- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Are Blackouts Here to Stay? A Look into the Future
(E&E News) Anne C. Mulkern, Nov. 15
…Throughout the United States, between roughly 2000 and 2010, about 75% of homes that burned in wildfires were located in the WUI, said Van Butsic, a land use specialist at the University of California, Berkeley. The rest was mostly in rural areas, with about 2% in cities.
People go back after they lose homes, Butsic said. He surveyed the 28 largest fires in California from about 1975 to 2005, and through aerial photos tracked what was rebuilt. About 90% of destroyed homes were rebuilt within a decade, he found. New homes also filled in large tracts of undeveloped land in formerly burned...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
California's unseasonably rainy spring may trigger more incidences of tree mortality due to sudden oak death, reported Sonia Waraich in the Eureka Times-Standard.
That impact may not be known for a while. UC Cooperative Extension forest advisor Yana Valachovic said the spike in tree deaths typically occurs the year following the spring rains, making 2020 a year of particular concern.
“One of the issues that becomes very apparent is that when we have these peak episodes of mortality, there isn't much funding to help us manage those impacts,”...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
UC Cooperative Extension is hosting a sudden oak death bioblitz April 25-28 in Northern California, in which a corps of volunteers will fan out across the wildland areas to track the progression of the devastating disease, reported Derek Moore in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.
Sudden oak death is caused by the pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, which was inadvertently introduced to California forests on nursery stock in the 1990s. The disease has killed up to 50 million trees (primarily tanoak, coast live oak, California black oak, Shreve's oak and canyon live oak) from Big Sur to southwest Oregon.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Central Coast residents, officials, ranchers and representatives of conservation organizations came out in force to a November UC Cooperative Extension meeting sounding an alarm about the recent detection of Sudden Oak Death (SOD) in San Luis Obispo County trees, reported Kathe Tanner in the San Luis Obispo Tribune.
This was the first such gathering in this county since tests confirmed that the disease made its way south of Monterey County, according to event coordinator Mary Bianchi, director of UC Cooperative Extension in SLO County. But there will be more meetings to come, she...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Thirteen years after sudden oak death was first detected in California, the disease's range in northern coastal areas of California and southwest Oregon continues to grow, according to a report by Michael Joyce on Jefferson Public Radio.
Joyce interviewed Yana Valachovic, a forest advisor for UC Agriculture and Natural Resources in Humboldt and Del Norte counties. Valachovic is also director of the UC ANR Cooperative Extension offices in Humboldt and Del Norte.
"For me, the challenge is communicating to the public the disease has...