ARCHIVE
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California Water Made Simple
Celebrating end of the academic year, and the need to grade papers, here is a reprise post from January 29, 2014. There’s only so many acre-feet of water jargon the public can absorb during a drought. Here’s a primer that avoids wading into cubic-feet-per-second, appropriative water rights, overdraft, conjunctive water use and the like. Further…
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Trump’s Dubious Drought Claims
By Vanessa Schipani This post originally appeared on June 9, 2016 on FactCheck.org. The original post can be found here. Peter Moyle, Associate Director at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, and Jeffrey Mount, Senior Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California and founding director of CWS, dispel some myths in Trump’s Fresno rally speech. During…
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Cue the Frogs! Water signatures, environmental cues and climate change
By Ryan Peek, Helen Dahlke, and Sarah Yarnell An organism’s success relies on responding to environmental cues that trigger activities such as breeding, migration, feeding, predator evasion, etc. Responses can be finely tuned to specific cues, or may require multiple triggers. For example, changes in day length and air temperature cue many bird migrations over…
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Water and salt exports from the Delta – A tale of two plots
By Jay Lund and William Fleenor Where does water exported from the Delta come from? And where does the salt in Delta exports come from? Water and salt exported from the Delta comes from several sources: Sacramento River (largest high-quality source) (Sac) San Joaquin River discharge (usually modest flow, but much saltier from agricultural drainage)…
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Understanding predation impacts on Delta native fishes
By Peter Moyle, Andrew Sih, Anna Steel, Carson Jeffres, William Bennett of University of California, Davis. Will endangered fishes, such as Chinook salmon, delta smelt, and longfin smelt, benefit from control of predators, especially of striped bass? This question is of interest because if the answer is ‘yes’, then predator control might increase the benefits…
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SGMA and the Challenge of Groundwater Management Sustainability
By Bill Blomquist It isn’t just the groundwater that has to be sustainable; it’s the management too. That’s why the title of this post shifts from the more familiar “sustainable groundwater management” to “groundwater management sustainability.” This perspective doesn’t come from the world of hydrologic or climate or environmental science, but from political science and…
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Inevitable Changes to Water in California
By Jay Lund A shorter version of this piece originally appeared as an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee. “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.” (anonymous) Water is always important for California, as a dry place with a boisterous economy and unique ecosystems. A growing globalized economy and society historically drive changes in California’s water…
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Conservation of inland trout populations in California
by Robert Lusardi This article originally appeared in California Trout’s The Current. For the full issue, click here. Native fish conservation and recovery is an onerous task. While there are many threats, hybridization has played an integral role in the demise of numerous inland trout species throughout the western United States. Nowhere is this more…
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California’s Delta-Groundwater Nexus: Delta Effects of Ending Central Valley Overdraft?
By Timothy Nelson, Heidi Chou, Prudentia Zikalala, Jay Lund, Rui Hui, and Josué Medellín–Azuara Surface water and groundwater management are often tightly linked, even when linkage is not intended or expected. This link has special importance in drier regions, such as California. A recent paper examines the economic and water management effects of ending long-term…
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Sailing the Seas of Data Discovery
by Megan Nguyen Which display is more engaging to you? The table or the map? Do you remember a time when you really needed to find something in your room that you know you for certain have but can’t remember where you placed it? And so then you have to search every nook and cranny…
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ENSO the Wet Season Ends (almost) – March 31, 2016
By Jay Lund Summary of conditions March 2016 has been unusually wet, and quite a contrast to February. The “Godzilla” El Nino this year has been a bit “Gonzo”, but overall has brought a welcome above average precipitation for northern California, after four solid drought years. The unevenness of the precipitation is some concern, and…
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Water managers drop the ball on Hetch Hetchy
By Nan W. Frobish Visitors to Yosemite’s iconic Hetch Hetchy reservoir are doing a double-take. Instead of seeing the majestic backdrop of the Sierra Nevada reflected in the pristine mountain water, they are now greeted by millions of black balls that cover the surface. After four years of record-setting drought and statewide low reservoir levels,…
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“Toilet to tap”: A potential high quality water source for California
By Nathaniel Homan Reusing water is not a new concept to many Californians. Many municipalities across California have facilities that treat wastewater to high standards, which allows it to be reused for agricultural irrigation, landscape irrigation, and industrial use. Other municipalities, such as the Orange County Water District, treat wastewater even further using advanced technologies,…
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Floods, farms, fowl, and fish: a confluence of successful management
By Eric Holmes The floodplain smorgasbord is open! Wrapping up a successful fifth season, the Knaggs Nigiri project, partnered with California Trout and the California Department of Water Resources, places fall run juvenile Chinook salmon in inundated rice fields during a six week period in February and early March, the non-rice-growing season. The project has implications…
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Using Game Theory To Encourage Cooperation in Levee System Planning
By Rui Hui, Jay Lund and Kaveh Madani Levees protect land from floods, but not perfectly. Different levees on a river often are controlled by different agencies or groups. A landowner on one riverbank sees the levee system differently from a landowner on the opposite bank or downstream. Each landowner, or elected levee board, is…
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Let people pay what water is worth – Sell your conserved water
By Jay Lund During dry years, water becomes scarcer, and, economically, people should pay more for it. But most urban residents do not pay directly for water scarcity. We only pay the financial cost of providing water through pipes, pumping, treatment plants, and reservoirs. We do not pay for the lost value that water…
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ENSO the Drought Strikes Back! The 2016 Drought so far – March 1
By Jay Lund Summary of conditions February 2016 has been dry, despite El Nino-besotted promises of aqueous abundance. There is sometimes a difference between climatic conditions and hydrologic reality (and economic reality). Annual precipitation and snowpack are now about average or a little less. Fortunately, the largest reservoirs continue to fill slowly, relative to previous…
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You Can’t Always Get What You Want – A Mick Jagger Theory of Drought Management
by Jay Lund “You can’t always get what you want But if you try sometimes you just might find You get what you need,” Rolling Stones (1969, Let It Bleed album) The ongoing California drought has many lessons for water managers and policy-makers. Perhaps the greatest lesson is how unimportant a drought can be if…
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What lies behind the dam? In some cases, self-sustaining salmon
By K. Martin Perales Chinook salmon are a remarkably adaptable species. There is good reason to believe there are multiple populations of landlocked Chinook salmon completing their entire life cycle above Central Valley dams. We recently documented spawning above six of thirteen reservoirs that have been stocked with Chinook. In some cases, populations have persisted for…
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Wanted: student scientists looking for inspiration and adventure
By Sarah Yarnell and Ann Willis Every spring for the past 12 years, a class of a dozen or so UC Davis undergraduates ride a river in the American West for a learning adventure like none other in their college life. Whether rafting the Colorado through the Grand Canyon, plying the undammed Skeena in British…