- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Safeeq Khan of UC ANR among collaborators on forest treatments in the Sierra
Despite the challenges of an extremely dangerous fire season, including California's largest wildfire in 2022 (Mosquito Fire) impeding access and limiting operations, partners of the French Meadows Forest Restoration Project have wrapped up their fourth season of forest treatments in the critical headwaters of Tahoe National Forest. Safeeq Khan, Cooperative Extension specialist in water and watershed sciences with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, is among the collaborators.
This season, project partners safely treated over 700 acres of federal land using a combination of mastication, mechanical thinning, hand thinning and prescribed fire. On adjacent private land, the American River Conservancy independently raised funds and treated 338 acres. Combined, this all-lands collaborative watershed management project has treated over 6,000 acres in just four seasons.
Work this season focused on areas most prone to wildfire ignition. The United States Forest Service treated over 200 acres with prescribed pile burns in and around the Talbot campground, improving the aesthetic quality of this important recreation area just north of French Meadows Reservoir. Although dry conditions limited the scope of prescribed burns this year, using fire as a management tool is a cost-effective way to maintain forest conditions that contribute to ecosystem resilience and human health and safety.
“Prescribed burns are a critical component of the partnership's ecological forestry model,” explained Edward Smith, forest ecologist and fuels manager with The Nature Conservancy. “Under ‘prescribed conditions' of wind, moisture and temperature, broadcast burning helps reduce the amount of tinder on the forest floor as well as fuel ladders that could otherwise carry wildfires into the tops of trees, protecting habitat for humans and diverse wildlife species. Fire also reduces brush and twigs to ashes that feeds the roots of trees and understory plants, protecting the soil and its microbial universe, making them more resilient to drought, insects and climate change.”
Mechanical thinning, hand thinning, and mastication operations continued in areas surrounding water research instrumentation, installed by the Sierra Nevada Research Institute at the University of California, Merced. Over the coming years, researchers will be assessing how vegetation changes in ecologically-based forest management affect water quantity in the local watershed.
“Optimal restoration of forested headwaters benefits from dedicated partnerships collecting scientific data,” said Khan, who is also an adjunct professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Merced. “UC Merced is working to provide this dimension at French Meadows with strategic measurements and modeling.”
Perhaps the partnership's biggest success in 2022 was securing, via multiple grants, the remaining funding necessary to complete all the thinning operations defined in the original project plan. Since the project's inception more than six years ago, the partnership has operated under an innovative funding arrangement consisting of local, state and federal dollars combined with private donations.
“What has impressed me most about the French Meadows partnership is its commitment to see the project all the way through: start to finish,” said Tahoe National Forest Supervisor Eli Ilano. “With the new funding secured this year, we will be able to wrap up thinning operations, and turn our focus to managing and maintaining the land for the enjoyment of the public.”
American River District Ranger Mary Grim with the U.S. Forest Service added, “This partnership learns from each year to adaptively manage for resilient forests that benefit everyone. The French Meadows Project is a reminder of what can be accomplished with a shared sense of stewardship for our forests and natural resources.”
Fuels reduction work this season resulted in more than 1.066 million board feet of overstocked timber, which was brought to a local mill, with the revenue generated offsetting some of the restoration costs. Project partners also repaired over seven miles of roadway and culverts to reduce sedimentation.
“Under the threat of a second consecutive severe fire season, including the Mosquito Fire in our own ‘backyard,' the partnership diligently moved treatment activities forward and began discussions on how to sustain the project's benefits through long-term maintenance planning,” said Kerri Timmer, regional forest health coordinator with Placer County, who coordinates the stewardship agreement with the Tahoe National Forest.
The catalyst of the French Meadows Forest Restoration Project was the 2014 King Fire, which burned over 97,000 acres in the American River watershed, much of it at high intensity. Eager to reduce the risk to hydroelectric assets, water quality, and biodiversity from future high severity wildfires, Placer County Water Agency joined with Placer County, The Nature Conservancy, the United States Forest Service, American River Conservancy, Sierra Nevada Conservancy, and the Sierra Nevada Research Institute at the UC Merced, to form the French Meadows Partnership.
The project spans more than 22,000 acres of federal land, nearly 7,000 acres of private land, and is a test case for the partnership's effectiveness in improving fire resilience and the overall health of the watershed.
To learn more about the French Meadows Forest Restoration Project, visit and tour the Project's story map.
/h3>Peach leaf curl is a disease that affects peach and nectarine trees. Although you may not see symptoms right now in the dormant season in California, it's time to think about treatment, especially if your tree had the disease last year.
Symptoms of this fungal disease include distortion, thickening, and reddening of foliage as trees leaf out in the spring. As weather warms, damaged leaves that die and fall off trees are replaced with new, usually healthy leaves. However, after several years without treatment, peach leaf curl will cause tree decline and reduced fruit production.
Avoid peach leaf curl by growing varieties resistant to the disease. For nonresistant peach and nectarine trees, consider spraying with preventive fungicides in the dormant season just before or as buds swell.
See the UC IPM publication Pest Notes: Peach Leaf Curl for more information about the disease and management options. Always read and carefully follow all precautions and safety recommendations given on the pesticide label.
Caused by the fungus Taphrina deformans, peach leaf curl is a very serious disease, which affects only peach and nectarine trees. Its most distinctive symptom is distortion, thickening, and reddening of foliage as trees leaf out in the spring. Damaged leaves often die and fall off trees but will be replaced with new, usually healthy leaves once the weather turns dry and warmer. A leaf curl infection that continues untreated over several years will contribute to a tree's decline and reduce fruit production.
To prevent peach leaf curl, peach and nectarine trees must be treated with preventive fungicides during the dormant season. The best time is after leaves have fallen, usually in late November or December, but in wet climates or during a wet winter, a pesticide application can be made in late winter (January or February) just before or as buds swell.
Although gardeners won't notice the symptoms until spring, there is little that they can do at that time to reduce leaf curl. Treatment applied after trees leaf out or after symptoms appear won't be effective. Removing affected leaves or shoots will not reduce the problem. There are a few peach varieties that are resistant or partially resistant to leaf curl. These are Frost, Indian Free, Muir, and Q-1-8.
Dormant Treatment Materials
The fungicide chlorothalonil is effective, and several trade named products are available (Daconil, Fung-onil, Ortho Garden Disease Control, etc.). However, care must be taken in handling chlorothalonil, since this active ingredient is listed as a likely carcinogen and can also cause severe eye or skin irritation if applied improperly or if proper protective clothing and equipment aren't worn.
Bordeaux mixture, which gardeners can mix up themselves by following the directions in the UC IPM publication Pest Note: Bordeaux Mixture, is also effective, but finding the ingredients and mixing up Bordeaux is more work than some gardeners may be willing to do. For gardeners wishing to take the extra time to make Bordeaux mixture, the primary ingredients are powdered copper sulfate in “bluestone” form and either hydrated lime (calcium hydroxide), such as used in making plaster, or quick lime (calcium oxide). Neither of these latter ingredients is a registered pesticide. Copper sulfate can only be found in large bags, so unused product will remain viable for years when kept in the garage or shed. Be sure to wear goggles, gloves, and a dust and mist-filtering respirator when working with hydrated lime and mixing up the solution.
If bud swell and flowering is already occuring in your area, it's too late to treat. For more information about this disease and its management, see the UC IPM publication Pest Notes: Peach Leaf Curl.
Always read and carefully follow all precautions and safety instructions provided on the pesticide container label, as well as any other regulations regarding the use of pesticides. Not following label directions, even if they conflict with information provided herein, is a violation of state and federal law. No endorsements of named products are intended, nor is criticism implied of products not mentioned.
/h2>Home Garden Advice From the Help Desk of the
UC Master Gardener Program of Contra Costa County
(Pseudococcus longispinus)
MGCC's Help Desk Response: Thank you for your request to our Help Desk.
It appears that your pest is a mealybug. Mealybugs (Pseudococcus longispinus) are small, pale insects, related to scales. They are about ⅛ to ¼ inch long and move very sluggishly. The adult females cover themselves and their eggs with a white, waxy material, making them look cottony. Mealybugs are most commonly found on the lower surfaces of leaves and in leaf axils (where the leaf attaches to the stem). They suck plant sap, causing stunted and distorted growth and sometimes plant death.
You will want to immediately separate the affected plants from all your other plants and carefully examine your those plants in case they are also infested to make sure you get rid of the problem!. In some instances, because of the time and effort to rid your plant(s) of mealybugs, you might want to consider destroying and/or disposing of your replaceable plants so that they don't become continuing source of mealybugs.
Here is a link to more information and treatment recommendations for mealybugs:
http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn74174.html
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/GARDEN/PLANTS/INVERT/mealybugs.html
Please let us know if you have any additional questions!
Help Desk of the UC Master Gardener Program of Contra Costa County (SLH)
Note: The UC Master Gardeners Program of Contra Costa's Help Desk is available year-round to answer your gardening questions. Except for a few holidays, we're open every week, Monday through Thursday for walk-ins from 9:00 am to Noon at 75 Santa Barbara Road, 2d Floor, Pleasant Hill, CA 94523. We can also be reached via telephone: (925) 646-6586, email: ccmg@ucanr.edu, or on the web at http://ccmg.ucanr.edu/Ask_Us/ MGCC Blogs can be found at http://ccmg.ucanr.edu/HortCoCo/ You can also subscribe to the Blog (http://ucanr.edu/blogs/CCMGBlog/).
Researchers also found that black and Hispanic people are disproportionally affected, with a lifetime risk of more than 50 percent compared to the general population's 40 percent.
These findings have implications for a generation who are still children: The rate increases apply to adults, but also to those born in the first decade of the new millennium, reported Mother Jones.
"We weren't necessarily surprised that it increased, but we didn't expect it to increase this much," the study's lead author, Edward Gregg, chief of the epidemiology and statistics branch in the Division of Diabetes Translation at the CDC, told HealthDay. "Forty percent is a humbling number."
The study, which was published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal, used death record data of nearly 600,000 Americans from 1985 to 2011 to determine the likelihood of developing diabetes for those born in the last quarter-century.
The researchers did not separate types of diabetes, but the vast majority of diabetes patients in the U.S. have Type 2 diabetes. Though the researchers didn't investigate causes for the rise in the disease, Type 2 diabetes is integrally linked to obesity and other illnesses associated with metabolic syndrome.
Gregg told Mother Jones that researchers calculated risk by race because they had that data available, but suggested that socioeconomic status, which is integrally linked to race, might be the more relevant factor. He pointed to an association between high school graduation status and diabetes diagnosis.
Thanks to advances in medication and treatment of both diabetes and its associated conditions, like vision loss and circulatory problems, a diabetes diagnosis does not always mean a shortened lifespan. In the general population, people with the disease now live 45 percent longer, on average, than they did in 1985. But, as MedScape reported, this could add a burden to health-care costs and disability programs.
Recently, the CDC found that one in 10 visits to a primary-care physician involved diabetes.
Source: Published originally on The Huffington Post as Diabetes Rate Soars, Especially Among Blacks And Hispanicsby Alana Horowitz & Meredith Melnick, August 13, 2014.