See original article:
150 million trees died in California’s drought, and worse is to come
Sixty-two million trees perished in the state in the last year alone, mostly in the Sierra Nevada, according to the U.S. Forest Service. That’s a lot of kindling.
Trees killed by rising temperatures, pests, and sustained drought “elevate the risk of wildfire,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Oh goody: just what California needs!
The state this year saw its most expensive wildfire in history: Monterey County’s Soberanes Fire took out more than 132,000 acres, and cost more than $260 million. South of Monterey, San Bernardino’s Blue Cut Fire burned more than 36,000 acres, and destroyed nearly 100 homes.
Removing the kindling before it burns is not a silver bullet, according to environmental scientist Char Miller in the Los Angeles Times.
Even if foresters had unlimited funds, it would be unwise to remove all the dead trees. Charred, decomposing trees are a natural element of the landscape and can support other life, making forests healthier in the long run.
Western fires in general are now bigger, and fire seasons last longer than they did a few decades ago, due to extended drought and elevated temperatures.
Read article here:
102 million dead trees in California since 2010 will make for one helluva wildfire season.
Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
In a major policy shift fueled by a wet winter, California officials announced Wednesday they will lift mandatory urban water restrictions starting in June.
The water cuts, which began last summer, required the state’s water districts to slash use by 25 percent, leading many Californians to replace lawns with drought-tolerant vegetation, take shorter showers, and change other water-related habits. The change doesn’t mean Californians are in the clear, however. Under the new policy, water districts can set their own conservation standards and are required to report monthly water use data to the state. And some water-saving restrictions will stick around: Residents can’t hose down driveways with drinkable water, and homeowners can’t punish those with brown lawns during a drought.
State officials said they may reinstitute the restrictions depending on weather and water use in the coming months. “We don’t know if we have a megadrought punctuated by an OK year,” State Water Resources Control Board chair Felicia Marcus told the Wall Street Journal. “This compromise allows us to keep our eyes wide open.”
The change is partly in response to the drought’s geographic variation. The snowpack in Northern California neared historic highs earlier this year, filing the state’s two largest reservoirs nearly to capacity. But with an unseasonably warm spring, the snow quickly melted to 33 percent of historic levels, according to the New York Times. Southern California is feeling the drought’s immediate effects more accutely: Many reservoirs in the south are at levels far below the historical average. According to the US Drought Monitor, large swaths of Central and Southern California remain in “exceptional drought”—the most extreme category.
A number of environmental organizations cautioned against Wednesday’s shift. With the dwindling snowpack, low reservoir levels in the south, and overpumping of groundwater, the policy “sends the wrong message,” says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute. Rather than temporary water cuts, Gleick calls for permanent, long-term water use targets. “By making it possible for urban agencies to set their own conservation targets,” he says, “I’m afraid we’re going to see some water agencies doing a good job and others going to back to old wasteful practices.”
Original link:
California’s Water Cuts Are Ending, But Don’t Hose Down Your Sidewalk Just Yet
Mother Jones
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
Ninety miles east of Sacramento in the Sierra Nevada mountains, snow surveyors plunged aluminum rods into the snow on Wednesday morning and recorded quite a different number than they did the year before: 58.4 inches.
The March 30 measurement is welcome news for drought stricken Californians, and a stark contrast from 2015’s record low of zero inches, the lowest number the Sierra had seen since measuring began in the 1940’s. This year’s snow pack is just about equal to the annual average—but that still won’t provide enough melt water to say the drought is over.
Snowpack in March 2015, the lowest ever recorded LA Times
Snowpack in March 2016, recorded at nearly 60 inches. LA Times
“This was a dry, dusty field last year, so it’s a big improvement but not what we had hoped for,” Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, said just after taking the measurement. “This is going to improve conditions for both reservoir storage as well as stream flow, but there’s still going to be some ongoing effects from the past years of…way-below-average snow pack.”
Frank Gehrke, Gov. Brown, and DWR Director Mark Cowin address the media after 2015’s dire snow survey. Florence Low/Department of Water Resources
Throughout the winter months, snow surveys are taken at various points in the Sierra Nevada. The measurement near the first of April is the most significant historically and hydrologically, because it’s the time of year when snowfall typically begins to melt, providing 30 percent of the state’s water.
In addition to the traditional aluminum pole method, surveyors from the state’s Department of Water Resources conducted aerial surveys and analyzed data from snow pillows, flat sensors put on the ground that measure the weight of accumulated snow.
See original article here:
California’s Snow is Finally Back—But the Drought Is Far From Over
Copyright © 2015 Care2.com, inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved
site feedback
Problem on this page? Briefly let us know what isn’t working for you and we’ll try to make it right!
Continue reading:
spoiler alert!
By Amelia Urryon 17 Jul 2015commentsShare
You know that historic and disastrous drought currently turning California into one big heap of straw? You know how it’s probably being exacerbated by climate change? And indicative of the conditions that will become more common as the climate continues to warm?
As if that weren’t bad enough on its own, there’s more: All those hot and dry conditions mean that climate change is basically flipping the bird to birds, which are in serious trouble as they make their long migrations over parched California. Yup — welcome back to Spoiler Alerts, where climate change is always a jerk.
Here’s the gruesome scene from National Geographic:
Along the 4,000-mile-long Pacific flyway — one of four main routes in North America for migrating birds — up to six million ducks, geese, and swans wing south every year to find warmth after raising young in the rich habitats of Alaska, Canada, and Siberia. They are joined by millions of shorebirds, songbirds, and seabirds, including the ultimate endurance winner, the arctic tern.
But California’s drought has dried up its wetlands. Many insects, fish, and plants are gone. As a result, some migrating birds have died or been depleted of so much energy that they have trouble reproducing. Thousands of ducks and geese, crowded onto parched rivers and marshes, are felled by botulism and cholera, which race through their feeding grounds.
So many birds rely on California as they make the trek down from summer homes in Alaska that the litany of threatened species reads like a birder’s wishlist: long-billed dowitchers, sandhill cranes, tricolored blackbirds, cinnamon teal, tundra swans, snow geese, Western sandpipers, northern shovelers, Wilson’s phalaropes. I don’t know what half those things are and I’m still sad. Just think how bummed all those retirees with binoculars and a lot of time on their hands are going to be.
Even the birds that survive the migration this year may be pretty ragged by the next time they get to their breeding grounds. With little food and not enough water, many may not breed at all (we’ve all been there):
“The birds will see there’s no water and will fly to where water is. Now there’s one less refuge and pressure on the other refuges. When they fly back to breeding territory in Alaska and Canada, they’re not in good shape. If they’re weak, they’re susceptible to disease. Some may not breed,” [Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge manager] Frisk says.
And that’s bad news for birders, too:
Along the coastal part of the Pacific flyway, on the last day of April, Josiah Clark, a champion birder, pedaled 130 miles, from the Santa Cruz Mountains to San Francisco Bay, in 24 hours with a fellow birder, Rob Furrow. They saw 187 species, setting a Northern Hemisphere record for a birding-on-bicycle competition. But the vegetation looked dry like June instead of wet like spring, Clark says.
They saw cinnamon teal and hummingbirds near the coast rather than inland, and western sandpipers and dunlins were switching to kelp flies on the beach instead of insects in a flooded meadow. “It shows their resilience,” Clark says. “Those birds that don’t figure it out are not going to pass on their genes,” which ultimately can determine evolutionary success or failure.
If birding-on-bicycle was a thing you ever wanted to do, sorry — now climate change is ruining that, too.
Source:
Birds Are Dying As Drought Ravages Avian Highways
, National Geographic.
Please
to view the comments.
Find this article interesting?
Donate now to support our work. A Grist Special Series
Read More –
Thirsty birds are dying all over California — thanks, climate change
hurrah for syrah
By Amelia Urryon 2 Jun 2015commentsShare
Drought, out to destroy all your favorite things, is taking it surprisingly easy on vino — here’s the veritas from the New York Times:
Water shortages plague a vast area of the West, including Washington, where Gov. Jay Inslee last month declared a statewide drought emergency. But grapes require far less water than other crops. And the problem runs much deeper in California, where the drought, exacerbated by climate change, has entered its fourth year and farmers, including some in wine-producing areas in central California, are dealing with cuts of 25 percent or more in their water allotments.
In Washington’s Yakima valley, apples have long reigned supreme — but since the wholesome, all-American fruit needs twice as much water as a wine grape, the state’s orchards are ceding territory to Bacchus’s crop of choice:
“All this used to be apples,” said Dick Boushey, gesturing out from the front of his house a half-hour south of Yakima, where a brown, tilled field of 24 acres was cleared of apple trees last winter. Mr. Boushey’s team was planting new cabernet sauvignon vines over the Memorial Day weekend, and when that final former apple field … goes to grapes, his transition from apple farmer to wine-grape grower will be complete. …
Since 2010, wine-grape acreage in Washington has increased by 22 percent, according to state figures, to about 50,000 acres. At the same time, acreage for many other historically important crops — from potatoes to wheat — has been flat or in decline.
While times get harder — and dryer — for Napa’s famous vineyards, Washington vintners can put their feet up and enjoy some home-grown Sauvignon. Water security, shmater security, amirite? Just this once, let’s raise a glass to drought.
Source:
Drought Is Bearing Fruit for Washington Wineries
, New York Times.
Please
to view the comments.
This article:
Caught Wet-handed
12 Nov 2014 3:59 PM
Share
California drought leads to a black market for water
The drought in California is bad — so very bad, in fact, that it’s created an illegal gold rush: Poachers are siphoning off fresh water with plans to sell it to the highest bidder.
If that sounds apocalyptic, it kind of is. While the State Water Resources Control Board has 22 employees tasked with investigating such crimes — “illegal diversions,” they’re called — there’s yet to be a concerted statewide effort to track (let alone control and punish) water theft. In some rural areas, wells are running completely dry; local law enforcement thinks the desperation drives theft, and they’re scrambling to keep up. Reports the National Journal:
Officials complain that the penalty for getting caught may not be sufficiently strict: Mendocino County counts water theft as a misdemeanor. County Supervisor Carre Brown considers that a slap on the wrist. “To me this is like looting during a disaster. It should be a felony,” Brown said. …
“This is something that’s very hard to pin down. If you don’t catch someone in the act, how do you prove they did it?” Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman said.
While there are fines in place for wasting water in California (overwatering lawns, say), there’s no great solution yet for this kind of opportunism — or desperation. In a record-breaking drought, California can’t afford lush gardens or leaky pipes, but folks are stealing thousands of gallons of water from schools, clinics, and fire hydrants. In Modesto, one man was caught stealing canal water for his miniature ponies.
Water is the new oil — and when the world’s largest companies are starting to worry about global water shortages, it’s especially scary. We’re one step closer to The Road Warrior, people.
Source:
Drought Is Taking California Back to the Wild, Wild West
, National Journal.
Find this article interesting?
Donate now to support our work.Share
Please
to view the comments.
Link to article:
Libros
