- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
As the California drought wears on, media have reached out this week to UC Agriculture and Natural Resources advisors about consequences in agricultural cropland, urban landscapes and fire-prone wildland.
Agricultural cropland
NPR's Valley Public Radio ran a story about salt buildup in almond orchards. Without rainfall to move salts below almond trees' rootzone, harmful levels of salinity are building up in the soil. “We've been seeing this increasing problem over the past couple years, due to the lack of winter rain, of...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Across California, pine trees that have been weakened by the drought are having trouble defending themselves from bark beetles, causing widespread tree death. The dead trees won't cause fires, but when ignited they will be hotter and be more difficult to control, according to articles that ran over the weekend in the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat and the Desert Sun.
“Statewide, it's horrific,” said Greg Giusti, UC ANR Cooperative Extension advisor.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The catastrophic Rim Fire, which has burned about 343 square miles in and around Yosemite, will provide abundant information for fire scientists to study the effects of forest management techniques, reported the San Francisco Chronicle.
The key question, the story said, is what happened on Aug. 22 and 23, when a 200-foot wall of flames burned almost 90,000 acres.
"Almost half of this very, very large fire happened in just two days," said Max Moritz, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Long before Europeans first set foot in the New World, Native Americans were altering the California landscape by setting fires, UC Berkeley researchers believe. A multidisciplinary team of scientists is looking at a variety of evidence to better understand the nature of Native American prescribed burns. The team includes ANR fire science professor Scott Stephens.
The study was described in the UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science newsletter ScienceMatters@Berkeley. The article said burning could have helped indigenous Californians in many ways.
"If you're a...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Distribution of more than $5 million in federal funds for wildfire hazard abatement in the Oakland Hills has been delayed to allow time for a more intensive environmental impact review, according to an article in the Oakland Tribune.
The news was a setback for UC Berkeley, the city of Oakland and the East Bay Regional Park District, which are relying on the grants to remove eucalyptus, pine and acacia trees from steep, wooded canyons and ridges.
UC Berkeley fire science professor Scott Stephens told reporter Cecily Burt that the university's plans for...