- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Nathanael Johnson of TheGrist.org set about clarifying some myths related to California's drought situation, leading him to declare - according to the article's headline - "Everything I thought I knew about water in California is wrong."
The first myth he debunked has been circulating since Gov. Brown announced steep water cutbacks for the state's municipalities. "He didn't mention agriculture, and that made people suspicious," Johnson wrote.
For clarification, Johnson spoke to Doug Parker, the director of UC Agriculture and Natural Resources'
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The water shortage being experienced by farmers today is a manifestation of years of imprudent, unchecked groundwater pumping, and not solely due to the current drought, is not the most severe, reported the Christian Science Monitor.
"This drought has brought home to more people the truth that California is a dry place and we are not going to have all the water we want,” said Jay Lund, professor of civil and environmental engineering at University of California-Davis and director of its Center for Watershed Sciences.
According to Lund, limiting the use of groundwater in...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Since the beginning of the drought three years ago, the amount of water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin watershed and in the Central Valley has dropped by 20 billion cubic meters, reported Brett Walton on the Circle of Blue website. These losses are in addition 30 billion cubic meters of water lost from 2003 to 2010.
The statistics come from analysis of GRACE data by researchers at the UC Center for Hydrologic Modeling at UC Irvine. GRACE - an acronym for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment - is a pair of NASA satellites that use changes in the earth's gravity to monitor...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
National Public Radio reporter Kurt Siegler spoke to the director of the UC California Institute for Water Resources, Doug Parker, to set the stage for a five-minute report on the California drought for All Things Considered. (The story is embedded below.)
In California, Siegler reported, water is moved through a network of dams, canals and pipes from the places where it rains and snows, to places where it is needed, like farms and cities.
"The system that we have was designed back in the 1930s...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The new groundwater laws that Gov. Brown is expected to sign may not be popular with today's farmers, but tomorrow's farmers likely will look back with gratitude, reported Bettina Boxall in the Los Angeles Times.
"Some farmers are going to be having to cut back at least in the short run," said Doug Parker, director of the UC California Institute for Water Resources.
Thomas Harter, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis, predicted the farmers' successors will appreciate the coming...
