Tag: Central Valley
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Severe drought impacts to Central Valley agriculture forecast this year
By Richard Howitt, Josué Medellín-Azuara, Duncan MacEwan and Jay Lund This year’s drought will have severe impacts on irrigated agriculture in California’s Central Valley. To estimate this impact, we updated and applied the Statewide Agricultural Production (SWAP) model for estimated cutbacks in surface water supplies (based on interviews with Valley water providers) — with limitations on groundwater…
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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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Some springtime reading on California water
Jay R. Lund, Director, Center for Watershed Sciences and the Ray B. Krone Chair of Environmental Engineering, University of California – Davis California is a wonderful place to study water, with so many interesting and important problems, many thoughtful and insightful authors, and much to be learned. Here is a short selection of readings on…
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Wanted: An integrated strategy for recovery of Central Valley salmon
Jacob Katz, Ph.D. Candidate, Center for Watershed Sciences Peter Moyle, Professor of Fish Biology, University of California – Davis Historically, the rivers of the Central Valley had seasonally variable stream flows and diverse habitats. Rivers tended to flood in winter, with low flows in summer. Salmon used in-channel gravel beds for spawning, deep in-channel pools…
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Growing costs and concern for drinking water in Tulare Basin and Salinas Valley
Thomas Harter, Robert M. Hagan Endowed Chair in Water Management and Policy, University of California – Davis Jay R. Lund, The Ray B. Krone Chair of Environmental Engineering, University of California – Davis A potential public health concern has been percolating into aquifer drinking water supplies in the Tulare Basin and Salinas Valley for the…
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Have our salmon and eat them too: Re-thinking Central Valley salmon hatcheries
By Jacob Katz and Peter Moyle In the previous blog, Jay Lund argued that wide-scale, integrated management of California’s water system will better balance water needs of the environment and water demands by humans. Here we expand on the need for fundamental shifts in policy to recover populations of Central Valley salmon using integrated management…
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The benefits of floodplain reconnection
By Jeffrey Mount For more than a century, California has sought to separate floodplains from rivers. An elaborate array of levees and dams usually confine, divert or capture winter floods, supporting agriculture on rich floodplain soils and unreliably protecting urban growth in flood-prone areas. Nowhere is this approach more evident than the Central Valley. One…
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Water to the sea isn’t wasted
By Jeffrey Mount In December of 2010 we had a remarkable set of storms. Relentless rain and snowfall hit both southern and northern California. The news reports about these events followed a predictable pattern, including the inevitable articles that bemoan floodwaters as “wasted” because they discharge to the sea. This generalization about floodwaters or any…
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Striped bass control: cure worse than disease?
By Peter B. Moyle and William A. Bennett Seven species of fish in the Delta are listed as threatened or endangered, including Delta smelt, salmon and steelhead. Although the ultimate cause of decline in these species is adverse water management throughout the Central Valley, there is a constant search for ways to increase their numbers…