- Author: Katherine E. Kerlin
As drought dries the landscape and rising global temperatures make for decreasing crop yields, farmers are faced with the question of how to feed billions of people in a way that both reduces global greenhouse gas emissions and adapts to the realities of climate change.
Scientists and policymakers from around the world will gather today through Friday, March 20-22, at the University of California, Davis, to grapple with the threats of climate change for global agriculture and recommend science-based actions to slow its effects while meeting the world's need for food, livelihood and sustainability.
- Author: sarah yang
Fields with diversified, organic crops get more buzz from wild bees, concludes a synthesis of 39 studies on 23 crops around the world published March 11 in the journal Ecology Letters.
The study found that wild bees were more abundant in diversified farming systems. Unlike large-scale monoculture agriculture, which typically relies upon pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, diversified farming systems promote ecological interactions that lead to sustainable, productive agriculture. Such systems are...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
When actress René Russo appeared in a video (posted below) about “New Oak Threats,” she wasn’t acting. The veteran of big-budget thrillers like Lethal Weapon 3 and 4 and the Thomas Crown Affair expressed her personal convictions when she called for Californians to become educated and observant guardians of California oaks.
“I love our beautiful oak trees,” Russo said. “But there’s a new pest in town, and we could potentially lose every tree that we have. It would change the face of Southern California. It’s terrifying.”
The actress says the death of 80,000 oak trees in San Diego County since 2008 from...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
A little love goes a long way, especially when it comes to saving resources, saving lives and teaching youths responsibility.
And a Solano County 4-H project is doing just that — with orphan kittens.
Twenty-one 4-H’ers, all from Dixon, Vacaville, Rio Vista, Vallejo, Elmira or Fairfield, participate in the Solano County 4-H Orphan Kitten Program, doing their part to care for the orphan kittens that arrive at the Solano County Animal Care and Control Facility, Fairfield.
The 4-H’ers foster the felines in their homes until the kittens reach adoption age, and then they seek good homes for them.
The project, which began in the summer of 2011, is “designed to give 4-H...
- Author: John Stumbos
At times during the winter and early spring it looks like a vast inland sea between Sacramento and Davis. This is the Yolo Bypass, which shunts Sacramento River floodwater around the state capital during high flows. You drive over the bypass on a three-mile-long elevated stretch of Interstate 80 known as “the Causeway” (the Blecher-Freeman Memorial Causeway). The bypass is also the site of a lot of innovative fish and wildlife work.
From late fall through winter you can see thousands of ducks, geese and other waterfowl winging over the bypass’s flooded rice fields and the restored wetlands in the Vic Fazio Yolo Basin Wildlife Area. The Central Valley of California is one of the...