- Author: Marissa Palin
I’m from San Diego. We don’t get a whole lot of extreme weather in San Diego. My comfortable temperature tends to range from 70 to 80 degrees. We don’t get snow, no hurricanes, no tornadoes. But we do get the Santa Anas—hot dry winds blowing out of the desert. Which means we get wildfires. I’m fairly familiar with wildfires. So much so, that I once mistook snow falling from the sky for ash falling from the sky. (Like I said, I’m from Southern California).
Our last big fires were in 2007, when half a million...
- Author: Rebecca Miller-Cripps
The Water Conservation Act of 2009, also referred to as Senate Bill x7-7 or “20 by 2020,” mandates that California reduce urban per capita water use by 20 percent by the year 2020. It also requires all water suppliers to increase water use efficiency.
It’s estimated that 50 percent of California’s residential water is used outdoors — to water lawns, ornamental plantings and vegetable gardens, and in swimming pools. Our water use practices can always become more efficient.
To help us become more aware of our watering practices, July is designated as Smart Irrigation Month by the national
- Author: Sabrina L. Drill
Poodle-dog Bush is a California native plant and a common fire follower. This attractive plant has reached very high densities in recently burned areas, and is an important early colonizer that can help these areas recover. Look but don’t touch (or smell or collect) though, because this plant can cause serious allergic reactions for some people.
A member of the forget-me-not family (Boraginaceae), the poodle-dog bush, Terricula parryi, is a subshrub (with flexible, slightly woody stems) commonly found in disturbed areas, but rarely seen under undisturbed conditions. It can grow almost 10 feet tall and has purple bell-shaped flowers. It grows in recently burned areas of several vegetation types including forest,...
- Author: Kim Ingram
‘Visualizing’ forests from computer and other technological data is common practice in the field of forestry. Forest visualization is used for stand and landscape management and to predict future environmental conditions. Currently, most visualization software packages focus on one forest stand at a time (hundreds of acres), but now we can visualize an entire forest, from ridge top to ridge top. The Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project (SNAMP) Spatial Team principle investigators Qinghua Guo, associate professor in the UC Merced School of Engineering; Maggi Kelly, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the...
- Author: Eve Hightower
The size, scope and intensity of research at Russell Ranch Sustainable Agriculture Facility at UC Davis make the 300-acre experiment like no other in the world. The ranch’s unique focus on sustainability research is what draws producers, researchers and students to its annual Russell Ranch Sustainable Agriculture Field Day.
Located just west of the main UC Davis campus, Russell Ranch is a testing ground for the long-term sustainability of various farming methods. Research at the ranch focuses on fundamental components of agricultural production – energy, water and land resources –...
