Sudden oak death (SOD) has been spreading among trees throughout coastal California and Oregon for the last 15 years. In that short time, the disease has infested 10 percent of California’s at-risk habitat and killed over a million tanoak and true oak trees, raising major concerns about the potential impacts of further pathogen spread. The disease is caused by the non-native pathogen Phytophthora ramorum.
Research by UC Cooperative Extension staff in Humboldt County shows that infection and oak mortality are only the beginning of the story, as the disease may increase forest fuels and put infested stands at higher risk of severe wildfire.
UC Cooperative Extension forest advisor
- Author: Janet Byron
In a comprehensive study published in the January-March 2012 issue of the University of California’s California Agriculture journal, researchers evaluated the myriad factors that contribute to crop damage from Fusarium wilt, and conclude that an integrated management approach is most effective.
“Management of Fusarium wilt requires an integrated approach that includes crop rotation to reduce soil inoculum levels and the use of resistant cultivars during the warmest planting windows,” wrote UC Davis plant pathology professor Thomas Gordon and co-authors.
Lettuce is...
- Author: Katherine E. Kerlin
Tree rings. Ice core records. Cave stalactites. All of these things tell the story of Earth’s history and climate. Now, a UC Davis researcher and others are expanding on that story from the ocean’s point of view. They just returned from scouring the seafloor — digging deep into layer upon layer of mud — to uncover centuries of climate data from beneath the ocean floor.
UC Davis geophysicist Gary Acton is one of 34 international scientists that set sail from the Azores Islands on Nov. 17 aboard the drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution. They finished their Mediterranean voyage on Jan. 17, docking in Lisbon, Portugal.
“The climate change...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The closer homes are to open spaces – parks, stream and river corridors, forests and other natural lands – the higher the value of the homes in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. However, if homes are far from such open land, homebuyers tend to place an especially high value on lot size.
These were some of the findings of research, which graduate student Monobina Mukherjee at UC Riverside conducted in collaboration with Linda Fernandez, a former associate professor in the UC Riverside Department of Environmental Sciences. A summary of this research is in the September-October 2011 issue of UPDATE, a newsletter published by the Giannini Foundation...
- Author: Anne Lombardo
Thank you 185 times over!! The wildlife research team from the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project recently put out a request for the donation of single socks. They use them to hold bait for their camera trap studies of the Pacific fisher. The response was overwhelming and the fisher research team would like to thank all of the people who sorted, dropped off or packaged, waited in line and mailed their recycled socks to them. Your commitment and follow through are remarkable!
The team first got bags of socks from the local high school, and then grocery bags of socks started appearing in a local drop off bin. Soon boxes of socks started arriving by mail. They came from all over...