Ongoing research

Come learn basic irrigation management in orchards and vineyards at the Madera Farm Bureau from 8-10 AM on August 27. We will cover evapotranspiration, soil sensors, and pressure chambers. Registration is free, but since space is limited, required.

Congratulations to the recipients of the CDFA Healthy Soils Program! Nine Mendocino farmers were selected for an award, totaling over $300k going to make Mendocino County soils that much healthier.

(Please share widely) Post Doctoral Scholar Opportunity University of California, Davis Small Fruit Insect IPM Post-doctoral Position A post-doctoral position is currently available for two years focusing on spotted wing drosophila (SWD) population biology, insecticide resistance, and management in...

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Climate change is real and it is changing rapidly in our lifetime. As Gardeners, we should be prepared to adapt to the new normal. Climate changes that affect us are: increase in temperatures; rising sea levels; extreme weather swings, droughts; and, wildfires.

For millennia, fires periodically burned through California forests, thinning trees, reducing shrubbery and clearing out downed branches and debris. Without periodic fire, the forests became more dense, with spaces between large trees filling in with a thick carpet of duff, seedlings and shrubs.

The Camp Fire, the worst wildfire in California history, ravaged the bucolic communities in the Butte County foothills, including Paradise, Concow, Butte Creek Canyon, Cherokee, Yankee Hill and Magalia in November 2018.

Shades of brown and grey cast over bricks, cement, remnants of metal roofs and steel beams from manufactured and modular homes, collapsed stucco walls, BBQs, shells of washers and driers, along with an occasional tea pot that is what you can see in and amongst living, but singed Ponderosa pine and...

Fire scientist Kate Wilkin was on the job just a few weeks when ferocious winds whipped up the Northern California firestorm of 2017.

The more different the root architecture, the greater potential to store more carbon The greater the diversity of the rooting network, the greater diversity of pores It's not just the biomass that stores the carbon, it's the diversity of the pores So plant a greater diversity of plants to increase s...