California Water Policy Seminar Series
Winter 2014 ~ Mondays, 4:10 pm - 5:30 pm ~ 146 Olson Hall ~ Open to public
William C. Clark of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government will talk about how UC Davis and other academic institutions can transform knowledge into action for sustainability. The free public talk is part of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute’s Distinguished Speakers Series. The Center for Watershed Sciences is a co-sponsor of the event.
When: Tuesday, Jan. 14., 5 pm – 6:30 pm
Where: Multipurpose Room, Student Community Center, UC Davis
Take a trip to the front lines of the Endangered Species Act in Peter Moyle's latest commentary, "40 years of swimming upstream to save fish", published Dec. 29 in The Sacramento Bee.
Join us Monday, Jan. 6, for a public lecture and conversation on "reconciliation ecology" with Michael Rosenzweig, a University of Arizona ecologist and evolutionary biologist who has inspired, entertained and provoked professional and lay audiences alike with his ideas for saving species in a post-wild world.
In an Associated Press interview Monday (Dec. 9, 2013) the Center director Jay Lund said the goal of the state's Bay Delta Conservation Plan is not to increase the amount of water being sent to cities and Central Valley farms, but to make the conveyance less environmentally damaging.
Peter Moyle has been documenting the status of California native fishes for as long as the United States has had an Endangered Species Act. That would 40 years, as of this month. In today's California Water Blog post, the UC Davis professor of fish biology makes a case for removing the Central Valley steelhead from the federal government's list of species threatened or endangered with extinction - based on new information that became available because of the law.
Join Danielle Dolan for presentations and discussion on effective tribal collaboration in California regional water planning Friday, Dec. 6, 1 p.m. - 4 p.m., at the UC Davis Student Community Center's multipurpose room.
Discussion panelists include California tribal representatives, leaders in water management and state Department of Water Resources staff. The event caps Dolan's research project for her M.S. in Community Development.
This winter quarter the Center for Watershed Sciences and the law school's California Environmental Law & Policy Center will present a weekly series of public speakers on California water policy called Reconciling Ecosystem and Economy, Mondays, 4:10 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., Room 146 Olson Hall.
Mary Matella is scheduled to present "Floodplain restoration planning for a changing climate: Coupling flow dynamics with ecosystem benefits" at 4:10 p.m. Monday, Nov. 18, in the 3rd floor conference room of Ghausi Hall at UC Davis.
Matella is a doctoral student at UC Berkeley's Department of of Environmental Science, Policy & Management. Her presentation is one in a series of Asano Seminars organized by the UC Davis Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering.
Rice fields in California’s Yolo Bypass provide an all-you-can-eat bug buffet for juvenile salmon seeking nourishment on their journey to the sea.
That’s according to a new report detailing the scientific findings of an experiment that planted fish in harvested rice fields earlier this year, resulting in the fattest, fastest-growing salmon on record in the state’s rivers.
The Delta is not just a canteen to supply water...its a place that a lot of people live and work and call home," said Kip Lipper, top environmental consultant for Senate President Darrell Steinberg, speaking at an Oct. 15 public forum on the future of fresh water in California.
"Most aquatic ecosystems in California are so highly altered that attempting to restore them to an earlier condition or stable state is largely not possible," UC Davis fish biology professor Peter Moyle says in an essay published in the September 2013 issue of River Research and Applications.
Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi today announced a $10 million gift to the Center from the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation.
Video tells Center's story at a glance.
We're looking forward to several events in the coming months. Here are some of them:
The Center for Watershed Sciences will moderate a Sept. 10 panel discussion on news media coverage of water and other environmental issues. The School of Law's California Environmental Law and Policy Center is hosting the noon - 1p.m. discussion at 1002 King Hall. The event is free and open to public. Seating limited to 50.
The Center's Carson Jeffres has a fish tale that, like most others, ends with fish much bigger than they were at the start of the story.
Jeffres, though, swears his story is no exaggeration. He has data, photos and video showing that baby salmon planted in a flooded rice field near Sacramento grew at some of the fastest freshwater rates ever recorded in California.
Joshua Viers, a highly productive scientist and mentor at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, has joined the faculty at UC Merced as an associate professor in the School of Engineering.
As of Aug. 15, Viers also became UC Merced’s director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), which promotes collaborative research on California’s pressing environmental, social and health care problems.
We at the Center for Watershed Sciences extend our heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Mike Taugher, a former California environmental journalist much admired for his amiable personality and the high level of commitment, depth and talent he brought to coverage of water issues. Mike died July 27 while snorkeling in Hawaii on vacation.
"Mike's death is tragic on lots of levels," said Peter Moyle, associate director of the Center. "He was a really good reporter who checked things carefully."
Environmentalism must move from the era of “no” to an era of “how better,” the Center's director Jay Lund asserts in a commentary published June 30 by The Sacramento Bee.
"A new environmentalism is needed that can redirect and reconcile human activities to better support and even expand habitat for native species," Lund says. "Rather than insist on blocking human use to protect nature – a largely quixotic quest now – environmental reconciliation works in and with unavoidably human habitats...
Salmon and other native freshwater fish in California will likely become extinct within the next 100 years because of climate change -- if current trends continue -- ceding their habitats to non-native fish, predicts a new study by Center scientists Peter Moyle and Rebecca Quiñones.
The study, published online in May in the journal PLOS ONE, assessed how vulnerable each freshwater species in California is to climate change and estimated the likelihood that those species would become extinct in 100 years.
The Center director Jay Lund is scheduled May 14 to receive one of the university's Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Awards for his work in California water policy.
"He has consistently and effectively brought science to policy, influencing policymakers, government agencies and public interest groups," UC Davis stated in its announcement of the annual Academic Senate and Academic Federation awards.
California Trout honored three pillars of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences at a May 10 gala in San Francisco.
Jay Lund, director; Jeff Mount, founding director; and Peter Moyle, associate director, each received the group's Golden Trout Award for distinguished and significant contributions to the conservation of wild trout, steelhead, salmon and their habitat.
The latest UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences magazine spotlights the Watershed Center's climate research in the Sierra. Cover: In January, Joshua Viers (center), the studies' leader, with hydrologist Sarah Yarnell and biologist Ryan Peek at a meadow along the Bear River in Nevada County.
Scientists and interest groups involved with the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta generally agree on the actions needed to improve conditions for native fish, but most parties would prefer if someone else bore the financial burden of making the fixes. That's the general finding from confidential surveys conducted last year by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California and discussed in a new institute report released April 29, 2013.