Tag: environmental flows
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The search for flow metrics that support fish success – case study in Scott River, Siskiyou County, California
By Claire Kouba, Sarah Yarnell, Leland Scantlebury, and Thomas Harter How much water do fish really need, and is it possible to ask the fish? One approach to answering this question is to monitor the abundance of a local fish population over many years, and determine the degree to which observed streamflow correlates with fishery…
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Representing interannual variability for environmental flow operations: the functional flow regime
By Lindsay Murdoch, Sarah Yarnell, and Jay Lund California’s local communities and native ecosystems alike have adapted to cycles of flood, drought, and a healthy portion of everything in between. Our river management, on the other hand, has fallen out of natural balance and tends to oscillate between insufficient minimum flows and emergency flood responses,…
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Announcing the 7th International Symposium on River Science
The International Society for River Science (ISRS) will hold the 7th International Symposium on River Science at the University of California, Davis on October 6-9, 2025. We invite you to attend! The first river symposium was held in 1979 in Norway, and rivers conferences have continued through the decades since, across the globe. Recent conferences…
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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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Minimum Flow Laws in California and Chile
By Camila Boettiger, Karrigan Börk, Roberto Ponce Oliva, Diego Rivera, Jay Lund, and Sarah Yarnell California and Chile share a history of water allocation with little regard for instream uses of water, especially environmental uses. In California, for example, many water rights were obtained with no consideration of the environmental impacts of the water use,…
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The myth of normal river flow: Drought, floods, and management of California’s rivers
By Julie Zimmerman, Jennifer Carah, Kirk Klausmeyer, Bronwen Stanford, Monty Schmitt, Mia Van Docto, Mary Ann King, and Matt Clifford Is California still experiencing drought? Even after a winter of record rainfall and snowpack, followed by a tropical storm, this is still an important question. And if you read the headlines, the answer is…yes and…
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Putah Creek’s rebirth: a model for reconciling other degraded streams?
By Emily Jacinto, Nann A. Fangue, Dennis E. Cocherell, Joseph D. Kiernan, Peter B. Moyle, and Andrew L. Rypel It’s hard to look at native fishes in Putah Creek and not grin a little. Be it a Sacamento Pikeminnow (below), a Sacramento Sucker, a Tule Perch, or even a Chinook Salmon – Putah Creek has…
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Considerations for Developing An Environmental Water Right in California
By Karrigan Börk, Andrew L. Rypel, Sarah Yarnell, Ann Willis, Peter B. Moyle, Josué Medellín-Azuara, Jay Lund, and Robert Lusardi This week, news emerged of a State Senate plan that would spend upwards of $1.5B to purchase senior water rights from California growers. Under California’s first-in-time, first-in-right water allocation system, senior water rights are filled…
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The Putah Creek Fish Kill: Learning from a Local Disaster
By Alex Rabidoux, Max Stevenson, Peter B. Moyle, Mackenzie C. Miner, Lauren G. Hitt, Dennis E. Cocherell, Nann A. Fangue, and Andrew L. Rypel Putah Creek is a small stream located in the Central Valley that has been extensively modified to suit urban and agricultural water needs. Following ratification of the Putah Creek Accord in…
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Nature has solutions…What are they? And why do they matter?
By Andrew L. Rypel California’s water problems are intense; so much so they are often referred to as ‘wicked’ for their extraordinary depth of complexity and general unsolvability. Yet it recently occurred to me that some of the better and more creative solutions often derive from one particular source – nature itself. Indeed, studies of…
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Functional Flows for Developing Ecological Flow Recommendations
by Sarah Yarnell, Alyssa Obester, Ted Grantham, Eric Stein, Belize Lane, Rob Lusardi, Julie Zimmerman, Jeanette Howard, Sam Sandoval-Solis, Rene Henery, and Erin Bray To protect California’s native aquatic species, stream flows need to be managed to support important ecological processes and habitat needs. In practice, such flows are difficult and controversial to define and…
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The folly of unimpaired flows for water quality management
by Ann Willis Unimpaired streamflow has long been the benchmark against which current stream flows are evaluated for environmental purposes. The underlying assumption is that if there is water in a stream, the stream must be healthy. A closer look shows why unimpaired flows is often a flawed basis for environmental management, particularly when water…
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Water giveaways during a drought invite conflict
This article first ran in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 20, 2015. By Jay Lund and Peter Moyle When labor is scarce, people move to better jobs with higher wages.…