What About This “Damn Tool”, Gov. Newsom?
Last Friday, April 29th, Governor Newsom urged Coastal Commission approval of the Poseidon desalination plant proposal for Huntington Beach that Coastal Commission staff had recommended against in their report issued Monday, April 25th. I had read and saved the Los...
Oaks As Threatened Catchment Keystones
The “bones” and “circulatory systems” of large portions of critical California catchments appear increasingly impacted by degradational processes analogous to osteoporosis and hardening of arteries in humans. Such downhill processes in humans are associated with...
Catchment Restoration for Biodiversity, Climate Change Resilience
What does a state do when it learns its tightly controlled management of freshwater isn’t meeting its historically touted benefits for salmonds? Add another layer of control – truck the fish up to suitable habitats above the dams. ‘Gotta say, it suggests a...
Who Values Catchments More Than CA?
The intermittent drought we experience in California, which may be part of a regional “megadrought” with anthropogenic signals (Williams and colleagues 2020), has us imagining that this is among the more impacted regions on the planet. Who here would guess that one...
Why No Nature-Based Solutions for Inland CA Waters???
Much gratitude to Steve Gaines, PhD, 30 x 30 Advisory Committee member and Dean of UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, for pointing out, during the Jan. 12th virtual meeting , the quite conspicuous, IMO, omission from the Draft Pathways to...
Newsom Administration – Progressive on Water?
Systems Thinking Would Be a Progressive Approach
Can’t anyone at CNRA recognize that they are putting all their attention on the water sinks, rather than the source??? Does no one at that agency understand systems dynamics?
Restore the SOURCE lands and the sinks will benefit naturally!
Native Fishes Seek Cool Pools
Given that steelhead were the impetus for the interdisciplinary investigation that led to Rainfall to Groundwater, I haven’t written a lot about them on this site to date. There’s the Ecohydrological Economics page, What’s in it for steelhead & salmon? They were...
How Does Groundwater Get There? Some Basics
In the Introduction to his text, Groundwater Hydrology, the late David Keith Todd offers a brief history of groundwater development from ancient times and groundwater theories dating back to Greek and Roman philosophers, whose theories ranged “from fantasy to nearly...
Rational Way to Recharge & Cold Flows for Fish
Lest anyone perceive the Rainfall to Groundwater approach to recharge as coming out of “left field”, without precedent, it seems appropriate to share the academic background that initially shaped my own perception/ paradigm. Landscape architecture (my masters field)...
Tale of Two Raindrops: A Pace Odyssey
[Any resemblance to Aesop’s Tortoise and the Hare is purely intentional. Apologies to the classic film 2001] Zoot and Zimm coalesced into raindrops after enjoying a picturesque aerial excursion from the Pacific Ocean, over the coastline, low hills, then...