- Author: Richard Smith
Richard Smith, Joji Muramoto, Tim Hartz and Michael Cahn
UCCE Emeritus Farm Advisor, Extension Specialist, Emeritus, Extension Specialist and Irrigation and Water Resources Farm Advisor.
The winter of 2023 had the highest rainfall years in the last 25 years. The high rainfall resulted in flooding onto farmland along the main branch of the Salinas River in both January and March. The flood waters disrupted planting schedules as well as inundated established plantings resulting in a disruption to the beginning of the vegetable production season.
The river also deposited a layer of sediments in flooded fields (Photo 1). The sediments came from several sources: river sediments from as far away as San Luis Obispo County; sediments from side channels; and soil sediments scoured from upstream farms. Several growers and industry personnel have asked what is the composition of these sediments? In April after the flooding had subsided, we collected samples at river crossings from San Lucas to Salinas. The layer of sediment left by the flood waters tended to curled up as it dried out and were easy to collect. Any field soil was brushed from the bottom of the sediments and they were sent to the UC Davis Analytical Laboratory for analysis.
Tables 1 and 2 have analysis of the sediments collected. The data in the table is arranged with sites from south to north; the two side channels, Arroyo Seco and Monroe Canyon are listed separately. Monroe Canyon is the drainage that comes from the west side of Hwy 101 just south of the intersection of Hwy 101 and Central Avenue north of King City; it cuts through a large section of the Monterey shale formation that contains elevated levels of cadmium.
The San Lucas, Arroyo Seco and Monroe Canyon samples are coarser indicating that they were transported by rapid water movement, while the rest of the samples are dominated by silts and clays, indicating that they were transported by slower moving water. In general, there is a good correlation between the clay content of the sediments and nutrient and organic matter content. Higher nutrients in the silt and clay sediments include total nitrogen, calcium, magnesium, sulfate, zinc and iron. The sediments are generally fertile which may indicate that they are at least partially composed of soil eroded from farmed fields farther upstream. Sediments that are low in phosphorus likely originated from non-farmed or vineyard areas.
The elevated cadmium levels measured in sediments from the Arroyo Seco and Monroe Canyon indicate that these side channels carried sediments from the Monterey shale formation which has naturally high levels of cadmium into the Salinas River. Presumably these sediments originating in the Monterey shale formation are transported to areas further downstream by flood waters.
Photo 1. Sediments deposited in a field along the Salinas River
Table 1. Analysis of river sediment samples from locations from San Lucas to Salinas and two side channel locations.
Table 2. Analysis of river sediment samples from locations from San Lucas to Salinas and two side channel locations.
Now an insurance lawyer in Carrizo Springs, Tex., he said he was concerned about global warming.
“It's obviously happening, the flooding, the record droughts,” said Mr. Padilla, who agrees with the science that human activities are the leading cause of climate change. “And all this affects poor people harder. The jobs are more based on weather. And when there are hurricanes, when there is flooding, who gets hit the worst? The people on the poor side of town.”
Mr. Padilla's concern is echoed by other Hispanics across the country, according to a poll conducted last month by The New York Times, Stanford University and the nonpartisan environmental research group Resources for the Future. The survey, in which Mr. Padilla was a respondent, found that Hispanics are far more likely than whites to view global warming as a problem that affects them personally. It also found that they are far more likely to support policies, such as taxes and regulations on greenhouse gas pollution, aimed at curbing it.
The findings in the poll could have significant implications for the 2016 presidential campaign as both parties seek to win votes from Hispanics, the fastest-growing segment of the population, particularly in states like Florida and Colorado that will be influential in determining the outcome of the election. The poll also shows the challenge for the potential Republican presidential candidates — including two Hispanics — many of whom question or deny the science of human-caused climate change.
Among Hispanic respondents to the poll, 54 percent rated global warming as extremely or very important to them personally, compared with 37 percent of whites. Sixty-seven percent of Hispanics said they would be hurt personally to some degree if nothing was done to reduce global warming, compared with half of whites.
And 63 percent of Hispanics said the federal government should act broadly to address global warming, compared with 49 percent of whites.
To be sure, more Hispanics than whites identify as Democrats, and Democrats are more likely than Republicans and independents to say that the government should fight climate change. In the poll, 48 percent of Hispanics identified as Democrats, 31 percent as independents and 15 percent as Republicans. Among whites, 23 percent identified as Democrats, 41 percent as independents and 27 percent as Republicans.
Over all, the findings of the poll run contrary to a longstanding view in politics that the environment is largely a concern of affluent, white liberals. Experts say that climate change is growing rapidly as a concern for Hispanics, who are likely to be more physically and economically vulnerable to the effects of global warming, such as more extreme droughts and floods, lower crop yields, and hotter temperatures.
“There's a stereotype that Latinos are not aware of or concerned about these issues,” said Gabriel Sanchez, a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico and director of research at Latino Decisions, a survey firm focused on the Hispanic population. “But Latinos are actually among the most concerned about the environment, particularly global warming.”
One reason, Mr. Sanchez and others said, is that Hispanics often live in areas where they are directly exposed to pollution, such as neighborhoods near highways and power plants.
Hispanics typically rate immigration, education and employment in the top tier of the policy issues on which they vote, but the poll is the latest in a growing body of data showing that Hispanics also care intensely about environmental issues.
A 2013 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 76 percent of Hispanics agreed that the earth had been warming, and 59 percent attributed that warming to human activity. By comparison, 62 percent of whites agreed that the earth had been warming, and 41 percent attributed that to human activity.
A 2014 study in the scientific journal PLOS One found that nationally, nonwhite minorities were exposed to concentrations of the toxic pollutant nitrogen dioxide that were 38 percent higher than what whites faced. Nitrogen dioxide is linked to respiratory illness and, like planet-warming carbon dioxide, is spewed from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks. While it is not directly linked to global warming, populations that experience high levels of exposure to it are likely to be more supportive of pollution regulation in general, Mr. Sanchez said.
Tony Vazquez of San Jose, Calif., a poll respondent and a former truck driver who now makes nickel plates for car parts, said in a follow-up interview that he would support policies such as national taxes on greenhouse gas pollution, even if that raised the cost of gasoline and electricity from fossil fuels.
“Where I live, you don't know what you're breathing — smog and pollution from refineries, ships, diesel trucks,” Mr. Vazquez said. “You're breathing it all. They need to do something about air pollution.”
Hispanics are also more likely to be concerned about the impact of global warming outside the United States, Latino researchers say, particularly in Latin America, Mexico and the Caribbean. Stronger droughts and storms there can lead to flooding or shortages of food and water, but people and governments may not be equipped to handle that.
President Obama has proposed spending $3 billion on a global Green Climate Fund intended to help poor countries adapt to the effects of climate change, but Republicans in Congress have been sharply critical of that plan. In contrast, two-thirds of Hispanics in the poll said the United States government should give money to poor countries to help them reduce the damage caused by global warming. Two-thirds of whites said the United States should not provide the money.
The result, Mr. Sanchez and other researchers said, is that politicians should be wary of dismissing the issue of climate change. “The most important thing is that candidates have to think about the Latino population as complex,” Mr. Sanchez said. Although immigration remains the most critical issue, “to ignore the environment is to ignore something that a large section of the Latino population sees as important.”
Source: Published originally on The New York Times as Climate Change Is of Growing Personal Concern to U.S. Hispanics, Poll Finds byCoral Davenport, February 9, 2015.