- Author: Bradley Hanson
A colleague and a graduate student at Cornell University are conducting a survey to assess grower attitudes towards establishing wildflower strips as part of conservation programs and asked me to share the survey link to broaden the response to include California growers.
From the Cornell team: We are conducting a survey on grower attitudes towards establishing wildflower strips. This survey is part of a project we are doing on using seed pellets to establish wildflower strips. The basic idea of the project is to put multiple small wildflower seeds into a seed pellet the size and shape of a field crop seed. These pellets could then be planted using standard grain drills/planters, significantly decreasing the labor required to establish wildflower strips. Here is a link to a recent paper published in Weed Science that another graduate student wrote on these seed pellets if you would like to learn more Multi-seed pellets and biodiversity
The survey will allow us to assess general interest in these sorts of pellets/plantings, and whether we can expect people to be generally receptive to the idea. I would really appreciate it if you could share this survey with your network of growers and stakeholders.
The link to the online survey is here: https://cornell.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3mHYv5pnxe4b3GS
- Author: Saoimanu Sope
Historically, date palms are grown along riverbeds or in areas with groundwater because they require an abundance of water to produce a good crop. Unlike lettuce or table grapes, date palms are deceptive in that they do not immediately wilt if underwatered. Eventually, however, the lack of water hurts yields and fruit quality.
The default for date growers is to apply excessive water, but doing so is neither economically nor environmentally sound. To help growers, Ali Montazar, UC Cooperative Extension irrigation and water management advisor for Imperial, Riverside and San Diego counties, has developed knowledge that enables growers in the region to establish irrigation guidelines they can use with confidence.
“Water issues in California's desert are very different than in the Central Valley,” said Montazar. “There is no groundwater to recharge so growers in the desert only have the Colorado River.”
Since 2019, Montazar has been focused on irrigation management for date palms in the Coachella Valley, the largest producer of dates in the United States. Montazar's research identifies how much water is needed for the crop and the best water delivery method according to location, soil type and conditions, and date cultivars.
“Dates require a lot of heat and light, which is why they do well in the desert. But they also need a fair amount of irrigation,” said Robert Krueger, a U.S. Department of Agriculture horticulturist and Montazar's co-author of a paper on date palm irrigation management.
Much of what we know about date palm production comes from the Middle East, which has a climate similar to the low desert of California. “That information is from many, many years ago though,” explained Montazar, whose research shows that drip irrigation cannot be the only form of irrigation for date palms.
“Ali is the first to really look at micro-sprinklers and flood irrigation for date palms,” said Krueger, adding that the other advantage of Montazar's research is that it prepares growers for production during times of reduced water supply.
Albert Keck, president of Hadley Date Gardens, Inc. and chairman of the California Date Commission, described Montazar's research efforts as “subtle yet incredible and profound,” adding that his findings not only benefit other farmers but also cities relying on water from the Colorado River.
Keck, one of the largest date growers in California, is well aware of how disruptive, expensive and time-consuming irrigation for date palms can be. Montazar has enabled growers like Keck to irrigate less without sacrificing yield or quality.
“Ali might save us a tiny percentage of the amount of water we're using. It might be a 5 or 10% savings. It doesn't seem like much, but it's an incremental improvement in efficiency,” said Keck. “And if you add all of these improvements up, say, along the U.S. Southwest, then that has a pretty profound impact.”
Montazar recommends that date growers in his region use a combination of drip and two to three flood irrigation events to manage salinity levels derived from the Colorado River. “We cannot maintain salinity issues over time if we're only relying on drip irrigation in date palms,” explained Montazar.
Flood irrigation pushes the salts below the root zone, when they would otherwise build up within the root zone preventing efficient water uptake. It also aids in refilling soil profiles quickly and more effectively since drip has a lower capacity of delivering sufficient water.
“Growers know what they need to water their crop within a broader parameter. But Ali has narrowed that window and helped us become more precise with our irrigation,” Keck said. “There's still room for improvement but we're spending less money, wasting less time and using less water now, and we're still getting the same positive results.”
Currently,Montazar is collaborating with the California Date Commission on developing guidelines for best irrigation management practices in the desert for date palms, which should be available by the end of 2023. These guidelines are based on a four-year data set from six monitoring stations and extensive soil and plant samples from commercial fields located in theCoachella Valley, Imperial Valley and near Yuma, Arizona. Additionally, Montazar is working to quantify how water conservation impacts growers economically.
“Growers from United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Tunisia and Mexico have already reached out asking for this information,” Montazar said, while reflecting on a presentation he made to a group of international date growers in Mexico late last year.
To read the paper on date palm irrigation, published in MDPI's Water journal, visit: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/12/8/2253.
- Author: Saoimanu Sope
Ibrahim Yaaseen, member of the Palos Verdes Peninsula (PVP) 4-H club, grabs a hard hat and places it on top of his head. He then reaches for a bright orange safety vest and goggles to complete his safety gear outfit before joining the rest of his club members who are dressed the same.
The 4-H Youth Development Program of Los Angeles is already thinking about the future of water management and turned to the West Basin Municipal Water District in El Segundo to gain a deeper understanding of the precious resource we often take for granted.
The University of California 4-H Youth Development Program is managed through local Cooperative Extension offices. Through hands-on learning experiences, 4-H empowers youth to reach their full potential and enables them to build self-esteem, connect with their community and emerge as leaders.
Dee Keese, community club leader for the PVP 4-H club, coordinated an exclusive and interactive tour of West Basin's Edward C. Little Water Recycling Facility for the club's monthly marine biology meeting in December 2022.
Eager to inspire a stronger appreciation for water, Janel Ancayan, the West Basin's education coordinator, challenged the youth to build their own water filters using materials including fabric, a strainer, and a funnel. Since no specific directions were given, the activity challenged each student's science and engineering skills, such as carrying out an investigation, designing a solution, and communicating information with team members.
During the tour, students saw firsthand the impressive equipment and essential staff members that help to produce nearly 40 million gallons of recycled water each day. At the end of the day, students left with a deeper understanding of water resources and felt empowered to do their part to conserve water sources.
“We learned that recycling water helps to conserve our limited water supply and improves the environmental condition of our coastal waters,” said Yaaseen. “We ultimately learned a great deal about how to conserve water for future generations and that water conservation is one of the most important elements in combating climate change.”
Though Keese has volunteered as community club leader for 48 years, this is only the second time she has partnered with the West Basin. “I like to mix it up,” she said. “I'm always looking for community organizations and local businesses to partner with because these are places that the kids will likely interact with since they're nearby.”
Regardless, it's leaders like Keese and programs like 4-H that encourage water stewards like Ancayan. “I'm always so humbled and inspired when teachers make it a point to come out and visit our facility. In Southern California especially, [water] is not something we think about,” Ancayan said.
Even in a drought, water continues to flow from our faucets allowing us to shower, wash dishes or water the lawn. It's no wonder why water conservation is not always top of mind, especially for consumers. Educating the public, and targeting the younger generation, however, is a great start to prepare for the future.
West Basin offers a variety of educational programs that focus on different age groups. Many of them involve hands-on learning like the Teach and Test volunteer program, a partnership with the Surfrider Foundation, where high school students test samples of coastal water for bacteria, and then publicly share their findings to contribute to water quality monitoring in the area.
According to Yaaseen, the time spent with Ancayan at the West Basin was “one-of-a-kind” and provided a “golden opportunity” to learn why water recycling facilities are important. Ancayan hopes that her time spent with students ultimately influences them to consider a career in water.
“It's not a glamorous job but I'm really passionate about the next generation of water workers,” she said. “I hope that once they see the engineering, the excitement of these scientists that work in our laboratory and everything in between, that they start to think about water as a future career path.”
For those interested in joining 4-H, visit https://4h.ucanr.edu/Members/
To read this story in Spanish, please visit:
Programas 4-H de Los Ángeles forman a la futura generación de administradores de los recursos hídricos
https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=57063
- Author: Saoimanu Sope
Earlier this year, officials in Southern California declared a water shortage emergency resulting in restrictions such as limiting outdoor water use to one day of the week. While mandatory restrictions vary across the region, Amir Haghverdi, UC Cooperative Extension specialist and associate professor of agricultural and urban water management at UC Riverside, is using research to pinpoint irrigation strategies that will help communities reduce their demand for water and increase supply.
Haghverdi and his team are responding to a hotter and drier California by working to identify changes that can make a substantial difference in water savings.
While behavioral changes such as preventing leaks and turning the faucet off while brushing teeth can help, Haghverdi's research focuses on methodical changes like stressing green spaces, planting drought-tolerant plant species, using non-traditional water sources, and investing in technology to better control water use.
Testing a lawn's limits
For six years, Haghverdi and his team have performed stress tests on turfgrass to identify the lowest percent of evapotranspiration rate (ETo) that it can withstand and still survive. To do this, Haghverdi's team applies different percentages of ETo, obtained from weather stations, and monitors the performance of each landscape species over time.
While both cool-season and warm-season species can be stressed and still maintain their aesthetic value for a few weeks to several months, Haghverdi's results showed that warm-season turfgrass species require less water and can withstand water stress better.
The actual duration that people can apply less water depends on the type of turfgrass, the weather conditions and the stress level. For example, results showed that hybrid bermudagrass (a warm-season turfgrass) during summer in inland Southern California could keep its aesthetic value above the minimum threshold for 30 to 50 days, depending on the weather conditions, with irrigation application as low as 40% ETo.
In contrast, tall fescue, a cool-season turfgrass, even with 20% more water, showed signs of stress after only a few weeks and could not maintain its minimum acceptable quality.
Plant drought-tolerant species
Haghverdi's work demonstrates that when water conservation is the goal, alternative groundcover species are clearly superior to all turfgrass species and cultivars that they have tested so far. In fact, his team has identified drought-tolerant species that can maintain their aesthetic values with a third to a quarter less water than cool-season turfgrass (as low as 20% ETo) and can even withstand no-irrigation periods.
Furthermore, extensive field trials showed that new plant species from different regions could be as resilient as native species in withstanding drought and heat stress while maintaining their aesthetic beauty and cool canopy. Occasionally, they have outperformed native species, underscoring the advantages of drought- and heat-tolerant species that are non-native.
Based on Haghverdi's preliminary results for minimum irrigation requirement in inland Southern California, creeping Australian saltbush, a non-native species originally from Australia, and coyote bush, native to California, were top performers. Considering cooling benefits, drought tolerance and sensitivity to over-irrigation, creeping Australian saltbush performed the best.
Counties are already using recycled water
Although he recommends renewing your landscape with drought-tolerant or low-water use greenery and identifying how long your green spaces can live without water, Haghverdi acknowledges that, while contradictory, the cooling benefits of landscape irrigation are essential in Southern California.
“This is one of the tradeoffs of water conservation,” said Haghverdi. “If the only goal is to conserve water, maybe people will conclude that we don't have enough water to irrigate landscape.”
Water conservation efforts could influence counties to stop or reduce landscape irrigation. The consequences, however, would result in hotter environments due to the heat island effect. The loss of landscapes means that the sun's energy will be absorbed into the ground, instead of prompting transpiration in plants, which helps keep environments cool.
Thus, stressing green spaces and investing in drought-tolerant plant species help reduce the demand for water, but increasing water supply is just as vital. Haghverdi urges Southern California counties to prioritize a supplemental water supply such as recycled water – an approach already implemented in Ventura, Orange and San Diego counties.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California's Pure Water Southern California Program, formerly known as the Regional Recycled Water Program, aims to do just that. In partnership with the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, the program will further purify wastewater to produce a sustainable source of high-quality water for the region.
According to the program's website, this would “produce up to 150 million gallons of water daily when completed and provide purified water for up to 15 million people, making it one of the largest water reuse programs in the world.”
Smart controllers save time, money and water
Making the best use of the water you already have relies on efficiency. Sprinklers that are poorly placed, for example, are not as effective as they could be.
“What I see often while walking my dog in the neighborhood is that there's a lot of runoff, bad irrigation and bad timing like when it's windy,” Haghverdi observed. “People usually set their irrigation timer and then forget it, but they don't adjust it based on the season or weather parameters. That's not going to help us conserve water, a precious resource, in California.”
Thankfully, Haghverdi and his team have done extensive research on smart irrigation controllers, which, simply put, are irrigation timers with a sensor built in. Generally, there are two types of smart irrigation controllers: weather- and soil-based controllers.
Weather-based controllers use evapotranspiration data to automatically adjust their watering schedule according to local weather conditions. Soil-based controllers measure moisture at the root zone and start irrigating whenever the reading falls below a programmed threshold.
Smart controllers that have flowmeters can detect leaks and be activated automatically, whereas rain sensors can stop irrigation during rainfall. Although both additions are ideal for large irrigation landscapes such as parks and publicly maintained green spaces, rain sensors are easy to install and effective for residential areas too.
When asked about cost being a hindrance, Haghverdi responded, “Not a lot of people know that there are grants for smart controllers – some that will pay either all or a majority of the cost.”
To check if grants are available in your area, interested individuals are encouraged to contact their local water provider.
“We need to move towards autonomous and smart irrigation [strategies], and water management in urban areas. That's the future. If we can build autonomous cars, why can't we build smart water management systems that apply the right amount of water to each plant species, can detect leaks and prevent water waste?” said Haghverdi.
To learn more about or stay updated on Haghverdi's research, visit www.ucrwater.com.
Why did you decide to apply to the UCCE Master Gardener program in San Bernardino County?
I decided to become a UCCE Master Gardener because I was interested in improving my knowledge in pesticide -free food production. I had been growing vegetables and fruit trees but a lot of experimentation and trial-and-error was involved. The UCCE Master Gardener program provides researched based gardening information and training that MGs can then share with diverse communities in a variety of settings.
Tell us about the “climate-ready” landscape tree mulch/no mulch research project you've led for the past several years.
As of February of 2019, I meet up with a group of several UCCE Master Gardeners to measure tree trunk circumference as part of a citizen-science project. The trees for this climate-ready tree study are located at the Chino Basin Water
Note from UCCE Lead Researcher Janet Hartin: Irene and her team (MGs Wayne Borders, Christian Ordaz, Roger Lai, Esther Martinez, Judy Scott, Debi Adams and Kit Leung) have played a critical role in identifying the impacts of mulch vs no mulch on drought, heat, and pest resistant trees that stand up to the challenges of climate change. Properly selected and cared for landscape trees cool urban heat islands, provide shade and habitat, and - at maturity - absorb and store carbon produced by the burning of fossil fuels. The four species of trees (‘Bubba' desert willow, ‘Maverick' mesquite, ‘Red Push' pistache, and ‘Desert Museum' palo verde) included in this project were selected from a larger project at UC Riverside due to our interest in determining the impacts of mulch on tree growth and development and water conservation due to less soil evaporation. Irene's team has meticulously taken quarterly data on tree circumference at two heights and photographed the trees throughout the project.This is just another example of how UCCE Master Gardeners help UCCE's mission to develop
I would tell a San Bernardino resident interested in becoming a MG to apply to the program. They will find that the decision to learn further about gardening and sustainable landscaping will not only enrich their own life but also that of those they share the information with. They will also likely make new friends with others who are also passionate about nature.