- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources is working to help farmers cope with the unwelcome outcome of historically low rainfall the last three years. UC scientists, with support from the California Department of Water Resources, have recorded video presentations on high-priority drought topics that are available for viewing on the UC California Institute of Water Resources drought webpages.
“We are bringing the latest research on drought and water from the UC system's leading experts to as many farmers, farm industry representatives, communities and students possible,” said Doug Parker, director of the UC California Institute of Water Resources. “People working in the ag industry are busy this time of year. They can get information from these videos whenever and, using mobile devices, wherever it is convenient for them.”
The first seven presentations in the “Insights: Water and Drought Online Seminar Series,” each about half an hour in length, are now ready for viewing at http://ucanr.edu/insights. Topics are:
Groundwater and surface water interactions under water shortage
Thomas Harter, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis.
Crop water stress detection and monitoring
Kenneth Shackel, professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis
Surface irrigation management under drought
Khaled Bali, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Imperial County
ET-based irrigation scheduling and management considerations under drought
Richard Snyder, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis
Salinity management under drought for annual crops
Stephen Grattan, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis
Salinity management under drought for perennial crops
Stephen Grattan, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis
Water-use-efficient tillage, residue and irrigation management
Jeff Mitchell, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis
Some of the topics that will soon be added to the online drought series are:
Managing deficit irrigation
Marshall English, professor emeritus at Oregon State University
Managing rice systems with limited water
Bruce Linquist, UC Davis
Climate change and paleoclimatology: 2013/1014 in perspective
Lynn Ingram, UC Berkeley
Available tools for estimating soil suitability to groundwater banking
Antony O'Geen, UC Davis
Irrigation management of tomato under drought conditions
Eugene Miyao, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources
How Will Monitoring Soil Moisture Save Me Water?
Dan Johnson, USDA-NRCS California State Water Manager
Winegrapes water management under drought
Paul Verdegaal, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources
Irrigation management of fruit and nut crops under Sacramento Valley conditions
Allan Fulton, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources
Alfalfa water demand and management under drought
Daniel Putnam, UC Davis
Field irrigation monitoring for maximum efficiency under drought conditions
Blake Sanden, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources
Subtropical orchards management under droughts
Ben Faber, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources
Additional valuable information from California academic institutions for dealing with the drought in the short-term and long-term is available at California Drought Resources, http://ucanr.edu/drought. The pages are regularly updated to bring new developments from the state's university and colleges to a broad range of communities, including farmers, ranchers, landscaping professionals, policymakers and California residents.
For more information on Insights: Water and Drought Online Seminar Series, contact Faith Kearns, UC California Institute for Water Resources, faith.kearns@ucop.edu.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
“Landscape irrigation represents well over half the water use in the average household,” Ingels said. “There are many proven ways to reduce high summer landscape water usage and these strategies will be especially critical this year due to the unprecedented drought in California.”
An expert in environmental horticulture, Ingels has maintained research and education programs for the University of California for 22 years on water conservation, deficit irrigation, sustainable landscaping and alternative turfgrass species. He also coordinates the UC Master Gardener program in Sacramento County.
In the spring, when the air temperature is in the 70s in much of California, lawns need about one-half to three-quarters of an inch of water per week, Ingels said. In the heat of the summer, water needs increase to about 1 inch to 1.5 inches per week. Knowing how much water to apply is half the battle. The other half is figuring out how much water is delivered by your irrigation system.
To calculate your home sprinklers' output, Ingels recommends conducting a catch can test. Place small cans with straight sides, like pet food or tuna cans, on the lawn in several places and run the sprinklers for 20 minutes. Use a ruler to measure the water in each can and determine the average. Multiply by three to get an hourly irrigation rate. Detailed information about various lawn species' water needs in different parts of California is outlined in the free UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources online publication Lawn Watering Guide for California. The document gives watering guidelines for warm season and cool season grass species growing in 10 climate regions in the state.
Loren Oki, UCCE specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis, a landscape horticulture expert, has conducted research on a wasteful but common residential lawn-watering problem in California: runoff.
“Much of the water that is applied to lawns runs directly into the gutters,” Oki said. “Not only is this wasted water, but we have found that the runoff carries pollutants – including pesticides and fertilizers – into the gutters and, eventually, into waterways. The problem is that typical sprinkler systems apply water faster than the soil can absorb it, which leads to runoff.”
To prevent runoff, use “cycle and soak,” a setting available on many irrigation controllers.
“This means the sprinklers come on for short periods with breaks in between to allow water to move into the soil,” Ingels said. “You'll still want to apply the full amount of water each of the days you're allowed to water, but you'll need a few hours between waterings to be sure it all soaks in.”
Sprinklers that spray a mist over lawns are another cause of water waste. Much of the water evaporates before it reaches the ground.
“You can save water by converting to rotary nozzles,” Ingels said. “The nozzles shoot out streams of water that provide very uniform watering. They have been shown to improve efficiency by 10 to 20 percent.”
In landscape borders, homeowners can save water by using a drip irrigation system. Drip irrigation will target water directly where the plants are growing, so no water is wasted wetting ground in areas where plant roots cannot reach. For optimal efficiency, the system must be carefully monitored throughout the growing season.
“Drip can be a great water saver, but it can also waste water if the system is poorly designed, if it's allowed to run too long, or if lines are accidentally cut with a shovel or other tool,” Ingels said.
Another water-saving strategy is preventing evaporation at the soil surface. Ingels suggests topping the soil with bark, wood chip, straw or other mulch.
“Bark and wood chips provide a long-lasting barrier to water evaporation from the soil,” he said. “Straw mulch works well in vegetable gardens. It saves water, keeps down weeds, and helps cool plant roots in the heat of the summer.”
Whatever irrigation system is used, Ingels said it is essential to check soil periodically throughout the year to determine how wet or dry it is and adjust the irrigation schedule as needed. The easiest way to check soil moisture, he said, is using a screwdriver.
“Just push a screwdriver down into the soil,” he said. “When the soil is moist, it will go all the way down. If the soil is moist only a few inches, the screwdriver will only go down that far.”
A more expensive soil sample tool, which pulls out a soil core, can be purchased at some nurseries and irrigation supply stores. Soil sampling provides more information about the soil, which is useful for making irrigation decisions.
UC Cooperative Extension and its Master Gardener program have abundant information on water conservation in the landscape:
- UC Guide to Healthy Lawns http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/TOOLS/TURF/
- Water use on Turfgrass and Landscape Plant Materials http://ucanr.edu/sites/UrbanHort/Water_Use_of_Turfgrass_and_Landscape_Plant_Materials/
- Drought: Gardening Tips http://cagardenweb.ucanr.edu/Drought_/Drought_Gardening_Tips_/
- Drought: Irrigation Tips http://cagardenweb.ucanr.edu/Drought_/Drought_Irrigation_Tips_/
- California Master Gardener programs (by county) http://camastergardeners.ucanr.edu/California_Counties_MG_Websites/
University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources is celebrating 100 years of UC Cooperative Extension researchers and educators drawing on local expertise to conduct agricultural, environmental, economic, youth development and nutrition research that helps California thrive.
Media contacts:
- Chuck Ingels, UCCE advisor, Sacramento County, (916) 875-6527, cell (916) 835-7458, caingels@ucanr.edu
- Loren Oki, UCCE specialist, Department of Plant Sciences, UC Davis, (530) 754-4135, lroki@ucdavis.edu
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
- Author: Nancy Vogel, DWR public affairs, nancy.vogel@water.ca.gov
Depending upon local conditions and near-term weather, irrigation may not be needed for a month or more.
"We can reap twice as much from the latest storms if people take full advantage of the natural precipitation and shut off sprinklers," said Department of Water Resources Director Mark Cowin. "Three dry years in a row have left our major reservoirs low, and we need to conserve those supplies in case drought conditions persist into the next rainy season. There's no need to water lawns, parks, median strips, or any landscaping already soaked by these recent storms."
On January 17, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. declared a drought emergency in California and called on all residents to conserve water by 20 percent in their homes and businesses. Typically more than half of the water used by homeowners is used outdoors. Californians can go a long way toward meeting the governor's goal by shutting down sprinklers until soil several inches deep appears dry or plants appear stressed. People who resume landscape irrigation should do so only according to the water schedules set by their local water districts. More than 100 such districts around the state have imposed voluntary or mandatory conservation measures that restrict the days and times when residents can run sprinklers.
Tom Gohring, executive director of the Water Forum, a diverse group of Sacramento regional interests working to resolve water issues, hosted the event at his home and switched off the sprinkler system controller in his garage to encourage others to do the same.
"Many people think they use more water in their house than they do in their yard," said Gohring. "The opposite is typically true. In the Sacramento region, about 65 percent of water used by homeowners goes to irrigate landscaping. We always want people to adjust their sprinklers based on the season and weather, but now, after a record dry year, there's real urgency."
While recent storms have boosted the Sierra Nevada snowpack and runoff into reservoirs, it would take half an inch of rain every day of March from Redding to Bakersfield to bring the state to average precipitation for the year in the watersheds that supply much of California's drinking and irrigation water. Even average precipitation would not be enough to avert water shortages, because major reservoir storage is now so far below typical storage for this time of year.
“Storms in the last couple of weeks have delivered a couple of inches or more of precipitation to most parts of California,” said Chuck Ingels, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Sacramento County. “Trees, shrubs, flowers, and lawns naturally use less water in winter's cool temperatures, and so an inch of rain provides enough moisture to forego the need for sprinklers for up to several weeks depending on temperatures.”
Sprinkler systems are controlled by a device, called an irrigation controller, that triggers the irrigation system when to turn on and off. People who do not know how to program their controllers can get links to manuals published by major manufacturers at the Save Our H2O website, saveourH20.org. Look under the "Sprinklers 101" section of the website: http://www.saveourH20.org/sprinklers101
Sacramento residents can find their water provider, information on the latest water restrictions, and water-saving tips at the Regional Water Authority's “Be Water Smart” website at http://www.bewatersmart.info/residential-customers/.
University of California master gardeners offer tips for gardening during a drought at http://cagardenweb.ucanr.edu. The California Center for Urban Horticulture, UC Davis, also has information for conserving water in the landscape, http://ccuh.ucdavis.edu, as does the UC Davis Arboretum http://publicgarden.ucdavis.edu/public-garden/drought-resources.
Other smart watering tips detailed at the Save Our H2O website:
- Water only in the early morning or late evening. Cooler temperatures reduce evaporation.
- Check your sprinkler system frequently and adjust so that you are not watering the hose, sidewalk, or street.
- Put mulch around trees and plants to cool soil and reduce evaporation.
- Consider installing a drip irrigation system, which applies water precisely, with less waste.
- Choose plants based on their adaptability to your climate. Check the Sunset Plant Finder to learn about water-wise plants that thrive in your region: plantfinder.sunset.com/plant-home.jsp.
- If you find yourself walking on your lawn only to mow it, consider replacing it with water-wise landscaping that reduces the need for water and maintenance.
- Check with your local water district for a free visit from a water conservation specialist, rebates on water-wise appliances, or "cash for grass" incentives to replace lawn with water-wise landscaping.
With California facing one of the most severe droughts on record, Governor Brown declared a drought State of Emergency last month and directed state officials to take all necessary actions to prepare for water shortages, and the governor, joined by legislative leaders, announced legislation to immediately help communities deal with the devastating dry conditions affecting our state and to provide funding to increase local water supplies.
Governor Brown met with President Obama about crucial federal support during the ongoing drought earlier this month, and the state continues to work with federal partners to ensure coordinated drought monitoring and response. Governor Brown and the administration have also expressed support for federal legislation introduced by Senators Feinstein and Boxer and Representatives Jim Costa, Tony Cárdenas and Sam Farr.
Across state government, action is being taken. The Department of General Services is leading water conservation efforts at state facilities, and the California State Architect has asked California school districts and community colleges to act on the governor's call to reduce water usage. The Department of Transportation is cutting water usage along California's roadways by 50 percent. Caltrans has also launched a public awareness campaign, putting a water conservation message on their more than 700 electronic highway signs.
In January, the state took action to conserve water in numerous Northern California reservoirs to meet minimum needs for operations impacting the environment and the economy, and recently the Department of Water Resources and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced they would seek the authority to make water exchanges to deliver water to those who need it most. The State Water Resources Control Board announced it would work with hydropower generators and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to preserve water in California reservoirs. Recently the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Fish and Game Commission restricted fishing on some waterways due to low water flows worsened by the drought.
The state is working to protect local communities from the dangers of extreme drought. The California Department of Public Health identified and offered assistance to communities at risk of severe drinking water shortages and is working with other state and local agencies to develop solutions for vulnerable communities. CAL FIRE hired additional firefighters and is continuously adjusting staffing throughout the state to help address the increased fire threat due to drought conditions. The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) launched a drought website to help farmers, ranchers and farmworkers find resources and assistance programs that may be available to them during the drought.
Even as the state deals with the immediate impacts of the drought, it's also planning for the future. Recently, the California Natural Resources Agency, the California Environmental Protection Agency and CDFA released the California Water Action Plan, which will guide state efforts to enhance water supply reliability, restore damaged and destroyed ecosystems and improve the resilience of our infrastructure.
Governor Brown has called on all Californians to voluntarily reduce their water usage by 20 percent, and the Save Our Water campaign launched four public service announcements encouraging residents to conserve, and has resources available in Spanish. Last December, the governor formed a Drought Task Force to review expected water allocations and California's preparedness for water scarcity. In May 2013, Governor Brown issued an Executive Order to direct state water officials to expedite the review and processing of voluntary transfers of water.
- Author: Pat Bailey
A statewide survey and follow-up interviews by the research team document a deep and growing concern over the severe conditions facing the ranching community. More than one-third of interviewed ranchers expect devastating impacts to their operations if drought conditions persist.
UC Davis postdoctoral researcher Leslie Roche and colleagues surveyed 511 ranchers across the state about their management decisions, including how they respond to drought. She is following up the survey with in-depth interviews to dig deeper into the specific factors affecting each ranching family and, so far, has met in person with more than 60 ranchers across California.
“Last year’s drought has really been on a lot of people’s minds,” said Roche. “But because this winter drought has hit so hard, it’s an extremely prominent concern among ranchers right now.”
She noted that ranching is often the sector of California agriculture that is most vulnerable to drought because it depends on rain-fed systems, rather than stored water or groundwater.
In 2013, California experienced its driest year on record, and the state’s current snowpack is just 17 percent of average. As a result, the state government and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have declared drought emergencies for California.
A statewide drought, such as the one that occurred from 1976 to 1977, would today exacerbate the effects of earlier regional droughts, according to many of the ranchers who responded to the UC Davis survey. With already conservative numbers of cattle in their herds, ranchers must now consider culling their herds to stay afloat as production costs rise.
California ranchers are accustomed to surviving drought. With a Mediterranean climate, drought conditions occur for about four months every year during the summer dry season. The last two winter wet seasons, however, have been below normal, forcing many ranchers to already implement drought plans. Most ranchers interviewed said that three to four of the last 10 years have been in drought. When asked if they consider themselves adaptive managers, almost all said, “you have to be.”
“Multi-generation ranchers, who have been viable in this state for a long time, have a lot to tell us from their own experience,” said Ken Tate, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis.
“They have to have flexibility and options in order to adapt,” Tate said. “Those who have less flexibility -- fewer types of forage, fewer places to go with cattle -- tend to be the ones having a harder time adapting to drought because their ‘toolbox’ is smaller.”
The UC Davis research team discovered that 99 percent of the ranchers surveyed depend on other ranchers as a trusted source of information. The team’s participatory research is tapping into that knowledge and experience so that it can be shared widely to the benefit of other ranchers, as well as policymakers and researchers. The survey is connecting campus directly to ranchers, opening up a wealth of research opportunities that will shed light on what management practices under what conditions work best for California ranchers. Through this study, state and federal resource-management agencies and drought-assistance programs are gaining a better understanding of what drought and other important issues mean to the ranching industry.
Information on how ranchers are dealing with the drought now is giving others in the agriculture industry a comparison of how extensive the drought’s impacts will be for them later.
“Other folks in ag are watching,” said Tate, “because they’re looking to planting time coming up soon for the summer crops, and they don’t know how much water they’re going to get.”
Other researchers involved in the study are Mark Lubell and Tracy Schohr of UC Davis, Justin Derner of the USDA Agricultural Research Service, Bethany Cutts of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Lynn Huntsinger of UC Berkeley. The project is funded by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the survey was conducted in partnership with the California Cattlemen’s Association and the California Farm Bureau Federation.
More information about the survey can be found online at the Rangeland Watershed Laboratory.
Media contacts:
- Ken Tate, Plant Sciences, (530) 754-8988, kwtate@ucdavis.edu
- Leslie Roche, Plant Sciences, lmroche@ucdavis.edu
- Pat Bailey, UC Davis News Service, (530) 752-9843, pjbailey@ucdavis.edu
- Author: Robert Sanders, (510) 643-6998, rsanders@berkeley.edu
In a press announcement accompanying the release of the studies, Secretary of Natural Resources John Laird noted that “significant increases in wildfires, floods, severe storms, drought and heat waves are clear evidence that climate change is happening now. California is stepping up to lead the way in preparing for — and adapting to — this change. These reports use cutting-edge science to provide an analytical roadmap, pointing the way for taking concrete steps to protect our natural resources and all Californians.”
Laird and others appeared yesterday at a press conference in Sacramento, where Robert B. Weisenmiller, chair of the California Energy Commission, called the reports “historic” and praised the scientists who contributed.
“We scientists know that climate change is and will be significantly affecting the state’s energy supply and demand system,” he said. “The research in these assessments furthers our understanding of the impacts …. The challenges are enormous, but certainly this state has the capability to rise to those challenges, and with these types of studies we are going to be prepared. We will use these in the energy commission planning … to maintain a reliable grid, but also use this as a way of planning our research.”
Laird and Weisenmiller were joined at the press conference by Chief Ken Pimlott, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), who painted a grim picture of the state’s fire future. Of the 20 worst fires in California history, 11 have occurred since 2002, he said. The fire season in some areas has increased by an average of two months, and a few areas in Southern California now have a year-round fire season.
“Studies like those being released today are key in helping us move forward to prepare California” to deal with these large and damaging fires, said Pimlott.
State’s fire season longer, fires more intense
UC Berkeley fire expert Max Moritz, who contributed a paper about increased vulnerability to wildland fires in the state, has been warning of increasing fire danger for years.
“Our results reveal that California should prepare — regardless of the future we may face climatically — for quite different fire activity levels in the future,” said Moritz, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. “Though our models continue to improve, we still don’t know which future climate scenario will actually emerge. The challenge is to learn to ‘coexist’ with this natural hazard and move toward fire-resilient ecosystems and fire-resistant urban development.”
Speaking for the more than 120 scientists in 26 teams who contributed to the studies, Susanne Moser, a Social Science Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, said that the report “spells out our new understanding of what climate change might mean to California. We are trying to inform the public, we are trying to inform the decision makers, with valuable information that they can use in … planning.”
The reports represent the third assessment commissioned by the California Climate Change Center since 2006, following up on discussions and topics presented at the Governor’s Conference on Extreme Climate Risks and California’s Future held last December in San Francisco. The new studies will provide a foundation for the 2012 Climate Adaptation Strategy, which is expected to be completed in December 2012.
David Ackerly, who co-authored three of the papers released yesterday, provided a new vegetation map that will allow planners to see how the Bay Area will likely change in the future.
“The big result that comes out of the models — and we have to remember that they are models — is a very wide expansion of chaparral and the loss of the cooler oak woodlands. And as climate change becomes more extreme, the Bay Area looks more and more like Santa Barbara or areas farther south, and the vegetation begins to look like Southern California, which is mostly scrublands,” said Ackerly, a professor of integrative biology. “That could take a hundred years or more, but the short-term result is that the dead trees become a fire danger and alien weeds invade.”
The short-term impacts are the most uncertain, he said, though UC Berkeley scientists hope to fill in these gaps through a broad research effort, the Berkeley Initiative in Global Change Biology.
“We hope to answer the question, ‘How fast can these changes really occur?’” he said.
Ackerly said that through his reports, which synthesized previous and ongoing research, he particularly wanted to link the expected decline of biodiversity throughout the state with a more visible impact on the ecosystem services people take for granted. The predicted march of desert northward into the San Joaquin Valley will make some areas unsuitable for agriculture, for example, while warmer winters may mean that plums and peaches will not get the winter chill they need to produce fruit.
“This is not merely nature for nature’s sake; nature and the services we expect from nature are all connected,” he said.
Gov. Jerry Brown is listening to these reports, according to Ken Alex, Brown’s senior policy advisor and director of the Office of Planning and Research, who also spoke at the press conference.
“Here in California, we do make policy decisions based on the science,” he said. “Gov. Brown actually reads the science, and he takes it very seriously, and I know that at a very deeply personal level, he wants to do something about climate change and wants to see California take the leadership role.”
The 26 teams submitting reports were led by researchers from around the state, including 15 from UC Berkeley, 19 from other UC campuses and two from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. For highlights from the reports, link to the CEC’s press release (PDF). To download the full reports, link to CEC’s website.
“The incredible breadth of studies, as well as the depth of their analyses, reveals just how much the University of California has to offer in preparing us all to adapt to a changing climate,” Moritz added. “Hopefully, it also demonstrates how important it is to grow this scientific capacity within our public university system.”