Posts Tagged: Theresa Becchetti

Lawn-pocalypse! Surviving Drought

Ah, summer! The season of sunburns, pool parties, and… lawn droughts. If your once lush, green carpet now looks like a crunchy brown doormat, you're not alone. Let's dive into why your yard is staging a dramatic death scene and what you can do to...

Bermuda grass and weeds overtaking drought stressed turf grass.

A patch of former lawn, mostly dead, with a few green weeds and Bermudagrass

Tips on care of backyard chickens, sheep, goats compiled on new website

UC Cooperative Extension expertise available in English and Spanish on small-scale livestock production, pasture management, pests and predators, weed management and emergency preparedness

A team of University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources advisors has created a new comprehensive website for small acreage landowners in California and beyond. The Small Acreage Landowners website, at https://ucanr.edu/sites/smacreage, is designed to be a one-stop shop for backyard livestock producers, youth raising livestock, and other small acreage landowners. Information on livestock husbandry, pasture management, pests and predators, weed management and emergency preparedness is in English and Spanish on the website. 

“We've seen an amazing growth in interest in small-scale livestock production throughout California in the last four years,” said project leader Julie Finzel, UC Cooperative Extension livestock and natural resources advisor for Kern, Tulare and Kings Counties. “Folks in our communities are hungry for knowledge about how to care for their land and their animals – from urban chickens to backyard goats and sheep.”

The website includes specific information for most common livestock species, as well as links to sites with more in-depth information about specific topics. Other pages include information on protecting livestock and property from pests and predators, controlling common weeds and protecting water quality.

The site also provides links to a variety of other UC ANR resources, including wildfire information from the Fire Network, and videos and webinars from the UC ANR Managing Land & Livestock on Small Acreage Webinar Series.

“We're excited this new website will make science-based information available to a wider audience,” said Finzel. “Most of our educational programming has focused on commercial livestock production.”

In addition to Finzel, a team of UC Cooperative Extension livestock advisors contributed to the project, including Theresa Becchetti (Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties), Brooke Latack (Imperial, Riverside and San Bernadino counties) Dan Macon (Placer, Nevada, Sutter and Yuba counties), Devii Rao (San Benito, Santa Cruz and Monterey counties), Rebecca Ozeran, former UC Cooperative Extension livestock advisor for Fresno and Madera counties and Flavie Audoin, former UCCE advisor for the Central Sierra now rangeland management extension specialist at University of Arizona. UC ANR technician Sequoia Williams in Placer County compiled information and designed the webpages.

The Small Acreage Landowners website was created in part with funds from a USDA-NIFA Renewable Resources Extension Act grant.

Updated March 6, 2024, to add Flavie Audoin as a contributor to the website.

Fighting fire with feeding

Are cattle a secret weapon for taking on California wildfires?

California's cattle ranchers contribute a significant amount to the region's culture, economy and food supply, but do they also inadvertently help to temper the wildfires that have been plaguing the state? And if so, is it a better alternative – environmentally speaking – to letting grasslands burn?

A new study published in the journal Sustainability delves into the topic, weighing the advantages – and disadvantages – grazing cattle bring to the table. Researchers, including scientists from University of California, Davis and UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, set out to calculate the greenhouse gas emissions of cows consuming vegetation that would otherwise burn in wildfires. Then they estimated the GHG emissions that would result should that forage be untouched and therefore, consumed by fire, eventually comparing the two.

Feeling the burn

Given the severity of California's recent wildfires and the belief they will continue and even escalate in the near future, it's a discussion worth having, said Frank Mitloehner, an expert in animal agriculture and air quality from UC Davis, director of the CLEAR Center and one of the researchers who contributed to the peer-reviewed article.

“Each year from 2010 to 2020, California lost on average 89,000 acres of grassland to wildfires,” said Mitloehner, who is also a Cooperative Extension specialist. “In addition to the obvious disruption and devastation they caused, the fires spewed greenhouse gases and harmful particulate matter such as black carbon into the air and into our atmosphere. Those alone threaten climate health and human well-being.”

A fast and furious gas

Cattle are adept at eliminating herbaceous fuel as they graze. However, at the same time, their specialized digestive system produces methane that is expelled most often in the form of enteric emissions … more commonly known as belches. By way of background, methane is a potent greenhouse gas that warms the atmosphere at 25 times the rate of carbon dioxide over 100 years. But it's only in the atmosphere for 10 to 12 years after it's emitted. Following that, it's broken down into carbon dioxide and water vapor.

For that reason, Mitloehner refers to methane as a “fast and furious” gas. Furious because it warms with a vengeance and fast because it does so for only a short time, especially when compared to carbon dioxide. Furthermore, because of the biogenic carbon cycle, whereby plants extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for photosynthesis, the warming of methane and its byproducts can end entirely when it's hydrolyzed and used by plants.

How researchers calculated emissions

In order to determine if grazing, methane-emitting cattle are better for the atmosphere than burning grasslands, Mitloehner and the other researchers employed a method known as “Monte Carlo simulation,” a mathematical technique used by scientists to predict outcomes of an uncertain event.

Looking exclusively at methane emissions, they found it's better to have cows eat vegetation than to have wildfires burn it. Granted, it's only marginally better, but when one considers other advantages of animal agriculture and conversely, other disadvantages of widespread, uncontrolled fire, the conversation suddenly shifts.

“Even if cattle provided no other benefit to us, which certainly is not true, we can now make the case that they are helpful to us in yet another way,” Mitloehner said.

Friends or foes?

It goes without saying that one would be hard pressed to find much good to say about wildfires, but that doesn't hold true for animal agriculture. The industry provides jobs and supports the economy in other ways as well. Plus, it is a major source of protein-rich food that is in increasing demand as the world's population continues on a trajectory toward 10 billion people by the year 2050.

Where global warming is concerned, the industry is in the unique position of being able to reach net-zero warming, also known as climate neutrality, if it continues to aggressively chip away at its methane emissions, which Mitloehner asserts is of critical importance to the planet. “Few other sectors can reduce its warming to net zero and still be of service to society, but agriculture can because of the way methane behaves in the atmosphere,” he says.

To be clear, grazing cows are no match for wildfires. Yet, in addition to everything else the sector does for us, slowing the burn and keeping relatively more methane from entering the atmosphere are not nothing.

In addition to Mitloehner, authors of the study are Cooperative Extension advisors Sheila Barry, Devii Rao and Theresa Becchetti; Rowan Peterson, Ermias Kebreab and Minju Jung of UC Davis; and Felix Ratcliff and Kaveh Motamed of LD Ford. 

This article was first published on the website of the CLEAR (Clarity and Leadership for Environmental Awareness and Research) Center at UC Davis.

Climate-Change Resources

University of California UC ANR Green Blog (Climate Change and Other Topics) https://ucanr.edu/blogs/Green/index.cfm?tagname=climate%20change (full index)

Examples:

     -  Save Trees First: Tips to Keep Them Alive Under Drought https://ucanr.edu/b/~CdD 

     - Landscaping with Fire Exposure in Mind: https://ucanr.edu/b/~G4D

     - Cities in California Inland Areas Must Make Street Tree Changes to adapt to Future Climate  https://ucanr.edu/b/~oF7

Drought, Climate Change and California Water Management Ted Grantham, UC Cooperative Extension specialist (23 minutes) https://youtu.be/dlimj75Wn9Q

Climate Variability and Change: Trends and Impacts on CA Agriculture Tapan Pathak, UC Cooperative Extension specialist (24 minutes) https://youtu.be/bIHI0yqqQJc

California Institute for Water Resources (links to blogs, talks, podcasts, water experts, etc.) https://ciwr.ucanr.edu/California_Drought_Expertise/

UC ANR Wildfire Resources (publications, videos, etc.) https://ucanr.edu/News/For_the_media/Press_kits/Wildfire/ (main website)

      -UC ANR Fire Resources and Information https://ucanr.edu/sites/fire/ (main website)

            -Preparing Home Landscaping https://ucanr.edu/sites/fire/Prepare/Landscaping/

UC ANR Free Publications https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/ (main website)

- Benefits of Plants to Humans and Urban Ecosystems: https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8726.pdf

 -Keeping Plants Alive Under Drought and Water Restrictions (English version) https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8553.pdf

  (Spanish version) https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8628.pdf

-  Use of Graywater in Urban Landscapes https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8536.pdf

-  Sustainable Landscaping in California https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8504.pdf

 

Other (Non-UC) Climate Change Resources

Urban Forests and Climate Change. Urban forests play an important role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Active stewardship of a community's forestry assets can strengthen local resilience to climate change while creating more sustainable and desirable places to live. https://www.fs.usda.gov/ccrc/topics/urban-forests

Examining the Viability of Planting Trees to Mitigate Climate Change (plausible at the forest level) https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2927/examining-the-viability-of-planting-trees-to-help-mitigate-climate-change/

Reports and other information resources coordinated under the auspices of the United Nations and produced through the collaboration of thousands of international scientists to provide a clear and up to date view of the current state of scientific knowledge relevant to climate change. United Nations Climate Action

Scientific reports, programs, action movements and events related to climate change. National Center for Atmospheric Research (National Science Foundation)

Find useful reports, program information and other documents resulting from federally funded research and development into the behavior of the atmosphere and related physical, biological and social systems. Search and find climate data from prehistory through to an hour ago in the world's largest climate data archive. (Formerly the "Climatic Data Center") National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA)

Think tank providing information, analysis, policy and solution development for addressing climate change and energy issues (formerly known as the: "Pew Center on Global Climate Change"). Center for Climate & Energy Solutions (C2ES)

Mapping Resilience: A Blueprint for Thriving in the Face of Climate Disaster. The Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange (CAKE) was launched in July 2010 and is managed by EcoAdapt, a non-profit with a singular mission: to create a robust future in the face of climate change by bringing together diverse players to reshape planning and management in response to rapid climate change. https://www.cakex.org/documents/mapping-resilience-blueprint-thriving-face-climate-disaster

Cal-Adapt provides a way to explore peer-reviewed data that portrays how climate change might affect California at the state and local level. We make this data available through downloads, visualizations, and the Cal-Adapt API for your research, outreach, and adaptation planning needs. Cal-Adapt is a collaboration between state agency funding programs, university and private sector researchers https://cal-adapt.org/

Find reports, maps, data and other resources produced through a confederation of the research arms of 13 Federal departments and agencies that carry out research and develop and maintain capabilities that support the Nation's response to global change. Global Change (U.S. Global Change Research Program)

The Pacific Institute is a global water think tank that combines science-based thought leadership with active outreach to influence local, national, and international efforts to develop sustainable water policies. https://pacinst.org/our-approach/

Making equity real in climate adaptation and community resilience policies and programs: a guidebook. https://greenlining.org/publications/2019/making-equity-real-in-climate-adaption-and-community-resilience-policies-and-programs-a-guidebook/ 

Quarterly CA Climate Updates and CA Drought Monitor Maps (updated each Thursday) https://www.drought.gov/documents/quarterly-climate-impacts-and-outlook-western-region-june-2022

 

 

 

 

Drought focus of Water Resources IMPACT magazine special issue

UC ANR experts address emotional toll of drought

Preparing the American West for prolonged drought is the focus of a double issue of Water Resources IMPACT magazine. The California Water Commission staff are guest editors for this special open-access edition of the magazine, which is published by the American Water Resources Association.   

Faith Kearns, academic coordinator of University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources' California Institute for Water Resources, is among the authors delving into how drought impacts people and the environment and how we can better prepare for the inevitable. 

The first issue, published on Feb. 14, focuses on water scarcity issues confronting California and the ways these issues affect different sectors. 

In “Trauma, Care, and Solidarity: Addressing the Emotional Toll of Chronic Drought,” Kearns highlights the effects of drought on mental health. She points to the spike in suicide hotline calls when wells ran dry in Southeast Asian communities in California's Central Valley.

By listening to Southeast Asian farmers, Ruth Dahlquist-Willard and Michael Yang of UC Cooperative Extension were able to “lighten the load” for them by providing pragmatic support, Kearns writes.

“The scale of some of these highly emotional issues – drought, wildfires, climate change – can make them seem incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to deal with,” Kearns said. “At the same time, they are affecting everyone living in the western U.S. on a daily basis. I wanted to highlight and provide models based on work that people – whether they are researchers, clinical psychologists, or Cooperative Extension advisors – are doing right now to ease the way.”

The authors who contributed to the double issue are a diverse array of Tribal experts, academics, nongovernmental organization thought-leaders, water managers and water policy influencers, each of whom brings their own perspective on the topic of drought. Their expertise and perspectives in climate science, water policy and water management will help inform drought-related decision-making and support policies that better prepare the state to thrive during periods of prolonged water scarcity.

In addition to Kearns, the first issue includes articles contributed by:

• Samantha Stevenson, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Jay Lund, University of California, Davis
• Ron Goode, North Fork Mono Tribe
• Andy Fecko, Placer County Water Agency
• Jeff Mount, Public Policy Institute of California, and Ted Grantham, University of California, Berkeley/UC Cooperative Extension
• Nat Seavy and Karyn Stockdale, National Audubon Society
• Kjia Rivers, Community Water Center
• Cannon Michael, Bowles Farming
• Michelle Reimers, Turlock Irrigation District

The January/February edition of Water Resources IMPACT magazine can be accessed, free of charge, on the American Water Resources Association website at https://www.awra.org under “Publications.”

The second issue, to be published in March, will focus on drought response, considering the options for adaptation. This two-part series complements the Commission's work on strategies to protect communities and fish and wildlife in the event of a long-term drought.

 

 

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