- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Stretching from the Death Valley to Calexico, California's vast dry desert is home to a unique and important agriculture industry.
It's a place where summertime temperatures often top the 115-degree mark. Where water supplies for irrigation depend on the Colorado River, but upriver states are claiming more of it. Where evapotrasporation – a reference rate of water use in unstressed turf grass – is 72 inches per year, but rainfall is rarely more than 4.
Still, stalwart farmers grow dates, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, kale and more, plus plants for landscaping everything from family homes to beautiful and luxurious resorts. The agriculture output of the state's three desert counties – Riverside,...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Although individual extreme weather events cannot yet be reliably linked to global climate change, the warming planet may be contributing to recent weather disasters in California. Across the state, 129 million trees died as a result of the drought of 2011-2016, many of them in the Sierra Nevada. Last fall, the worst wildfires in the state's history whipped through wildland areas and neighborhoods, and then were followed by a January deluge and deadly mudslide.
Climate change is also impacting agriculture. The winter chill that farmers rely on to re-boot cherry, pistachio, walnut and other important fruit and nut crops has been curbed by unseasonably warm nighttime temperatures. Sustained summertime heat waves are damaging crops...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Hedgerows enhance wildlife abundance and diversity around farmland without contributing to food safety problems in field crops, according to a new study published by a team of University of California researchers. The UC Agriculture and Natural Resources and UC Davis study documented that field edge plantings around farms are generally too narrow relative to the surrounding landscape to be a source of rodents and foodborne pathogens.
“This study is particularly pertinent right now when FDA's Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) is calling for farmers to co-manage wildlife and agriculture, instead of clear cutting wild habitat around their crops,” said co-author...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
A rigorous field study in two California climate zones has found that alfalfa can tolerate very heavy winter flooding for groundwater recharge. The research was published online Jan. 16 in California Agriculture journal.
The alfalfa research is the latest in a series of projects studying the effects of using land planted with permanent crops – including almond orchards and vineyards – to capture and bank winter storm water. Such projects have great promise but also require collaboration across multiple jurisdictions and agencies. UC Agriculture and Natural Resources vice president
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The gypsy moth, an interloper from Europe and Asia, is threatening California's majestic oaks in Ventura County.
Invasive desert knapweed, which comes from Africa, has made its first North American appearance in in California's Anza-Borrego Desert, where it has started to crowd out native plants.
Asian citrus psyllids are slowly spreading the devastating huanglongbing disease in Southern California citrus.
River rats from South America, called nutrias, are munching voraciously on wetland plants in some areas of Stanislaus, Merced and Fresno counties.
These are just a few of the insects, weeds, animals and diseases that have entered the state of California from elsewhere on the globe, causing...