- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Above average rainfall in February benefits strawberry crops in the Central Valley
(ABC 30) Reuben Contreras, Feb. 28
…Above average rainfall in February will help this year's harvest last through October.
"It looks like it is in full bloom right now and it looks like it is going to rain. So we need the water as much as we can right now," said Michael Yang, University of California Cooperative Extension.
He works with small farms and specialty crops in the Hmong community, including a strawberry field in Northeast Fresno near Willow and Behymer.
Yang said the rain will add to the groundwater supply most farmers use to grow their crops plus it will help make the...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Franz Niederholzer - 2019 New Year's Profile
(Appeal-Democrat), Dec 31
Keeping Up with Navel Infections
(Dairy Herd Management) Emre Gürdal and Noelia Silva del Rio, Dec. 31
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Enormous wildfires spark scramble to improve fire models
(Nature) Jeff Tollefson, Aug. 31
…“Something is definitely different, and it raises questions about how much we really know,” says Max Moritz, a fire scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
… The problem, Moritz says, is that most of the fire models in use today are based on data from the past two or three decades. But it seems that fire behaviour might be shifting in response to climate faster than anybody expected, and that makes it increasingly problematic to extrapolate from past trends, he adds.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Even after wildfires have burned homes and taken lives, communities allow for rebuilding in wildland-urban interface areas prone to such disasters, reported Alistair Bland in the East Bay Express.
Van Butsic, a UC Cooperative Extension specialist at UC Berkeley, has studied the alarming trend of building homes in known fire-risk areas.
"We studied 30 of the largest fires since 1970," he said.
On average, 20 years after an inhabited area burns, most of the destroyed homes are rebuilt and many new homes were added — about twice as...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
UC Cooperative Extension in Humboldt County has invited local cannabis farmers to meetings this week to discuss ways to reduce the industry's environmental impacts, reported Will Houston in the Eureka Times-Standard.
UC advisors and specialists will discuss future research aimed at reducing the impacts of pesticide and fertilizer use on cannabis grows.
The reporter talked to Deborah Giraud, UCCE advisor in Humboldt County, who said federal laws prevent UCCE from handling cannabis plants in their studies, but they are still able to test areas around cannabis grows for...
