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Given the chance to police themselves after a wetter winter, Bakersfield’s five urban water districts are holstering their batons — relaxing or removing conservation standards while still preaching a message of saving water. Local water officials say that’s not a contradiction. They point out the State Water Resources Control Board decided in May to let local agencies set their own standards relative to 2013 water usage — though requiring them to ensure a three-year supply during dry years like those from 2012 to 2015.

A group representing powerful statewide business and water interests has filed a petition to ease Sacramento River fishing regulations for striped bass, a predator fish some blame for the demise of chinook salmon.

The California Fish and Game Commission will consider the petition, which also includes changes to black bass regulations, during its meeting next month in Folsom.

The filing is the latest in an ongoing debate over striped bass, a non-native fish some say eat enormous amounts of young salmon in the Sacramento River and in the Delta as the little fish try to make it to the ocean.

Since California’s most recent drought began more than four years ago, scientific studies have been helping us better understand the causes and implications. We know now that a lack of precipitation has largely been caused by a very stubborn high-pressure system sitting off the West coast – dubbed at one time the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge. We’ve also learned that high-pressure systems like this may be the kind of thing we’ll see more of with climate change. A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters helps increase our understanding of the relationship between drought and the water cycle.

Two herons—one chalky blue, the other snowy white—lift from the reeds beside a gravel road running along the levee. On the other side, a lone mallard lands with a skid on the surface of the Santa Fe Canal, which is filled with water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. As Ric Ortega steers his white pickup along these marshy wetlands southeast of Mount Hamilton, he says the patchwork of canals, tule clusters, and grassy bogs comes alive with clouds of birds in the fall, when ducks and geese are migrating south from Canada.

Since California’s most recent drought began more than four years ago, scientific studies have been helping us better understand the causes and implications. We know now that a lack of precipitation has largely been caused by a very stubborn high-pressure system sitting off the West coast – dubbed at one time the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge. We’ve also learned that high-pressure systems like this may be the kind of thing we’ll see more of with climate change.

A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters helps increase our understanding of the relationship between drought and the water cycle.