Ongoing research

Here's something from the Salinas Valley Agriculture blog :: Aug. 9, 2016 Bagrada bug (Bagrada hilaris) is an invasive stink bug that was first observed in the Salinas Valley in October-November 2013.

Calls are coming in about leafminer. It's there on the new growth, twisting and distorting it. In fact, it' been there most of the year. It was working new growth all winter long, because it was a warm winter. Right now, though, they are more active and more damage is being seen.

Sex. Passion. Passionflower vine. And by--what else--the "passion butterflies," Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae). We came across the scenario below by accident.

March 9, 1923 - August 4, 2016 Samuel was born in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the eldest of five siblings. He graduated medical school in Cochabamba and married Carmela Morales. They had two children, Lucia and Dario. Samuel moved his family to the United States, settling in California in 1959.

A psyllid, perhaps new to the Western Hemisphere, has been found on Ficus microcarpa (Chinese banyan, Indian laurel fig) in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Ventura, San Diego, and Riverside counties. It causes a distinctive, tight, and typically complete rolling of the leaves.

Baseline soil health monitoring was begun by Wendy Krehbiel and Megan Schroeder of the USDA NRCS, and Betsy Karle, UCCE Advisor, in Glenn County at the dairy farm of Marty Poldevarrt on August 8, 2016.

Oh, the joy of rearing monarchs...from an egg to a caterpillar to a chrysalis to an adult... However, the ultimate joy is not in rearing them, but releasing them--from their confined and well-protected indoor habitat to that Spectacular Spacious World Without Boundaries.

The very fact that avocados can be grown in hard to get to places means that the trees are also in areas that are subject to wildfire damage. Recently several hundred acres of avocado burned in the Fillmore/Santa Paula foothills. The fire was fanned by high winds and low humidity.

Calling all water resource managers and researchers! Do you have spatial data of water stocks, water infrastructure, or water usage? Do you have a story to go with it? Then you have everything you need to submit a map idea for an exciting open-source atlas project.

Every time we see a pollen-packing bumble bee take flight, we think of the 300,000-pound Spruce Goose, which was never flight-worthy (well, except for its brief flight on Nov. 2, 1947).