- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Luedeling's dire prediction was included in a story about new UC Davis research that shows winter chill hours in the San Joaquin Valley could decrease 60 percent from 1950 levels by mid-century and by as much as 80 percent by the end of the century. The reduction in winter chill, a vital component of many fruit and nut tree's growth cycle, means the valley may ultimately become unsuitable for many of the crops currently grown...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Escaped nitrogen from agricultural production has "huge potential to contribute to climate change," according to the director of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at UC Davis, Tom Tomich. He was quoted in "The Smog Blog," written by Mark Grossi of the Fresno Bee, in a post about $2.8 million in grant funding ASI received to research agricultural nitrogen. The story appeared in his blog last week and on the front page of the newspaper's Local News section yesterday.
According to an ASI news release announcing the new funding, many...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Under any of six models of climate change, in 100 years there will be no new trees in Joshua Tree National Park and a significant number of existing trees will be dead, according to a recent Riverside Press-Enterprise story. The climate models, developed by Ken Cole, a biologist and geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz., and plant ecologist Kirsten Ironside of Northern Arizona University, suggest a temperature increase of seven degrees.
Joshua Trees were prolific and widespread 11,000 years ago, Cole told newspaper reporter Janet Zimmerman. Their seeds were carried long distances from Mexico to...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Reports about climate change in the current issue of California Agriculture journal are taken with a brave face by Kings County farmers and officials, according to a story published in the Hanford Sentinel. Reporter Sean Nidever provided highlights in the newspaper of the research presented in the UC ANR's 50-page publication titled "'Unequivocal' How climate change will transform California."
Despite the fact that Nidever reported that the county's agricultural industry could face "tough times," Kings County farmers and agricultural officials...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The Bay Area National Public Radio affiliate KQED posted "reporter's notes" on the Quest portion of its Web site yesterday featuring comments from UC Berkeley fire ecology specialist Max Moritz about recently published research that predicts changes in world wildfire patterns due to climate change. Quest is a KQED multimedia series exploring Northern California science, environment and nature.
In the written notes, reporter Craig Miller explained that Moritz and a team of researchers found that climate change won't cause a rise in wildfire everywhere in the world.
In audio interview excerpts,...