ARCHIVE
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The ESA, fish and me
“Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed.” — President Richard Nixon upon signing the Endangered Species Act on Dec. 28, 1973 By Peter Moyle The Endangered Species Act turns 40 this week, and I…
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Are Central Valley steelhead really ‘threatened’?
By Peter Moyle The primary goal of the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) is to shorten the government’s list of “endangered” and “threatened” species. The American Peregrine falcon, the brown pelican, the eastern Steller sea lion and California populations of the gray whale are among the iconic creatures that have recovered to large populations and…
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Board game wakens Delta islanders on flood risks
By Wouter Jan Klerk and Ties Rijcken The California Delta is one of the world’s most complex water systems. As a group of five Dutch students from Delft University of Technology, we were eager to visit the diked islands, or “polders,” as we call them in the Netherlands. We wanted to learn how California balances…
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New suspense flick on Delta
_____________ Postcard from the Sacramento Delta (2013) 5 min 40 sec — Rated G — Suspense Director: Todd Dayton Cast: Jay Lund, Daniel Wilson The sea is rising and the land is sinking. Aging levees are giving way. Island communities find themselves at the mercy of forces beyond their control. Produced by Fallout Pictures for Greenpeace’s Postcards…
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Halloween horrors and machetes on the Butte
By Chris Bowman Photos by Bill Husa, Chico Enterprise-Record They spook the faint-of-heart every Halloween. Ghoulish, hollow-eyed creatures stumble about like they’re half-dead. Their skin is mottled from open sores. Rotting lips peel back to reveal horrific grins. But enough about California’s spring-run Chinook salmon. Come autumn, these fish become the real-life living dead. Human…
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‘North Delta Arc’ lifts hope for recovery of native fish
By John Durand Matt Young and Denise De Carion thought they had seen about all there is of fish communities in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. They had surveyed nearly the entire web of channels using electrofishing boats in their years of assisting environmental researchers at UC Davis. In all their dozens of sampling runs, the…
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Innovations in floodplain modeling: A test-drive on the Yolo Bypass
High-resolution simulation of 2006 flooding in Yolo Bypass Video shows a swollen Sacramento River spilling over the Fremont weir into the 57,000-acre floodway. Notice that the floodwaters spread through individual irrigation ditches and drains, the blue hues darkening as levels rise. Hydraulic models need such fine detail when the acreage at stake is relatively small –…
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Groundwater and climate change in California
By Andrew Fisher, Graham Fogg, Joshua Viers, Jay Lund, Ruth Langridge and Patricia Holden For all the talk of climate change adaptation, California has yet to comprehensively address the effects of warmer temperatures and changing weather patterns on the state’s limited groundwater resources. To start the process, several of the leading University of California faculty…
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Environmental science students rise to storytelling challenge
Trailer for “Stream Macroinvertebrates, A Love Story,” by UC Davis student Kyle Phillips By Sarah Yarnell 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…
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Journey to the bottom of the Rim Fire
Video: Researchers with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences describe their Sept. 20 hike through the apocalyptic terrain left by this summer’s Rim Fire. The U. S. Forest Service granted the researchers limited access on the still-closed and burning Stanislaus National Forest to retrieve their scientific monitoring equipment at the confluence of the Tuolumne…
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Major gift endorses UC Davis’ multidisciplinary engagement with California’s water problems
By Jay Lund Today marks a milestone for successful engagement of university research with California’s water problems. UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi announced a major donation to the Center for Watershed Sciences. The $10 million gift from the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation will enable the Center to expand its scientific research and public…
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Paradox on the Plains: As water efficiency increases, so can water use
By C.-Y. Cynthia Lin Groundwater and water conservation are critical issues in California and globally. Many of the world’s most productive agricultural regions depend on groundwater and have experienced unsustainable declines in water levels. In many places, policymakers have attempted to decrease groundwater extraction through voluntary, incentive-based conservation programs for irrigated agriculture. These policies are…
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Project HOBBES: Assembling water models from the data up
By Samuel Sandoval Solis, Josué Medellín-Azuara and Jay Lund Computer modelers tasked with untangling California’s knotty water problems often find themselves entangled by incompatible or poorly organized datasets. They’re stuck for months trying to transform these datasets into model inputs before the important business of modeling can get underway. Some highly useful datasets on parts…
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How to save salmon: location, location, location
By Robert Lusardi Spring-fed waters are luxurious places for salmon and trout. They provide ideal flows and temperatures year-round and jungles of aquatic plants teeming with insects for easy snacking. In real estate, the saying goes, three things matter: “location, location, location.” Can the same be said for native fish? Are fish that reside near…
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New environmentalism needed for California water
By Jay R. Lund California needs a new environmentalism to set a more effective and sustainable green bar for the nation and even the world. For decades, we have taken a “just say no” approach to stop, prevent or blunt human encroachments onto the natural world – often rightly so. Early environmentalism needed lines in…
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Time to rethink fish plantings in the Klamath
By Rebecca M. Quiñones The Klamath River basin presents one of the best opportunities for the reform of hatchery practices and the recovery of wild salmon and trout populations in California. Much of the habitat for the Klamath’s Chinook, coho and steelhead fisheries is in relatively good shape compared with conditions in the Sacramento and…
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The Delta won’t rise again
By Jay R. Lund Much of the western and central Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta has sunk deeply below sea level, and it continues to subside as its marsh soils erode from being drained and farmed. At the same time, sea level is rising. The two trends increase these islands’ likelihood of flooding from major storms, earthquakes,…
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The new ‘normal’ water year in a changing California climate
By Sarah Null and Joshua Viers For at least 20 years now, water scientists have impressed upon us the unavoidable effects of climate change already underway in California. The forecasts repeatedly call for reduced Sierra snowpack, earlier spring snowmelt, prolonged hot spells and droughts, warmer rivers stressing cold-water fish, wilder storms and sea level rise…
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Warmer water will kill off most of California’s native fishes
By Peter Moyle The peculiar pattern of rain California had this winter – virtually none in January and February – should remind us all that climate change is really happening now. “Abnormal” events will become increasingly frequent as our era of benign climate recedes. Dry winters are especially hard on native fishes that rely on…
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What lies in store for the state water bond?
By Ellen Hanak California has been struggling to manage its scarce water resources effectively for the benefit of competing needs: a growing population and urban economy, a highly productive agricultural sector and many valuable but threatened watersheds. In the final months of 2009, the state Legislature passed a comprehensive package of water bills – the…