- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
The goldspotted oak borer continues to threaten oak trees, Tom Scott, area natural resource specialist located at UC Riverside, told participants at conference on sustaining native oak woodlands in Los Angeles, the Monrovia Patch reported.
Scott said there is still a quarantine on moving firewood out of San Diego County to prevent the spread of the damaging insect.
Reporter Sandy Gillis wrote that Larry...
- Author: Brenda Dawson
Forest restoration would be one way to improve our economy, writes researcher Tong Wu of the Center for Forestry and UC Berkeley on CNN's Global Public Square news website. He states that human interference has "made many ecosystems unnaturally susceptible to catastrophic wildfires" and that global warming will exacerbate the problem.
"In economic analyses of environmental management projects across the western United States, ecological restoration produced multiplier effects (the economic 'bang for the buck' of every dollar spent) that...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
When UC Cooperative Extension forestry specialist Gary Nakamura retires this summer, he will be "leaving a big hole in our local community," organic farmer Wayne Kessler told the Redding Record-Searchlight.
The article, written by Tim Holt, reviewed Nakamura's nearly 40-year career as a forestry expert, which included stints with private industry and the U.S. Forest Service, before his long-time tenure with UC Cooperative Extension.
Nakamura took on a unique role as a go-between, a soft-spoken and knowledgeable mediator between public and private interests, the article said. In...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Roger Beachy, the director of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, was at UC Davis yesterday to announce grants for agricultural research amounting to $40 million, calling them "significant investments," said a UC Davis news release.
Together with UC Davis officials, Beachy announced that:
- Wheat geneticist Jorge Dubcovsky will receive $25 million to develop new varieties of wheat and barley. Dubcovsky and his 55 university and USDA colleagues will focus on biological and environmental stresses to wheat that are caused, at least in part, by global climate...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
An array of scientists are working together to help the U.S. Forest Service determine the best way to ensure the long-term health of California forests. One aspect of the wide-ranging effort - called the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project or SNAMP - is to define a healthy forest. UC Berkeley scientist John Battles is leading a group of researchers who have been extracting core samples from thousands of trees in the Sugar Pine and Nelder Gove areas over the past two years to analyze their health.
A recent public field trip in the experimental area was covered by Sierra Star reporter Jill Coppler. Her article said people...