- Contributor: John Stumbos
- Author: Katherine E. Kerlin
A recent study led Peter Moyle, professor in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology at UC Davis, predicts the demise of 82 percent of California’s native fish if present trends continue.
The study, published online in May in the journal PLOS ONE, assessed how vulnerable each freshwater species is to climate change and estimated the likelihood that those species would become extinct in California within 100 years.
The researchers found that, of 121 native fish species, 82 percent are likely to be driven to extinction or very low numbers as climate change speeds the...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Many parts of the Sierra Nevada have not burned in more than 100 years, a significant departure from a natural fire cycle that would characterize a healthy forest, according to Susie Kocher, UC Cooperative Extension advisor in the Central Sierra office.
“The fire interval is completely out of whack compared to pre-settlement conditions,” Kocher said.
In a historical, natural and healthy fire regime, nearly half of Sierra forests would experience fire every 12 years and three-quarters would burn every 20 years. However, only 0.2 percent of Sierra forest land has burned repeatedly at least every 20 years in modern times, while 74 percent has not had a single...
- Contributor: Ann King Filmer
- Author: Robin DeRieux
Ocean waters are warming, sea level is rising, seawater is becoming more acidic, and shoreline erosion is intensifying. The world’s oceans are reacting to increased carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere.
“The physical and chemical environment of the ocean is changing with the climate,” said John Largier of the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory. “This affects ecosystems — like tidal marshes and coral reefs that protect us from storms and flooding.”
The ocean brings stability to the earth’s climate. It heats up and cools down more slowly than the land and the air. With climate...
- Author: Suanne Klahorst
The first thing I had to learn as writing staff at the John Muir Institute for the Environment, UC Davis, was the difference between "climate" and "weather." I compare it to reading a stock chart, there are jagged peaks and valleys daily, but it takes stock performance over years to reveal an unmistakable trend. The small ticks are similar to weather but the trend over decades is closer to climate. Nearly every stock chart has a huge valley at the year 2008, this is thought to be a once in a century event. That event is analogous to climate change, except climate trends are measured over millions of years, and climate is thought to be much slower to recover.
American opinions about global warming are as uncertain as the...
- Author: Katherine E. Kerlin
Decades of extreme weather crippled, and ultimately decimated, first the political culture and later the human population of the ancient Maya, according to a study by an interdisciplinary team of researchers that includes two University of California, Davis, scientists.
Now, for the first time, researchers have combined a precise climatic record of the Maya environment with a precise record of Maya political history to provide a better understanding of the role weather had in the civilization’s downfall.
Their findings are published in the Nov. 9, 2012, issue of the...