It’s hard to motivate meaningful responses to abstract environmental problems. That’s why some scientists have thrown their weight behind putting dollar signs on nature. Their hope is that if people better grasp the dividends society reaps from rivers, forests, soil, and the atmosphere, they might support investing in protecting it. Certainly, that’s the philosophy the U.S. Forest Service has adopted in the agency’s work with urban canopies.
Deputy Secretary Mike Connor of the U.S. Interior Department heads to California this week to discuss the state’s worsening water crisis.
Politico reports that he will meet with state officials and water users as the water challenges continue to get bigger. California water users and their legislative allies were surprised by a couple of proposals that aim to protect endangered fish species.
The small town of Stratford, Calif., has been ravaged by drought for years. In this short film, director Joris Debeij talks to locals, hearing the personal stories of how they’re affected by the drought.
These conversations point to heartbreaking effects of this environmental disaster. A local farmer has to sell his land to earn money because he can’t farm without water. “It’s land that I worked with my dad, and it’s gone,” he says.
California is ramping up for what may be another challenging year for wildfires. Though welcome rain occurred during the winter, it was already too late for the millions of trees that have died due to the historic drought and epidemic bark beetle infestation.
Though natural disturbance agents such as wildfire, drought, insects and disease eventually restore a balance in natural ecosystems, the drastic and periodic disturbances of catastrophic wildfires and large-scale tree mortality from bark beetles are not compatible with a population of 38 million people, many of whom like to live in a forested environment.
California’s drought – or lack thereof, according to some – has made national headlines again, prompting suggestions from many quarters on whether we need to divert more or less water from the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary in response. Some of these suggestions reflect a basic understanding of California’s complex water system. Many don’t. But almost all of the recent debates seem to overlook one crucial and fundamental fact about California’s water future and the Bay-Delta ecosystem that serves as the switching yard for the state’s massive water projects: The state has already answered the question.
The fight to save the delta smelt, the beleaguered fish at the center of an increasingly bitter tug-of-war over water rights in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, is as close to a lost cause as ever, but fisheries biologists vow to continue the struggle to protect the species.
Two developments in recent days outlined alternative strategies for protecting fish whose populations drive water-allocation decisions for much of California: A coalition of business and water groups petitioned the state to address a key predator of native fish, while members of Congress asked federal agencies not to force additional water-supply cutbacks on the species’ behalf.
The petition from the business/water coalition asks the California Fish and Game Commission to allow more fishing for the striped bass and black bass, non-native species that feed on endangered chinook salmon and delta smelt in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Anthea Hansen, general manager of the Patterson, Calif.-based Del Puerto Water District, described the exciting work to bring more water stability in the form of recycled water to multiple Central Valley cities—in our five-part series on the North Valley Regional Recycled Water Program (NVRRWP).
“After six and a half years of effort,” Hansen said, “we have fully completed all of our environmental documentation, and most of the permitting is in hand.” Recently, the partners have interviewed and selected the preferred firm to construct the Modesto component of the project, so that process is underway.”
To understand what the future holds, sometimes we have to look at the past, Bruce Daniels has learned. Daniels is trying to help Californians understand future water availability by examining 85 years of daily precipitation records. His analysis has shown that water managers (and the rest of us) have some reason to be concerned.
Daniels holds a PhD in hydroclimatology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, although he originally started his career in computer science, including working on the first Macintosh computer.
For two weeks in August, the researchers flew a plane called the Carnegie Airborne Observatory over forests throughout the state and aimed a laser-guided sensor at the trees to measure the water content of their canopies.up to 58 million trees have suffered a water deficit classified as extremely threatening to long-term forest health. California’s years-long drought is not only having a distressing impact on humans but also on vegetation, as years of little or no rain is taking a big toll on the state’s forests, a new study revealed.
