- Author: Julie V. Hopper
- Editor: Guy B Kyser
On a bright Saturday morning, girls ages 10-16 started tearing apart water hyacinth plants, some with exclamations of disgust, and others filled with joyful excitement.
Here, on August 13th at the West Contra Costa Boys and Girls Club, I lead a ‘Global Change Biology' workshop for the ‘Greenlight 4 Girls (G4G), Bay Area Event', encouraging young girls to pursue futures in STEM science.
I started the workshop with a discussion of ‘Global Change Biology'. I am sure many of you (just like many of the girls) are very familiar with the term ‘Climate Change'. Global...
- Author: Karen Jetter
- Author: Kjersti Nes
- Editor: Guy B Kyser
Invasive aquatic weeds hinder access to marina docks and slips in the Sacramento / San Joaquin Delta, resulting in costs for management and potential lost business for marina operators.
Water hyacinth collects around slips and docks and other structures in the water. If not removed or treated, the weeds continue to grow. By late summer, water hyacinth and other weeds can block marina entrances, damage boat propellers, or even shut down marinas.
Because marina operators cannot spray herbicides to manage invasive weeds, they must rely almost exclusively on manual labor to remove invasive weeds. How this is done depends on the marina and the size of the...
- Author: Patrick Moran
- Editor: Guy B Kyser
A recent USDA-CDFA collaboration has documented the first establishment of a population of the water hyacinth planthopper in the western U.S.
The water hyacinth planthopper (Megamelus scutellaris, Order Hemiptera) is found on water hyacinth throughout tropical and sub-temperate areas in eastern and central South America. The USDA-Agricultural Research Service (ARS) first learned of this insect in Argentina and has worked with it there and at the USDA-ARS lab in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Lab testing demonstrated that the planthopper can feed and reproduce only on water hyacinth, and that just two generations of feeding can reduce plant biomass by up to 70%. Planthoppers start out as eggs, go through 5...
- Author: Guy B Kyser
The Delta Region Areawide Aquatic Weeds Project will host an update meeting Thursday, August 18, 9-12 am, at the San Joaquin Cabral Agricultural Center, 2101 E. Earhart Ave., Suite 100, Stockton, Assembly Room 2. We'll present information on the current status of projects on management of waterhyacinth and egeria, remote sensing of aquatic weeds across the Delta, mosquito ecology, and more.
- Author: Guy B Kyser
- Author: John Madsen
In June 2016 the Madsen team revisited the site of our 2015 surfactant study to establish a more extensive test of aquatic herbicides for controlling waterhyacinth in the Delta.
Recall that in summer 2015 we established a preliminary trial to evaluate waterhyacinth response to different aquatic surfactants with glyphosate, using our famous floating quadrats with color-coded swim noodles (Figure 1).
By season's end, the crawdads had chewed up most of the swim noodles, so this year the quadrats underwent a slight redesign. We used thinwall 2” PVC, no noodles, and no fencing (Figure 2). (Calculating the enclosed volume and the weight per linear foot, we figured we had 8 to 10 pounds of ‘float' per...