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California WaterBlog

Tag: Ryan Peek

  • Day 8 – Haikus

    We invited haiku submissions from CWS members and friends to be a part of the 8th day of our California WaterBlog series, “12 Days of CWS“. A haiku is a traditional Japanese three-line poem (5-7-5 syllables) that focuses on capturing a moment, feeling, or image. We hope you enjoy… and leave us your own haiku in the…

  • Picture this research – a photo blog from the Center for Watershed Sciences

    by Scientists at CWS Holidays are a natural time of introspection on who we are, what we do, and why. Towards a bit of our own self-reflection, some researchers from UC Davis’ Center for Watershed Sciences (CWS) have each contributed a photo and short description of their work. We hope you enjoy reading about us…

  • 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…

  • Time-lapse river videos expose nature in the raw

    By Ryan Peek Thanks to its Mediterranean climate, California swings from one extreme to another — severe drought, raging wildfires, big floods. These forces often interact and amplify, as we saw all too well this past summer in the scorching of hundreds of thousands of extremely dry forested acres, with the loss of homes and lives.…

  • 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…

  • Life springs in Sierra rivers as springtime flows recede

    By Sarah Yarnell and Ryan Peek In case you hadn’t heard, the annual Sierra “spring snowmelt recession” has begun. The foothill yellow-legged frog certainly knew. Adapted to the seasonal patterns of California’s climate, this rare frog and other native amphibians, fishes and bottom-dwelling invertebrates are genetically wired to reproduce during the spring snowmelt when river…