- Author: Kim Ingram
Thinning a forest of woody materials has multiple objectives. It can increase the resiliency of the remaining trees from the effects of fire, drought, pest and disease; it can improve habitat quality for wildlife including watersheds; and it can make it easier for firefighters to protect human lives and livelihoods when a fire is burning. There are several ways thinning is carried out: cable logging, feller bunching, conventional tractor skidding, hand-thinning and piling, and mastication. One of the issues with thinning is the disposal of biomass that is non-merchantable (e.g., branches, tree tops, small diameter trees). Typically this material goes into large slash piles. For the most part, these piles are left in the forest to...
- Author: Eve Hightower
The 100 miles between the agricultural fields that surround Davis, Sacramento and the Sierra Foothhills and the culinarily rich city of San Francisco can seem vast to farmers who lack the connections needed to market their produce to Bay Area buyers.
That gap was bridged this week for a group of 25 small, beginning and ethnic farmers when the Agricultural Sustainability Institute (ASI) at UC Davis and the Sacramento County UC Cooperative Extension hosted a day-long bus tour that began in Sacramento early Tuesday morning. Farmers boarded a bus bound for the Bay Area, where they met wholesale food buyers.
“Many buyers are eager to meet small-scale farmers who can supply the rapidly expanding market for...
- Contributor: Trina Wood
California recently passed a law that will ban the use of lead ammunition when taking wildlife with a firearm. The intent is to protect scavenging birds and other wildlife from the threats of lead poisoning from spent lead ammunition.
While the new law, which was passed on Oct. 11, 2013, will be phased in over the next six years, the research that helped shape it has been going on for some time and much of it was done by researchers at the University of California, Davis.
UC Davis wildlife epidemiologist Terra Kelly (in photo at right) studied the effects of big game hunting on lead exposure in carrion-eating birds like eagles and turkey vultures and monitored the effect of a 2008 law that made it...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
In the Pajaro Valley, an agricultural region in Monterey County, residents are being proactive about water conservation policies and seeking ways to save water.
Groundwater makes up roughly 90 percent of the water delivered by Pajaro Valley’s Water Management Agency (PVWMA). There is a current overdraft of groundwater in the aquifers of this region, which calls for immediate action to protect their water source. Historically, the amount of groundwater in the aquifer was above sea level so the amount of salt water in the freshwater aquifer was kept at bay. Removing too much water from the ground at a faster rate than it is being replenished has caused seawater from the Pacific Ocean to enter the aquifer as the water...
- Author: Katherine E. Kerlin
It's no big surprise that humans are impacting the planet. But a new study pinpoints a sobering connection.
As human life expectancy increases, so does the percentage of invasive and endangered birds and mammals, according to a study by the University of California, Davis.
The study, published in the September issue of Ecology and Society, examined a combination of 15 social and ecological variables — from tourism and per capita gross domestic product to water stress and political stability. Then researchers analyzed their correlations with invasive and endangered birds and mammals, which are two indicators of...