- Author: Susie Kocher
The fourth winter in a row of disappointing precipitation has triggered a die off of trees in the Sierra Nevada, most of which is now in ‘exceptional drought' status. The US Forest Service conducted aerial monitoring surveys by airplane in April 2015 and observed a large increase in tree mortality in the Southern Sierra (from Sonora south). Surveyors flew over 4.1 million acres of public and private forest land and found that about 20 percent had tree mortality on it, totaling over 10 million dead trees.
The Forest Service found severe mortality in many pine species especially ponderosa pine. On private lands along the foothills of the Sierras, surveyors found extensive areas of dead pines. Large areas of blue and live oak...
Reposted from the UCANR Green blog:
Four years of drought has left California with acres of dry brush and dying trees, abundant fuel for wildfires. Currently, CalFIRE's fire mapshows several major fires burning in California.
“There are two factors that help fires...
- Author: Jeannette Warnert
Reposted from the UCANR News Blog
Northern California's Rocky Fire is roaring through shrublands that have no previous recorded history of wildfires, reported Kirk Siegler on All Things Considered. It has already burned 65,000 acres and is 12 percent contained, according to CalFire's Incident Report.
The area has been protected from fire for decades, primed for...
- Author: Jeannette Warnert
Reposted from the UCANR News Blog
Responding to the giant fire that burned 39 homes and 70,000 acres in the Clear Lake area, Warren Olney of KCRW's Which Way LA asked a UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) fire expert in Southern California, "Could it happen here?"
"It happens here all the time," said Tom Scott,...
- Author: Faith Kearns
Reposted from the Confluence, Blog of the California Institute for Water Resources
When we think water in California, we tend to think big: the Sacramento River, the American, the Delta. But, the state is also filled with small headwater streams that can be particularly easy to overlook when, during the state's dry summers, they start to resemble a series of pools rather than flowing creeks. Adding insult to injury is a longstanding view that the fish and insect communities in these intermittent streams will be less diverse than those found in the...