semente – Only a Seed
By Carson Jeffres, Gislene Torrente Vilara, Jansen Zuanon Seeds are often thought of as a start that will eventually grow into something larger than it originally started. In this case, the seed was a seed grant from UC Davis Global Affairs to develop a collaborative project with international partners working with a migratory fish along the…
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Got Blood? Unmasking a vampire fish
By Emily L. Mensch “They’re strong, they’re fast, and they’re out for blood…..” From the depths of a murky lake, a slimy eel-like creature emerges, slithering and writhing. With a gaping, circular mouth lined with rows of needle-sharp teeth spiraling inward, it locks in on its target prey: you! Soon this nightmarish creature is slinking…
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Lessons from the California Environmental Flows Framework and Opportunities for Chile
By Camila Boettiger, Karrigan Börk, Roberto Ponce Oliva, Diego Rivera, Jay Lund, and Sarah Yarnell Managing waterways for ecosystems with minimal loss to existing water uses is increasingly difficult. As we’ve discussed in the first two blogs in this series (here and here, now with Spanish language translations), California and Chile both struggle with this challenge. Both…
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Black Bass Diversity in California
By Peter B. Moyle and Andrew L. Rypel When both of us began studying the freshwater fishes of California, we independently discovered most fishes found in reservoirs and other highly altered habitats belonged to non-native species. Anglers and many fishery managers had pretty much accepted the reality that freshwater recreational fisheries are focused on non-native…