California WaterBlog

By Richard Howitt, Duncan MacEwan, Josue Medellin-Azuara, Jay Lund and Daniel A. Sumner The drought is expected to be worse for California’s agricultural economy this year because of reduced water availability, according to our preliminary estimates released today. The study, … Continue reading →

Since the onset of California’s drought emergency 16 months ago, federal agencies and Congress have been seeking to help the state through funding and new and existing legislation. Here are 10 recommendations for new federal actions. Although many focus on … Continue reading →

Four years of severe drought and decades of huge water diversions appears to have pushed delta smelt to the point of no return. State biologists netted only a single smelt last month in trawl of 40 sites in San Francisco … Continue reading →

Rob Gailey, Graham Fogg, Thomas Harter, Jay Lund, Helen Dahlke, Richard Frank, Tim Ginn, Richard Howitt, Mimi Jenkins, Bonnie Magnuson, Josué Medellín-Azuara, and Samuel Sandoval Solis The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 creates an opportunity to establish standards for … Continue reading →

By Jay Lund California cities and water utilities will be stressed to meet the state’s aggressive urban conservation mandates in this fourth year of drought. Following Gov. Jerry Brown’s executive order, the State Water Resources Control Board developed specific reduction … Continue reading →

By Josué Medellín-Azuara, Jay Lund and Richard Howitt Some of the most popular drought stories lately have been on the amount of what water needed to produce food from California, as a consumer sees it — a single almond, a head of … Continue reading →

By Daniel A. Sumner California’s drought has been tough on farms and especially painful for farm workers in the Central Valley. But consumers of California-produced food have been spared large price increases. Despite the severity of the drought and California’s … Continue reading →

By Josué Medellín-Azuara and Jay Lund When it comes to water, California’s irrigated agriculture is always under the public magnifying glass because it is the largest managed water use in the state and the economic base for many rural areas. … Continue reading →

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By Joshua Viers and Graham Fogg A little publicized but highly curious part of the emergency drought legislation signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last month advances hundreds of millions of dollars to shore up and replace aging levees in flood … Continue reading →

By Nestle J. Frobish Visitors to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are doing double takes lately as they encounter some newly introduced “biological controls” to keep a fast-spreading waterweed from damaging boat propellers and choking off waterways. Working with state water … Continue reading →

By Jay Lund This fourth year of drought is severe, but not yet the driest ever. The drought’s impacts are worsened by record heat, which has dried out soils and raised the demands for irrigation. There is need for concern, preparation and … Continue reading →

                                                This article first ran in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 20, 2015. By Jay Lund … Continue reading →

By Peter Moyle I saw my first delta smelt in 1972, during my first fall as an assistant professor at UC Davis. I was on a California Department of Fish and Wildlife trawl survey to learn about the fishes of … Continue reading →

By Peter Moyle The sound of splashing drew me to the stream. A dark finned back cut the surface. Salmon? The fish came into view and its snout was a giveaway, maroon-hued and curved like a hook. This was a … Continue reading →

Jay Lund, Thomas Harter, Robert Gailey, Graham Fogg, Richard Frank, Helen Dahlke, Timothy Ginn, Sam Sandoval Solis, Thomas Young — UC Davis Andrew Fisher, Ruth Langridge — UC Santa Cruz Joshua Viers, Thomas Harmon — UC Merced Patricia Holden, Arturo … Continue reading →

By Jay Lund Droughts are strange, and this one is becoming scarier. February began with a nice few stormy days, but has since looked like this January – very dry. And so far, the March forecast is not wet. At … Continue reading →

This is the second of an intermittent series of articles on the future of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. By Jay Lund In any lowland, levees define how humans live and how they disrupt native habitats. This is as true for … Continue reading →

This is this first in an intermittent series of articles on the future of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. By Steven Culberson Estuaries are hard places to understand and even harder to explain. Estuarine scientists, myself included, have struggled to learn … Continue reading →

By Jay Lund Imagine capturing some of the heavy rain that has been draining off Northern California roofs lately to water yards this summer, for what will likely be a fourth year of drought. The drought has generated interest in … Continue reading →