- Author: Kat Kerlin, UC Davis
Reducing leaks a cost-effective way to save urban water without draining utilities
Before a drop of treated water in California ever reaches a consumer's faucet, about 8% of it has already been wasted due to leaks in the delivery system. Nationally, the waste is even higher, at 17%. This represents an untapped opportunity for water savings, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, is the first large-scale assessment of utility-level water loss in the United States. It found that leak reduction by...
/h2>- Author: Kat Kerlin, UC Davis
The world's abalone are threatened, endangered or otherwise vulnerable in nearly every corner of the planet. While captive breeding efforts are underway for some species, these giant sea snails are notoriously difficult to spawn. If only we could wave a magic wand to know when abalone are ready to reproduce, without even touching them.
Scientists from the University of California, Davis, found that wand — although it isn't magic, and it only looks like a wand. It's an ultrasound transducer, and it can be used to quickly and noninvasively detect when abalone are ready to spawn, according to
- Author: Rick Kushman, Almond Board of California, (916) 716-9909, rkushman@almondboard.com
Almond Board of California biopic details how one man's vision and determination led to a new best practice in orchard replanting
Brent Holtz grew up on the farm his grandfather bought in the 1940s, six miles north of Modesto at the time. By the 1970s, the land was on the urban edge of the city, surrounded by houses.
By the late 1980s, Holtz's family had to farm differently, and they could no longer burn their brush. At that time, Holtz was a UC Berkeley plant pathology graduate student. “I felt a responsibility to help my family find a solution for ag burning,” the UC Cooperative Extension pomology advisor says now.
One...
- Author: Kara Manke, UC Berkeley
In his years managing California woodlands, Rob York has come up with a few quick and easy ways to gauge whether a forest is prepared for wildfire.
“The first question I like to ask is, ‘Can you run through the forest?'” York says.
York, an assistant cooperative extension specialist and adjunct associate professor of forestry at UC Berkeley, poses the question while standing in a grove of pine trees during a tour of Blodgett Forest Research Station, a 4,000-acre...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Farmers and ranchers are invited on a tour to learn how to use cover crops to build soil health. A full-day tour of several cover crop sites in orchards and annual crop fields in the Sacramento Valley is being offered on March 3 by the Western Cover Crop Council's Southwest Region Committee.
“The goal of this tour is to demonstrate ways to use cover crops effectively in annual crops and orchards in the Sacramento Valley,” said tour organizer Sarah Light, UC Cooperative Extension agronomy advisor.
“This tour will cover a range of topics, including cover crop selection,...