2801 Second Street
Davis, CA 95618-7779
(530) 750-1352
jdowning@ucanr.edu
Links
Biography
M.S., Civil and Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley, 2001
M.A., Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley, 2000
B.S., Agricultural Engineering, Cornell University, 1995
Deep Springs College, 1991-1993
Jim is the Director of Publishing and the executive editor of UCANR's research journal California Agriculture. He joined UCANR in 2015.
From 2010 through 2014, Jim was a consultant to The Nature Conservancy, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the International Finance Corporation, the Water Education Foundation and other organizations working in agriculture and natural resources. From 2004 to 2010 he covered agriculture, water policy, energy and climate change at the Sacramento Bee and the Seattle Times. Before becoming a full-time reporter, he was a consultant to the World Bank Water and Sanitation Program's New Delhi office and the Blue Planet Run Foundation. In the 1990s he conducted ecological research in the Colorado Rockies and the Eastern Sierra region of California, as well as at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in Ispra, Italy.
Jim has been awarded a Switzer Environmental Leadership Fellowship, an American Association for the Advancement of Science Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship, and a Fulbright Fellowship.
California Agriculture Article Contributions
- A crossroads for strawberries
- Kearney and West Side RECs: Studies of sorghum's adaptation to drought push the frontiers of crop improvement
- Following the fuel: How portable biomass energy generation may help rural communities
- New UC ANR working group to address residual material from anaerobic digesters
- UC Global Food Initiative: UC ANR student fellows work on food insecurity, food communication and developing the next generation of Cooperative Extension experts
- Conifer encroachment study will inform efforts to preserve and restore North Coast oak woodlands
- Forest thinning may increase water yield from the Sierra Nevada