Safe, healthy and happy Thanksgiving
The power in the picture
UCCE's media services manager Mike Poe recently shared a video success story with the Communications Services team. Sacramento UCCE was struggling to maintain county funding. At budget hearings, the 4-H advisor in Sacramento County, Marianne Bird, handed out copies of a five-minute video that Poe had helped put together about the 4-H Water Wizards project.
Bird e-mailed Mike last week: "Our acting county director just came in to tell me that the Department of Water Resources has committed $20,000 to Sacramento UCCE as a result of seeing the Water Wizards DVD."
This experience definitely shows how a visual communications piece can pay dividends. Here is the video:
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More on global warming
Escaped nitrogen from agricultural production has "huge potential to contribute to climate change," according to the director of the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at UC Davis, Tom Tomich. He was quoted in "The Smog Blog," written by Mark Grossi of the Fresno Bee, in a post about $2.8 million in grant funding ASI received to research agricultural nitrogen. The story appeared in his blog last week and on the front page of the newspaper's Local News section yesterday.
According to an ASI news release announcing the new funding, many people, including politicians. are unaware that escaped nitrogen from agricultural production affects climate change and air, water and soil quality.
Earth's atmosphere is 78 percent nitrogen by volume, according to the Wikipedia entry on the chemical element. And in fact, "Mike D." commented on Grossi's blog posting, "I'm a bit confused as to how nitrogen could be a greenhouse gas when it already exists in abundance in the atmosphere."
This confusion perhaps underscores the need for more research and extension efforts on the topic. According to the ASI news release, data on agricultural nitrogen pollution are limited, and some nitrogen pollution forms are difficult to monitor. Measurements can be labor-intensive and expensive and are influenced by variables such as weather conditions, irrigation timing and method, and crop-specific fertilization practices.
I trust that, as the ASI's research is conducted and results are publicized, much more information about the role of agricultural nitrogen in global warming will become widely available.
Joshua Trees could vanish in Joshua Tree National Park
Under any of six models of climate change, in 100 years there will be no new trees in Joshua Tree National Park and a significant number of existing trees will be dead, according to a recent Riverside Press-Enterprise story. The climate models, developed by Ken Cole, a biologist and geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz., and plant ecologist Kirsten Ironside of Northern Arizona University, suggest a temperature increase of seven degrees.
Joshua Trees were prolific and widespread 11,000 years ago, Cole told newspaper reporter Janet Zimmerman. Their seeds were carried long distances from Mexico to Nevada in the dung of the Shasta ground sloth. Now, seeds are transported only short distances by rodents.
Climate change is expected to combine with other human impacts to threaten Joshua Trees. Factors mentioned in the Press-Enterprise article include:
- Non-native grass species, such as red brome and cheatgrass, are transported along roads by passing cars.
- The non-native grasses are fertilized by nitrate and ammonium deposited in the soil by car emissions. Edith Allen, a UC Riverside professor of plant ecology, has found that the levels of those chemicals in the park are 15 to 30 times higher than those in an undisturbed ecosystem.
- Dirt patches that separated native plant species are being replaced with a continuous carpet of non-native grass.
- Wildfire is increasing in frequency and intensity as the continuous bed of tinder dry grass carries fire long distances from plant to plant.
A possible bright side: Joshua Trees are taking root in areas to the north, such as Tonapah, Nev., where none existed a century ago because it was too cold.
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UCCE report addresses ag on national parkland
This month, the UC Cooperative Extension office in Marin County released a carefully researched and written report on The Changing Role of Agriculture in Point Reyes National Seashore. PRNS is unusual in the National Park system because it has contained a "pastoral zone" with working cattle ranches, dairies and other farms since its establishment in 1962.
Now, some area residents and environmentalists are questioning the existence of commercial farming in the park, particularly an oyster farm in Drakes Bay. A controversy generated by the release of the new UCCE report was covered in yesterday's Marin Independent Journal.
Reporter Rob Rogers wrote that members of several environmental groups have called the report inaccurate, and have expressed anger with what some see as the report's support for an oyster farm within the national seashore.
"We bent over backwards to make this as neutral and positive as possible," the article quoted Ellen Rilla, UCCE county director and one of the authors of the report. "We knew we would be attacked by people who had extreme opinions."
Rilla told me this morning that she wrote the report with Lisa Bush, Marin County's agricultural ombudsman, to bring some scientific information into the conversation. "That was the point of paper," Rilla said.
The 21-page report describes current county, regional and state policies, including those contained in the Marin Countywide Plan and Local Coastal Program, economic statistics, research studies, and the historic record to support the continued existence and viability of agriculture at PRNS.
Rogers wrote that Rilla and Bush realize that their suggestions may carry little weight with the National Park Service. But Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey believes the conclusions drawn by the university researchers could be important in determining the future of the park.
"I think their suggestions may have less importance with the federal park, but they are of significant importance to the Board of Supervisors," Kinsey was quoted. "And if the Board of Supervisors expresses its collective will, federal legislators pay close attention to that."
The new UCCE report.
Media outlet takes notice of new ANR council
The University of California issued a news release about a new Animal Welfare Council on May 19. Jim Downing of the Sacramento Bee picked it up, writing in a story published today that "The University of California, hoping to insert itself as a peacemaker, formed a new animal welfare council last month."
Downing's article focused on voters' overwhelming support of Proposition 2 last November, which, among other things, requires farmers to give egg-laying chickens room to spread their wings. However, the story says the battle over hen housing has "only just begun."
The story mentions that:
- The university is being sued by the Humane Society over what the group says was an industry-biased analysis of Proposition 2 during the campaign.
- The Human Society is backing Assembly Bill 1437, which would require all eggs sold in the state - not just those produced in the state - be laid by cage-free hens.
- Farmers are looking at various options for complying with Prop 2, such as a 60-hen "colony" cages used on some farms in Europe.