- Editor: J. M.
- Author: Mike Jones
From Michael:
I joined UCCE on October 1, 2018 as the Forestry Advisor for Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake Counties. I specialize in forest entomology with a focus on forest health and integrated pest management of invasive and endemic forest pests.
I completed a Ph.D. in Entomology from State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry and a B.S. in Environmental Biology and Management from UC Davis.
Prior to joining UCCE, I was a Research Project Assistant (graduate student) at State University of New York. I developed and maintained research projects on delimitation, management, and biological control of the invasive forest pest emerald ash borer in New York. From 2010 to 2013, I was a research associate in the Department of Entomology, UC Davis in collaboration with the US Forest Service, Forest Health Protection in southern California. I participated in a variety of forest pest research projects involving the detection, evaluation, and management of native and invasive forest pests, including goldspotted oak borer. I have been active in leading training activities for land managers and owners in the field identification and management of forest pests, and training and supervising field crews in the collection of forestry data. My journey in forest health started as an undergraduate at UC Davis, where I worked on sudden oak death in the department of Plant Pathology.
I moved to the town of Sonoma in high school and have been fascinated by the area ever since. My family goes back eight generations in California, and I feel very fortunate to be able to move back to the area (Healdsburg) to start my career. I look forward to working with Sonoma County, and helping land owners and managers deal with forestry challenges faced by the county, particularly after the fires of 2017, but also looking into the future.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions. I look forward to working with and meeting members of the Sonoma County community.
Michael I. Jones, PhD| Forest Advisor
UC Cooperative Extension - Mendocino, Lake, and Sonoma
890 North Bush Street | Ukiah, CA 95482
(707) 463-6344 office | (707) 338-7457 cell | mjones@ucanr.edu
http://cemendocino.ucanr.edu/ | http://ucanr.edu/sites/forestry/
- Author: Vanessa Raditz
- Contributor: Julia Van Soelen Kim
- Editor: Karen Giovannini
Local food producers: The recent wildfires are creating dangerous air pollution in our region. The biggest threat to your health is from inhaling the smoke. Protect your lungs by staying indoors whenever possible, and wearing a respirator mask when outdoors. An N95 respiratory is the minimum protection recommended, while a P100 will provide additional protection from petroleum-based chemicals and smaller particles. Employers of outdoor workers should consider adequate protection for their workers, such as limiting the time that employees work outside and providing adequate respiratory protective equipment (see California Code of Regulations Title 8 section 3203, Injury and Illness Prevention Program, and section 5141, Control of Harmful Exposure to Employees).
During the fires in Sonoma County last fall 2017, many local food growers expressed concern about the impact of the wildfire smoke on the food safety of our local produce. Since then, a group of researchers and concerned community members have been investigating this question. The Produce Safety after Urban Wildfire project will be releasing a final report in early 2019. However, due to this current air pollution emergency, we would like to share that the lab results from our
plant samples DO NOT show extensive contamination of produce exposed to wildfire smoke, and our findings suggest a low health risk from ingesting produce exposed to wildfire smoke.
Fresh produce, especially green leafy vegetables, are critical for nutrition and promoting the body's resilience to the health impacts of smoke. To further reduce risk of contamination, wash produce with running water and remove outer leaves or peels and wash hands after harvesting produce or coming in contact with soil and ash.
Some groups are more vulnerable to health impacts from the smoke and should take extra precaution during this time, including children, elders, and people with respiratory and heart conditions. If you are a garden educator working with kids, please consider activities that can be done inside until air quality improves.
We encourage our community to continue supporting our local food system and sharing our online resources with all those concerned, including our publication:
See our Produce Safety after Urban Wildfire for more resources and information.
Sign-up for our google group of community members discussing these issues and sharing strategies.
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- Author: Rhonda Smith
- Editor: J. M.
Planting a vineyard with vines that are not infected with common grapevine viruses is essential to the bottom line. It can be challenging enough to keep over 1000 vines per acre relatively free from the normal canopy and trunk diseases such as grapevine powdery mildew and Eutypa dieback. Those diseases are caused by infections that occur naturally after vines are planted and can be controlled with proper farming practices.
Grapevine leafroll virus is an example of a common virus that can be avoided – at least initially – by planting certified vines. It is one of the viruses that cause the leaves of red-berried varieties to turn red in the fall. (The red “fall color” seen in photos of grapevines is not a good sign.) In white-berried varieties visual symptoms are more difficult to identify because the leaves do not turn red. Leafroll disease is widespread throughout the world and prevents the normal ripening process from occurring.
Unknowingly planting vines infected with leafroll virus is possible and very damaging because the virus is spread by mealybugs and scale insects. Starting with infected vines makes a bad situation worse because the incidence of diseased vines in a block quickly increases. Growers invest significant resources to control the insect vectors of leafroll, remove diseased vines and replant with clean stock.
UC Davis Foundation Plant Services
Starting out with “clean” vines is critical. And clean in this context means not infected with grapevine viruses that are known to reduce grape yield or quality. So it is important to plant a vineyard with vines that are far less likely to be infected on the day they are planted. In reality virus-free cannot be guaranteed.
To obtain the cleanest plants possible using normal nursery production practices, most growers purchase certified vines from grapevine nurseries and the source of those vines can be traced back to Foundation Plant Services (FPS) at UC Davis.
Vines are planted into Foundation Blocks at FPS only after undergoing a battery of virus tests – some of which can take two or more years - as prescribed by the CDFA regulations as well as pass other evaluations. The FPS lab continually tests for viruses in the Foundation Blocks; each vine is tested every three years. For nematode transmitted viruses, each Foundation vine is tested every two years.
Protocol 2010
Nearly 10 years ago, FPS began to develop a new Foundation Block that met newly established national standards for grapevine foundation plants in the US. The Russell Ranch Vineyard (RRV) at UC Davis contains Foundation vines which have all been propagated using a technique called microshoot tip culture – in which a 0.19 inch (0.5 mm) or smaller slice of the growing tip of a shoot is used as the starting material for a grapevine. These vines start out in small boxes on growth media. After a vine has grown large enough for tissue to be collected and tested for viruses, it must test negative for over 30 grapevine viruses.
Why so many? Because other countries have grapevine viruses that we don't have in the US, thus creating a testing protocol that includes those viruses helps to insure they are not in US Foundation Blocks. The testing protocol used to establish the RRV is known as “Protocol 2010” and it was made possible by funding in the 2008 Farm Bill that established the National Clean Plant Network (NCPN).
National Clean Plant Network
The purpose of the NCPN is to protect plants of economic value by diagnosing for plant pathogens, curing those plants, and to protect starter plants and make them available to industry. The goal of the NCPN is to sustain national funding for clean planting stock programs of key horticultural crops. There are five Grape Clean Plant Centers and they are located at UC Davis, Florida A&M University, Missouri State University, Cornell University and Washington State University. Clean Plant Centers also exist throughout the US for fruit trees, berries, citrus, hops, sweetpotatoes and roses. UC Davis FPS is also a Clean Plant Center for fruit trees, sweetpotatoes and roses.
“The National Clean Plant Network is an association of clean plant centers, scientists, educators, state and federal regulators, large and small nurseries and growers of specialty crops that work together to ensure that plant propagation material is clean and available.”
For more information on the National Clean Plant Network, visit nationalcleanplantnetwork.org
To learn more about Foundation Plant Services at UC Davis, visit fps.ucdavis.edu
- Author: Steven M. Worker
- Contributor: Karen Giovannini
Steven Worker is the 4-H Youth Development Advisor for Sonoma, Marin and Napa counties.
4-H uses a variety of volunteers for it's programs. Steven conducted a study of volunteer educators, with a "diverse experiences, abilities and values" to teach STEM projects to students using 4-H curriculum at three sites using three different methods.
To describe volunteers' pedagogical practices, I conducted a qualitative case study at three sites where volunteer educators were implementing a design-based 4-H curriculum. The curriculum advanced youth scientific literacy by supporting scientific inquiry in conjunction with planning, designing and making shareable artifacts. Through detailed observations, videos and focus groups, I identified six common pedagogical practices, though educators differed widely in which ones they used. Pragmatic and structural constraints shaped their choices, as did their professional identification as engineers, or not, and their relative comfort with engineering.
To support volunteer educators in implementing a learner-centered educational program, curricula designers might be more specific in recommending and explaining pedagogical practices, and program managers might better train volunteer educators in those preferred practices.
Read this research article is in California Agriculture, volume 71, number 4.
Citation: Worker S. 2017. Volunteer educators bring their own ideas about effective teaching to a 4-H curriculum. Calif Agr 71(4):208-213. https://doi.org/10.3733/ca.2017a0021.


- Author: Diego Mariscal
- Editor: J. M.
4-H Outreach Summer Program
Summer of 2018
More than 100 youth, ages 5-12, participated in four weeks of summer camps in Santa Rosa and Windsor. The camps focused on team building, leadership, and civic services while also keeping youth active with sports clinics and non-competitive scrimmages to promote skill building.
Additionally, 4-H continued to grow its college preparation program – called JUNTOS - for Latino high school students. Four teens from Sonoma County were selected to attend the Juntos Summer Academy at UC Merced. The academy lasted 3 days and offered teens a weekend of college life along with college preparation workshops and mentoring.
As the new year begins, 4-H will continue to work with families, school districts and community partners to present more opportunities to engage in positive youth development programs.