Water Right Exactions

Posted on May 26, 2024 by Christine Parisek

By Karrigan Börk

A humpback chub, one of four endemic Colorado River fish species protected under the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program.

Water right exactions are a proposed tool to mitigate costs associated with water rights and water infrastructure that would also help users make better decisions about how much water to use. But first, what are exactions? Exactions are a land use permitting tool used by cities and other permitting agencies to ensure developers bear some of the public costs of new development, like increased traffic, a need for more parks, or increased sewage from new residents. Technically, an exaction is property (money or other property) given by a developer in exchange for a discretionary permit (i.e., a permit that the permitting entity can decide whether or not to issue). So, when developers seek a permit from a city to build a new development, the city might require the developer to build a park in the new development or install a stoplight at the entrance to the new development. These requirements, called exactions, mean that the developer is bearing some of the costs of the development by paying for public amenities that mitigate new costs.

The short argument for water right exactions goes like this: 

  • Water use and associated infrastructure imposes significant costs on the public.
  • Many of these costs are externalities, i.e. costs borne by the public, not the person making the decision to use the water or build the infrastructure.
  • These costs can sometimes be mitigated, through approaches like physical habitat improvement or careful flow management.
  • Exactions on water rights and associated infrastructure can make users bear some public costs, helping them to make better water use decisions and providing money or water for mitigation.
  • Thus, water permitting agencies like the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) could improve water management by imposing exactions on both new and existing water rights based on the public costs associated with those water rights.
Gravel restoration is an ongoing form of mitigation for the public costs of dams. This is a phot of the Feather River Gravel Supplementation and Improvement Project, in Oroville, Calif. Phot courtesy of Kelly M. Grow/ California Department of Water Resources.

Like new residential and commercial developments, water use and infrastructure impose significant costs on the public, from impaired ecosystems to subsidence to a loss of beach sand. This dynamic creates several problems. First, because the public pays these costs, and water users are generally not paying for them, water users aren’t aware of the real cost of water and so use more than they otherwise would. Second, although some of the public costs of water use and infrastructure can be mitigated, doing so takes money, time, and often dedicated water. Importing the exactions tool from the land use setting to the water rights setting offers a method to address both problems. 

Charging water users for some of the public costs of water use and infrastructure would incentivize less water use overall; increasing the price of water is a sure-fire way to reduce water use. And exactions don’t have to be monetary; like the developers who build parks and dedicate the land to the public, water users could, in some cases, do habitat work or dedicate some of their water right to mitigate the costs of water use. The funds and water from water right exactions would provide dedicated resources for mitigation.

While the idea might seem farfetched, several existing water management approaches apply a similar framework to new and existing water rights:

Salmon spawning in restored gravels in the Feather River.  Photo courtesy of Kelly M. Grow/ California Department of Water Resources.
  • In the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program, as part of the federal Endangered Species Act permitting process, new large diversions supply replacement water to mitigate impacts of their water use, while new small diversion supply money for the same purpose. Together, they fund roughly half the cost of the recovery program for four protected endemic Colorado River fishes: the humpback chub, bonytail chub, razorback sucker, and the Colorado pikeminnow.
  • In Oregon, water users seeking to protect their right to conserve water and seeking to transfer or otherwise use the water can seek a discretionary permit from the state through an expedited process; the state takes 25% of the water for instream uses, like ecosystem protection, and in return the user gets protection for their water right and a right to transfer their portion of the conserved water in the future.
  • Finally, here in California, after the Supreme Court’s landmark Mono Lake decision, the Water Board required Los Angeles to give up some of its water right and carry out physical habitat improvements on LA’s land and on some public land in order to keep the rest of their water right.

In all three of these cases, water users are giving up some property (either money or water) in exchange for a discretionary permit from the state. That sure sounds like a water right exaction. In some ways, this idea tracks other proposals, like charging for the use of environmental water by other users during a drought or encouraging the Water Board to require more mitigation for water rights.

Of course, there’s always a risk that mitigation efforts might fail. In the land use setting, cities require performance bonds to ensure that infrastructure and other work by developers will be of high quality and last well into the future. Water right exactions (and other mitigation) should carry similar protections.

Mono Lake, California. Photo courtesy of Norm Hughes / California Department of Water Resources.

There are other reasons to consider water right exactions, from addressing fairness concerns to complicated legal arguments about water rights and their regulations. See a detailed analysis here. In short, however, deploying exactions more widely would incentivize better water use decisions and address the public costs of water use. 

UC Davis Acting Professor of Law Karrigan Börk’s publications run the gamut from the definitive text on the history and application of California minimum streamflow requirements to a hatchery and genetic management plan for the reintroduction of spring-run Chinook salmon in the San Joaquin River. Professor Börk graduated with Distinction and Pro Bono Distinction from Stanford Law School in 2009 and completed his Ph.D. dissertation in Ecology at UC Davis in September 2011. He works on legal and ethical issues in ecological restoration, including local governance issues in ecosystem management. His current work focuses on Western water law.

Further Reading

Adell Louise Amos, Freshwater Conservation: Oregon Water Law and Policy (2009), https://perma.cc/A5FQ-8CEE.

John Loomis & Jeffery Ballweber (2012), A Policy Analysis of the Collaborative Upper Colorado River Basin Endangered Fish Recovery Program: Cost Savings or Cost Shifting?, 52 NAT. RES. J. 337.

Karrigan Bork, Water Right Exactions (2023), 47 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 63.

Swimming Upstream: The Story of the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery, Colo. River Recovery (2022), https://perma.cc/NED7-K89L.

Bruce Aylward, Restoring Water Conservation Savings To Oregon Rivers: A Review Of Oregon’s Conserved Water Statute (2008), https://perma.cc/TZ6VLTS5.

Amendment of the City of Los Angeles’ Water Right Licenses for Diversion of Water from Streams Tributary to Mono Lake (Water Right Licenses 10191 and 10192, Applications 8042 and 8043) City of Los Angeles, Licensee, No. D-1631 (Cal. State Water Res. Bd. Sept. 28, 1994).

Brian Gray, Jennifer Harder, and Karrigan Bork, Implementing Ecosystem-Based Management, 31 Duke Envtl. L. & Pol’y F. 215 (2021).

Cal. State Water Res. Control Bd., Order No. WR 98-05 (1998).

Grantham, T., J. Howard, B. Lane, R. Lusardi, S. Sandoval-Solis, E. Stein, S. Yarnell and J. Zimmerman (2020), Functional Flows Can Improve Environmental Water Management in California, CaliforniaWaterBlog.com, November 29, 2020 https://californiawaterblog.com/2020/11/29/functional-flows-can-improve-environmental-water-management-in-california/

Horne, A., Webb, J. A., Stewardson, M., Richter, B., and Acreman, M. (2017). Water for the Environment: From Policy and Science to Implementation and Management. Academic Press.

Obester, A., S. Yarnell, and T. Grantham(2020), Environmental Flows in California, CaliforniaWaterBlog.com, March 18, 2020, https://californiawaterblog.com/2020/03/18/environmental-flows-in-california/

Yarnell, S.M., Stein, E.D., Webb, J.A., Grantham, T., Lusardi, R.A., Zimmerman, J., Peek, R.A., Lane, B.A., Howard, J., and Sandoval-Solis, S. A functional flows approach to selecting ecologically relevant flow metrics for environmental flow applications. River Res Applic. 2020; 1– 7. https://doi.org/10.1002/rra.3575

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Bill Bennett: friend of fish and fisheries in the San Francisco Estuary

Posted on May 19, 2024 by UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences

by Peter Moyle

William (Bill) Bennett.

William A. Bennett (1955-2024)  was a top-notch scientist/biologist who spent much of his career improving our understanding of the ecology and management of native and non-native fishes in the SF Estuary (SFE) especially delta smelt and striped bass.  Those of us who had the good fortune to work with him knew Bill as an insightful biologist who worked hard to retain his objectivity on controversial fish management issues in the SFE.  

I got to know Bill when he joined my lab as a graduate student in Ecology at UCD in 1987. I agreed to sponsor him because I was impressed by his outstanding academic record as both a teacher and researcher at U. Mass. Boston.   Bill also spent time as a research assistant working with the famous ecologist Richard Levins, where he learned about ecological modeling and gained an appreciation for Loop models, dialectics and holistic approaches to theoretical ecology.  His first published paper (1990) dealt with competitive interactions between house sparrows and house finches, published in the prestigious journal American Naturalist.

Once his M.S. degree was in hand, Bill decided to obtain his PhD studying fish ecology in a different ocean (Pacific) than the one he grew up with (Atlantic), although both had striped bass in common.  I provided him with the opportunity to study fish in the SFE, and he took advantage of it.  He quickly became knowledgeable about the SF Estuary and its fishes.  Soon, he began working with other faculty (e.g., David Hinton) and wrote the grant that funded (including much of his salary, 1988), a study on the ecology and effects of contaminants on larval striped bass. 

An important aspect of Bill’s work in diverse laboratories was that he brought with him 20 years of working as a carpenter and machinist in Boston (1965-1986). This meant he could build and fix almost anything. Thus, in the early days (1980s) of my monthly fish sampling of Suisun Marsh, he was a key person in keeping the project afloat. For a while, it seemed the project was in its final days because of lack of funding and because my research boat was falling apart from years of abuse.  Bill stepped in and said he could restore the boat with the limited funding I had available.  I was skeptical, but he convinced me that he could do it.  The next thing I knew, he had the boat in his driveway, stripped down to its aluminum hull. A month later, the boat was on the water, so we could continue the Suisun sampling. But the outboard motor on the boat was also failing, beyond the capacity of even Bill to fix it. In desperation, I went to the Dean (Graham Gall) to beg for some emergency funding.  He was impressed with all the work had been done to keep the Suisun sampling program afloat and provided funds for a new outboard motor.  This gave the project the ‘breathing room’ it needed for me to finalize project funding.  Today, many years later, the Suisun  Marsh fish sampling program is stronger than ever. The monthly sampling is now a key component of fish sampling programs in the entire San Francisco Estuary. The Suisun Marsh fish sampling program employed and trained many students over the years, thanks to Bill.

Bill received his PhD (1993) with a dissertation as complex as the rest of his work: “Interaction of food limitation, predation, and anthropogenic intervention on larval striped bass in the San Francisco Bay estuary.”   To keep his project rolling,  he worked as a research scientist with the UCD Center for Watershed Sciences and then at the Bodega Marine Laboratory. In Bill’s words, his main research focus was “understanding the population dynamics and forces structuring fish assemblages in the San Francisco Estuary and near-shore marine environments in California.”  His first work on larval striped bass  (published in 1995) showed how water contaminated with herbicides at times was an important cause of high mortality in early life stages of pelagic SFE fishes.  Subsequently, he worked with a coalition of other scientists to determine the habitat requirements of pelagic fishes, especially the endangered delta smelt and longfin smelt, as seen in the list of selected publications below.  

These studies by Bill and colleagues at San Francisco State University and at the USGS were large multi-disciplinary field campaigns that involved virtually all the large vessels in the Interagency Ecological Program, and dozens of people from multiple agencies, all sampling continuously and simultaneously around the clock in the Suisun Bay/Confluence region.  These studies were important because persistence of pelagic fishes (e.g., delta smelt, longfin smelt, striped bass) depends on management strategies that maintain zooplankton populations.  His publication list also reveals that he played an important role in developing an understanding of zooplankton movements in relation to tides, freshwater inflow to the “Entrapment Zone”  and their availability as prey for smelt and other pelagic fishes.  He demonstrated that zooplankton populations were a critical part of the food web.  Few people understood this better than Bill because he applied a broad understanding of how the estuary worked  (or did not work) to support pelagic fishes, especially delta smelt.  His work was central to numerous project reports that were part of the CALFED Bay-Delta Ecosystem Restoration program and the Interagency Ecological Program as well as various technical reports for agencies.

Colleagues who worked closely with Bill during this time were impressed by how courageously he dealt with the intense pressure associated with his work on delta smelt during the period when the delta smelt declining population began to restrict exports of water from the Delta.   Bill often had to deal with politics associated with Endangered Species Act protections for delta smelt.   For example, Bill and a few colleagues had concerns regarding the viability of the so-called 2-Gates Fish Protection Demonstration Project.  This was an $80 million dollar project, endorsed by Senator Diane Feinstein and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, that aimed to increase protections for delta smelt and for water reliability.  Somehow these concerns reached David Nawi, Senior Advisor to Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar.  David set up a meeting of SFE scientists and the proponents of the 2-Gates project to discuss the scientists’ concerns. Before the meeting, Bill joked it could be their last day working in the Delta.  But no one lost their job and Bill noted that the outcome of this meeting was another large experiment designed to address concerns associated with the 2-Gates project.  The 2-Gates Project was never implemented.

Not surprisingly, Bill was frequently an invited speaker and workshop participant, where his broad knowledge of estuarine food webs and sense of humor were appreciated and valued. In fact, Bill’s talks at the annual Interagency Ecological Conference at Asilomar were legendary because his work on delta smelt invariably put him in the “hot seat”. Yet, he returned to Asilomar year after year for over a decade. Often Bill would weave in rock and roll lyrics into his seminar and paper titles (see Bennett and Burau, 2015, for an example), combining his love for estuarine science and music. He was the Principal Investigator on over 25 major grants from agencies that worked towards addressing major issues in the estuary.  His keen intellect combined with a unique perspective led to novel approaches and new insights into estuarine fish ecology.

Bill also worked in the nearshore marine environment collaborating with his wife Dr. Laura Rogers-Bennett in their laboratory at the Bodega Marine Laboratory studying sea urchins, the rockfish fishery and larval fishes. In their work together, Bill added elegant multivariate statistical analyses to help demonstrate plasticity in sea urchin morphology from different habitats and compare multiple growth models. In the nearshore rocky reefs, Bill worked to examine contrasting patterns of recreational fishing pressures in southern compared to northern California showing the influence of climate change on fishery landings. In another collaboration, Bill and Laura lived in a tiny trailer with their new baby Brian working to test the impact of inland silverside predation and turbidity on the survival of larval fishes in large mesocosm experiments in Suisun Marsh. 

In short, Bill Bennett was a highly valued member of the SFE research community, whose publications and interactions with other researchers have led to an improved understanding of the dynamics of estuarine fishes, especially endangered delta smelt.  He was also a colleague who produced influential publications, some listed below.  For example, he was a co-author (with six other scientists) of the 2010 book, produced by the Center for Watershed Sciences, on the future of the Delta.  He was asked to join the author team because of his deep knowledge of the estuary ecosystem and its fishes. For the past 10 years or so, he was an advisor on science issues for The Bay Institute. Amazingly, he was actively working on critical TBI initiatives right up to his death, including a briefing for a group of scientists on recent delta smelt modeling efforts. 

Bill Bennett is survived by his two children Brian Bennett (Dive and Boating Safety Officer), his daughter Lucy Bennett (graduate student in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley) and their mother Dr. Laura Rogers-Bennett. Bill’s siblings are Susan Bennett, Linda Cook and Robert Bennett and he is predeceased by his mother, Dorothy Creutz, and father Edward Bennett. Bill will be missed by his family, his colleagues, his friends and all who knew him.  A celebration of  Bill’s life is planned for June 2, at the Bodega Marine Laboratory.

Bill Bennett (right, in blue hat) prepping before a study. Jon Burau,

Selected publications

Bennett, W.A., D.J. Ostrach, and D.E. Hinton. 1995. Condition of larval striped bass in a drought- stricken estuary: pelagic food web limitation. Ecological Applications 5: 680-692.

Rogers-Bennett, L., Bennett, W.A., Fastenau, H.C., and C.M. Dewees 1995. Spatial variation in red sea urchin reproduction and morphology: implications for harvest refugia. Ecological Applications 5:1171-1180.  

Bennett, W.A. and P. Moyle. 1996. Where have all the fishes gone?: factors producing fish declines in the San Francisco Bay Fishes. In, San Francisco Bay: the Ecosystem. J.T. Hollibaugh, editor. Pacific Division, American Association for the Advancement of Science, San Francisco, California.

Kimmerer, W.J., J. Burau, and W.A. Bennett. 1998. Tidally-oriented migration and position maintenance of zooplankton in northern San Francisco Bay. Limnology and Oceanography 43: 1697-1709. 

Kimmerer, W.J., J. Burau, and W.A. Bennett. 2002. Persistence of tidally-oriented vertical migration by zooplankton in a temperate estuary. Estuaries 25:359-371

Bennett, W.A., W.J. Kimmerer, and J.R. Burau. 2002. Plasticity in vertical migration by native and exotic estuarine fishes in a dynamic low-salinity zone. Limnology and Oceanography 47: 1496-1507.

Kimmerer, W.J., J. Burau, and W.A. Bennett. 2002. Persistence of tidally-oriented vertical migration by zooplankton in a temperate estuary. Estuaries 25:359-371

Rogers-Bennett, L., Rogers, D.W. Bennett, W.A. and T.A. Ebert. 2003. Modeling red sea urchin growth using six growth models. Fishery Bulletin 101:614-626. 

Bennett, W.A., Roinestad, K., Rogers-Bennett, L. Kaufman and B. Heneman 2004. Inverse regional responses to climate change and fishing intensity by the recreational rockfish fishery in California. Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 61:2499-2510.

Bennett, W.A. 2005. Critical assessment of the delta smelt population in the San Francisco Estuary, California. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science. 3(2): 71pp . (http://repositories.cdlib.org/jmie/sfews/ vol3/iss2/art1/)

Hobbs, J.A., Q. Yin, J. Burton-Hobbs, and W.A. Bennett. 2005. Retrospective determination of natal habitats for anestuarine fish with otolith strontium isotope ratios. Journal of Freshwater and Marine Research. 56: 655-660.

Hobbs, J.A. , W.A. Bennett, and J. Burton-Hobbs. 2006. Assessing nursery habitat quality for native fishes in the low-salinity zone of the San Francisco Estuary, California. Journal of Fish Biology 69: 907-922.

Hobbs, J.A., W.A. Bennett, and J. Burton-Hobbs. 2007. Modification of the biological intercept model to account forontogenetic effects in laboratory-reared delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus). U.S. Fishery Bulletin. 105:30-38.

Hobbs, J.A., W.A. Bennett, J. Burton-Hobbs, M. Gras. 2007. Classification of larval and adult delta smelt to nursery areas by use of trace elemental fingerprinting. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 136:518-527

Hobbs, J.A. W.A. Bennett, and J. Burton-Hobbs. 2006. Assessing nursery habitat quality for native fishes in the low-salinity zone of the San Francisco Estuary, California. Journal of Fish Biology 69: 907-922.

Lund, J., E. Hanak, W. Fleenor, W. A. Bennett, R. Howitt, J. Mount, and P. Moyle. 2010. Comparing Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.

Thomson, J., W. Kimmerer, L. Brown, K. Newman, R. MacNally, W. Bennett, F. Feyrer, and E. Fleishman. 2010.  Bayesian change-point analysis of abundance trends for pelagic fishes in the upper San Francisco Estuary. Ecological Applications 20(5): 1431-1448.

Bennett, W.A. and J. R . Burau , J.R.. 2015. Riders on the storm: selective tidal movements facilitate the spawning migration of threatened Delta Smelt in the San Francisco Estuary. Estuaries and Coasts 38:826-835.

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Book Review: Seek Higher Ground

Posted on May 12, 2024 by Christine Parisek

by Peter Moyle

Seek Higher Ground: The Natural Solution to Our Urgent Flooding Crisis, by Tim Palmer. University of California Press 2024.                                            

Flooding is a natural phenomenon that we humans keep assuming can be controlled with enough effort and engineering.  But this simply is not possible, as floods across the globe repeatedly demonstrate. People continue to be surprised when landscapes become waterscapes. This brings loss of life and enormous costs of repairing damaged infrastructure and constructing bigger levees and dams for flood control. As Tim Palmer says in his new book (2024) local to global failures of current flood management practices: “The age of denial is over. The time has come to take a different path  (p 140)”.  Palmer is the right person to explore new pathways.  He is an independent writer and photographer who has spent a lifetime exploring the rivers and watersheds of North America, but especially those in California (Palmer 2010). 

This book exposes the inability (for the most part) of agencies throughout the USA to deal with problems created by floods and flooding in a realistic fashion. These problems are worsening as global warming increases the size and frequency of storms that bring floods.  Because politics often overrides sensible solutions to flooding, disasters created by floods are the most frequent and largest consumers of disaster relief funds. Most of these disasters are preventable. Scientists and engineers who study floods and their consequences, as Palmer documents do so well, have produced numerous reports and papers on how to live with floods (basically, get out of the way) that have been down-played since at least the 1930s, at the cost of billions of dollars and many lives.  This basic story is actually well known, if not in all its details, but there is just too much money to be made building levees, dams, towns, farms, and other infrastructure on cheap, flat, floodable land.  

The naïve optimism of those who rely on dams and levees is pervasive and has led to the widespread belief that flooding can be prevented if we pour enough concrete and move enough dirt.   Palmer’s book is timely because there have been great improvements in responses to flooding in some areas, including in California. But even with improved knowledge, the likelihood of more frequent and bigger floods is increasing to the point where we should be getting prepared for them now, on an accelerated basis. The 1849-50 flooding that turned the Central Valley into an inland sea (Kelley 1959) will be repeated at some point, probably on a much bigger scale. 

Sacramento, the Great Flood of 1862.  

Palmer tells this basic story extremely well with excellent documentation, making this information accessible to a wide range of people. This includes relating his experiences with floods and his interviews with people who have had houses and property destroyed by floods, often several times. Disaster relief programs often allow people to keep rebuilding in high-risk places, even though they and flood management agencies know better. The clarity of Palmer’s writing and his attention to facts reminds me of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. It is an urgent call for action starting with changes in our attitudes towards floods and flooding. The book is not all gloom and doom, however, because  Palmer makes a good case for positive actions that if taken now will pay off in the future, as the title of the book (Seek Higher Ground) indicates.  He points out, for example, that only about 7% of the land in the USA is floodable or capable of being flooded with peak flows. This makes the point that from a land use perspective, floodable land is a relatively small acreage so it should be what is spent today on flood management.

Palmer’s coverage of the issues is thorough and well-documented. The chapters on insurance (8) and relocation (9) presented information that was largely new to me, as a biologist.  But chapters covering more familiar ground are there as well, on the history of floods (2), the ecological and economic importance of floods and floodplains (3, 7), and the need for green infrastructure (3, 4, 10). Even those who work with flood management issues regularly will find it worth reading and discussing for new insights and examples.  The book is also a good read for general audiences seeking to better understand the expanded role floods will play in the future.  To read further in this area, especially for California examples, go to other UC Press books such as Mount (1995), Garrone (2013), Opperman et al (2017), and Ingram and Malamud-Roam (2013). Otherwise, there are lots of other books on individual flood disasters (e.g. Kelley 1989) but few are as comprehensive and dispassionate as Palmer’s book. 

Flooding in Maxwell, CA in February 2017. Hector Iniguez.

On the positive side, our understanding of floods and flooding is improving. For example, the UCD Center for Watershed Sciences got its start as a home for a multidisciplinary research projects to develop an understanding of the Cosumnes River floodplain and the native and non-native fishes that use it. The Cosumnes was chosen because it has a ‘natural’ flow and flooding regime that is attractive as a model for restoring California floodplains for native biodiversity. The project was soon expanded to include studies of the Yolo Bypass, a large highly managed floodplain in the Central Valley. The findings of this research are summarized in weekly CaliforniaWaterBlog posts since 2011 (https://californiawaterblog.com). The posts provide support for the conclusions and solutions which Palmer’s book discusses so clearly. The book is a fairly easy read, despite the subject matter, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the future of California water and fish but especially to anyone interested in learning to how live with our floods and flooding.  

“Tomorrow will bring greater floods whether we plan for them or not. It is our choice to live …in their path or to seek higher ground (p269)”.

Further reading

Cox, C. (2023). The Trillion Gallon Question: California’s dams are vulnerable; and thousands of lives hang in the balance. How long does the state have to avert disaster? The New York Times Magazine, June 25, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/us/california-dams-extreme-weather.html

Dettinger, M.D. and B. L. Ingram. (2011). The Coming Megafloods. Scientific American, 308(1):64-71.

Garone, P. (2011). The Fall and Rise of the Wetlands of California’s Great Central Valley. Berkeley: UC Press.

Hanak, E., J. Lund, A. Dinar, B. Gray, R. Howitt, J. Mount, P. Moyle, and B. Thompson. (2011). Managing California’s Water: From Conflict to Reconciliation, Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco, CA, 500 pp.

Katz, J. V. E., C. Jeffres, J. L. Conrad, T. R. Sommer, J. Martinex, S. Brumbaugh, N. Corline, and P.B. Moyle. (2017). Floodplain farm fields provide novel rearing habitat for Chinook salmon. PLoS ONE 12(6): e0177409. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0177409.

Ingram, L. and F. Malamud-Roam. (2013). The West without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us about Tomorrow. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

Kelley, R. (1989). Battling the Inland Sea. Berkeley: University of California Press

Lund, J.R. (2012). Flood Management in California. Water 4: 157-169; doi:10.3390/w4010157, 2012.

Lund, J. R. (2023). Portfolio Solutions for Water Management https://californiawaterblog.com/2023/08/27/portfolio-solutions-for-water-flood-management/

Lund, J., D. Des Jardins, and K. Schaefer. (2023). Whiplash again- learning from wet (and dry) years. California WaterBlog.  https://californiawaterblog.com/2023/05/21/whiplash-again-learning-from-wet-and-dry-years/

Mount, J.F. (1995). California Rivers and Streams: the  Conflict between Fluvial Processes and Land Use.  Berkeley: University of California Press.

Moyle P. B., Crain P.K., and Whitener K. (2007). Patterns in the use of a restored California floodplain by native and alien fishes. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science 5(3): 1-27. http://repositories.cdlib.org/jmie/sfews/vol5/iss3/art1.

Moyle, P.B., J.  Lund, A. Rypel, C. Jeffres, and N. Pinter. (2023). Living with extreme floods in California. California WaterBlog . https://californiawaterblog.com/2023/07/30/living-with-extreme-floods-in-california/

Opperman, J.J, P.B. Moyle, E.W. Larsen, J.L. Florsheim, and A.D. Manfree. (2013). Floodplains: Processes, Ecosystems, and Services in Temperate Regions. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Palmer, T. (2010). Rivers of California: Nature’s Lifelines in the Golden State.  Heyday Books.

Pinter, N., J. Lund, and P. B. Moyle. (2019). The California water model: resilience through failure. Hydrological Processes 2019: 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.13447

Rypel, A.L., C.A. Parisek, J. Lund, A. Willis, P.B. Moyle, S. Yarnell, and K. Börk. (2023). What’s the Problem with Dead Beat Dams? https://californiawaterblog.com/2023/05/28/whats-the-dam-problem-with-deadbeat-dams

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How to incentivize better groundwater use

Posted on May 5, 2024 by Christine Parisek

by Ellen Bruno, Molly Bruce, and Katrina Jessoe

For more than a century, parts of California have been using groundwater faster than the resource can be replenished. As a result, aquifers are dwindling—a mounting challenge for irrigators, communities, and ecosystems. 

The negative impacts of over-extraction include subsidence, shallower wells running dry, and water-quality deterioration. If overextraction remains unaddressed, groundwater will become more expensive and less reliable. This could have rippling economic and social consequences. 

Strawberries, by Ellen Bruno.

California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) in 2014 (ten years ago), a law that aims to protect and restore our aquifers. Going forward, traditional management tools may not be sufficient. To comply with SGMA’s mandates, new and creative management strategies are needed.  

Financial incentives can help change practices that contribute to groundwater overuse. Innovative programs already operate successfully in California’s Pajaro Valley, a prime farming region. Our research shows that these incentives have effectively influenced behavior and are less costly than other management options. 

The Pajaro Valley is an agricultural region between the Coastal Range and the Pacific Ocean, south of Santa Cruz and north of Monterey. It is well-known for growing crops like strawberries, apples, and artichokes—crops that, in addition to being lucrative, are also water-intensive. Agriculture accounts for 90% of the Pajaro Valley’s freshwater demand and contributes to the basin’s groundwater deficit of 12,000 acre-feet/year.

Pajaro Valley is similar to many of the state’s agricultural regions; current and projected water demand outpaces what existing resources can supply. 

Butter Lettuce, by Ellen Bruno.

But this region is taking a different approach to managing groundwater. In other parts of the state, individual pumpers generally don’t pay more for their water than the energy costs to operate groundwater pumps. Unpriced groundwater can lead to more pumping. The Pajaro Valley, however, charges groundwater users extraction fees. These fees incentivize irrigators to flexibly steward groundwater resources.  

Groundwater fees can be leveraged in two ways to improve sustainability: they can be increased to disincentivize pumping, which reduces overall groundwater use, or pumping fees can be offset using a rebate for recharge, which increases overall groundwater supplies. 

The Pajaro Valley began levying pumping fees in 1994 to generate revenue that helped fund basin management activities. For many years, the local water agency charged all pumpers the same price per acre foot for extracting groundwater. But in 2010, the agency started charging a different price for those inside a special coastal zone that receives recycled water.

This change provided an opportunity to understand how farmers respond to price increases. A comparison of groundwater use between those inside and outside the special zone, relative to their use before the price split, shows how an increase in water fees decreased groundwater use. Our study found that fees were effective at reducing water use, especially when farmers were given enough time to adjust. 

The local agency has continued to innovate with new incentive programs. One such program—called Recharge Net Metering, or ReNeM—provides rebates on pumping fees to landowners who improve infiltration on their property. Similar to solar net metering for electricity, ReNeM subsidizes groundwater recharge projects on private property. ReNeM’s subsidy is performance based, meaning the more water a project infiltrates, the bigger the rebate.

Our study results indicate that the ReNeM program is cost-effective. At roughly $570 per acre-foot of water, ReNeM increases water supplies at lower cost than other viable management actions. This calculation included the annualized capital costs of the design and construction of recharge projects, operation and maintenance and opportunity costs of land used for recharge instead of farming.

Financial incentives are not a perfect solution. They won’t work everywhere, but the success in the Pajaro Valley shows promise for other groundwater-dependent agricultural regions. Our research shows that financial tools can help achieve groundwater sustainability goals in a cost-effective way. 

Under California’s state groundwater law, local groundwater sustainability agencies are legally required to bring basins into balance by 2040. If these agencies want to succeed, they will need to innovate. The Pajaro Valley’s story offers hope. Learning from the region will be essential as California and the broader Western U.S. endeavor to more sustainably manage water resources in the years to come. 

Further readings

Bruno, Ellen M., Katrina Jessoe, and W. Michael Hanemann. “The Dynamic Impacts of Pricing Groundwater.” Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, forthcoming. Draft available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2mx8q1td

Bruce, M., Sherman, L., Bruno, E., Fisher, A. T., & Kiparsky, M. (2023). “Recharge net metering (ReNeM) is a novel, cost-effective management strategy to incentivize groundwater recharge.” Nature Water, 1(10), 855-863.  Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-023-00141-1

More information on Recharge Net Metering can be found here: https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/clee/research/wheeler/renem/

Ellen Bruno is an assistant professor of Cooperative Extension in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Berkeley. Molly Bruce is a research fellow at the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment. Katrina Jessoe is an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis.

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Roaches of California: Hidden Biodiversity in a Native Minnow

Posted on April 28, 2024 by Christine Parisek

by Peter B. Moyle

RussianRiverRoach

*This is a repost of a blog originally published in 2019.

If you inspect small streams in northern California, including those that seem too small or warm for any fish, you will often see minnows swimming in the clear water. Chances are you are seeing a very distinctive native Californian, usually called California roach.  This fish is a complex of species that occurs as far north as Oregon tributaries to Goose Lake and is widespread in tributaries to the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, as well as in rivers along the coast from the Eel River to Monterey.

“California Roach” is the name originally given to some minnows collected in 1854 from the San Joaquin River.  When the great Stanford ichthyologists David Starr Jordan and Barton Warren Evermann put these fish into their grand monograph Fishes of North and Middle America, they decided it looked like the roach (Rutilus rutilus), a common minnow in England and Europe.  They then gave it the scientific name Rutilus symmetricus.  While the relationship to European roach was dismissed by John O. Snyder in 1913, the unfortunate common name of “roach” stuck.  Snyder placed California Roach in its own genus, Hesperoleucus, and divided it into six species, based on body shape and counts of fin rays and scales (see Table).  His species were also based on the isolation of their home waters from other watersheds, which would prevent interbreeding.

Because roaches are small inconspicuous fishes, little formal attention was paid to their taxonomy (or status).  By the 1950s, there seemed to be a general consensus that Snyder’s species were at best subspecies and the California roach was back to one species.  This was reflected in the classification presented in my 2002 book, Inland Fishes of California, although the species was divided into eight subspecies.   Then, Andres Aquilar and Joe Jones (2009) looked at populations that were part of this ‘species complex’ using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA. Their analysis indicated that two of Snyder’s species, northern roach and Gualala roach, were strongly supported as ‘good’ species.  The other six subspecies I listed in 2002 were at least supported as distinct genetic units by their analysis.

To clarify the relationships among the species more firmly, new techniques in genomics were brought to play.  This effort was led by Jason Baumsteiger, a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Watershed Sciences and in the genomics laboratory of Mike Miller.  He performed restriction-site associated DNA (RAD) sequencing on roach samples collected throughout California to discover and genotype thousands of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) (see Baumsteiger et al.  2017). This detailed examination of the genomes of roaches from throughout their range allowed determination of how much each population had diverged from other populations.  Among other things, it allowed for ‘rules’ to determine which populations were species, subspecies, or distinct population segments.

Distinct population segment (DPS) designations are based on the use of DPS designations under the national Endangered Species Act; they are isolated populations that are distinctive, but not quite different enough so to be called species or subspecies. DPS designations are widely used for determining whether or not salmon and steelhead populations are eligible for protection under the ESA.

The application of genomics to the taxonomic relationships of roach populations (Baumsteiger and Moyle 2019) resulted in our recognition of five species, four subspecies, and 5 distinct population segments (Table 1). The five species each have distinctive, interesting features.

The California roach is the most widespread species, historically found in streams throughout the Central Valley, with many opportunities for adaptation to local conditions, such as those found in the Kaweah River (hence the Kaweah roach DPS). It appears to be losing these locally-adapted populations rapidly, however, as they become increasingly isolated by dams and damage to streams, and by invasions of their small stream refuges by green sunfish and other non-native predators.

The Clear Lake roach is a bit of mystery because it a perfect hybrid between coastal roach and California roach.  This fits the geologic history of the region, which has been alternately connected to the Russian River and to the Sacramento River. Presumably representatives from both watersheds made it into the Clear Lake basin at times and hybridized.  The hybrid was apparently superior to either parent species in its ability to persist in streams tributary to Clear Lake.  Today, the Clear Lake roach is more isolated than ever, because the lake is full of non-native predatory fishes.

Hybridization also has led to the development of new species in the northern roach.  This roach inhabits small streams and springs of the upper Pit River basin and looks like other roach species.  So we were surprised when the genomics study showed that about 80% of the genome was like that of the hitch, a related species in a different genus (Lavinia exilicauda).  This seems to have been from an ancient hybridization, perhaps when Sacramento Valley fishes invaded the Pit River region thousands of years ago. Curiously, we also found that the roach-like fish abundant in Hetch-Hetchy Reservoir, on the upper Tuolumne River, also are hitch-roach hybrids even though they were introduced into the reservoir by persons unknown.

The southern coastal roach is also known to hybridize with hitch, where the two species occur together naturally, but these hybrids seem unimportant to the populations of both species. The presence of subspecies and DPSs in the coastal roach distribution reflects the isolation of coastal watersheds from one another with enough connections in the past to keep populations from differentiating enough to be labeled species.  This also makes the Gualala roach a bit of an anomaly, given that watersheds on both sides of the Gualala River contain coastal roach.   The northern coastal roach also shows how rapidly a species can spread when introduced into new watershed, in this case the Eel River. These roach, probably introduced in the 1960s, now occupy most of the accessible habitat in the Eel, one of California’s largest watersheds; the genomic study indicates that they came from fish in the Russian River roach DPS, just to the south, so were pre-adapted for conditions in the Eel River.

This study of small fishes demonstrates again the high endemism in fishes that are adapted to the special, often harsh, conditions in California streams.  This surprising diversity is another example of what makes California special and needing of a well-supported, state-wide conservation strategy. The roach species complex is also good example of hidden biodiversity revealed by new genetic techniques.  Modern genomics can support conventional taxonomic methods to designate species, subspecies, and DPSs and should improve our ability to conserve California’s richness of fishes.

NorthernRoach

Northern roach. Photo by Stewart Reid

Common name Scientific name Snyder 1913 Moyle 2002 Notes
California Roach H. symmetricus H. symmetricus H. symmetricus Name applied to all roach by Moyle 2002 and others
Red Hills Roach H. s. serpentinus – H. s. subsp. Serpentine endemic; Tuolumne County
Central California Roach H. s. symmetricus H. symmetricus H. s. symmetricus Tributaries to Central Valley
Kaweah  Roach H. s. symmetricus – H. s. symmetricus DPS, Kaweah River
Clear Lake Roach H. symmetricus x venustus – H. s. subsp. Hybrid that behaves like a full species; tribs. to Clear Lake
Coastal Roach H. venustus – – Originally multiple species/subspecies
Northern Coastal  Roach H. venustus navarroensis – – Introduced into Eel River.
Russian River Roach H. venustus navarroensis – Lumped with Clear Lake Roach DPS, introduced into Eel River
Navarro Roach H. venustus navarroensis H. navarroensis H. s. navarroensis DPS, Navarro R.
Southern Coastal Roach H. venustus subditus – –
Tomales Roach H. venustus subditus – H. s. subsp. DPS, Tomales Bay streams
Monterey Roach H. venustus subditus H. subditus H. s. subditus DPS, Salinas-Pajaro watersheds
Northern Roach H. mitrulus H. mitrulus H. s. mitrulus Pit River; originated as hybrid with Hitch.
Gualala Roach H. parvipinnis H. parvipinnis H. s.  parvipinnis Gualala River

Further readings

Baumsteiger, J. and P. B. Moyle. 2019. A reappraisal of the California Roach/Hitch (Cypriniformes, Cyprinidae, Hesperoleucus/Lavinia) species complex. Zootaxa 4543 (2): 2221-240. https://www.mapress.com/j/zt/article/view/zootaxa.4543.2.3  (available as open-access download)

Baumsteiger, J., P. B. Moyle, A. Aguilar, S. M. O’Rourke, and M. R. Miller. 2017. Genomics clarifies taxonomic boundaries in a difficult species complex. PLoS ONE 12(12): e0189417. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0189417 (available as open access download)

Moyle, P.B. 2002. Inland Fishes of California.  University of California Press, Berkeley.

Peter B. Moyle is a UC Davis Professor Emeritus of fish biology and an associate director of the Center for Watershed Sciences.

ClassicRoachHabitat2014

Classic California roach habitat.  Dye Creek, Tehama County, July 2014

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Support our Students and Engagement at the Center for Watershed Sciences

Posted on April 19, 2024 by UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences

California WaterBlog is a long-running outreach project from the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, a research center dedicated to interdisciplinary study of water challenges, particularly in California. We focus on environmentally and economically sustainable solutions for managing rivers, lakes, groundwater, and estuaries. This week, for UC Davis Give Day (April 19-20) we’re sharing a little about the Center and the work we do. I’m Karrigan Bork, the Center’s Interim Director, helping out while Director Andrew Rypel is on sabbatical, and I’ll be your guide for this brief tour through the “Shed”. If you would like to donate to help the Center continue important work, I’ve shared our giving link below.  

Students sampling the Tuolumne River as part of an Ecogeomorphology trip.

The Center for Watershed Sciences has always been about moving beyond single-issue and single-species approaches to water management.  Geologist Jeffrey Mount and fish biologist Peter Moyle founded the Center in 1998, and it really got going with the addition of agricultural economist Richard Howitt, civil and environmental engineer Jay Lund, and hydrologist Thomas Harter. We remain a place where biologists, geologists, hydrologists, engineers, economists, legal scholars and others work together to help understand and solve California’s complex water problems.

Today, the Center is home to a team of Professional Researchers who pursue projects to fund their own labs at the Shed, employing teams of students, post docs, and specialists to conduct a wide array impactful research. We also offer physical, intellectual, and institutional space for faculty in various departments across campus who are pursuing interdisciplinary work within UC Davis, across the UC system, and with other research organizations around the world. The Center’s work is designed to be problem-focused and immediately relevant, pointing to better ways to manage water, species, and habitat in California and beyond. Our research is nonpartisan and focused on good science, not easy answers.

CWS specialists pull an otter trawl.
PC Mette Lampcov / The Guardian
Picking through aquatic vegetation pulled up in an otter trawl. PC Mette Lampcov / The Guardian

The Center is a productive place; in 2022-2023, Center-affiliated research produced almost 60 publications, mostly in peer reviewed journals, but also in books and law reviews. We’ve pioneered groundbreaking work on salmonid floodplain use, thiamine deficiency as a major cause of Central Valley salmon mortality, minimum flow protections, process-based meadow restoration techniques, and tracking salmon habitat use through isotopes in their otoliths and eyeballs. We also conduct a monthly sampling program for fish and invertebrates that has been going on for more than three decades! It’s really incredible research that informs management decisions. 

I’d like to highlight just a few areas of ongoing work at the Center:

See also our research webpage.

Rafting down the Tuolumne River for an Ecogeomorphology class experiential learning expedition.

The Center is very active in education and outreach, through UC Davis classes like Ecogeomorphology and engagement with high school, junior high, and elementary schools like salmon in the classroom as well as our work to bring environmental education into underserved schools. Our DEI committee works to help us live our philosophy of “providing a welcoming and supportive environment for all people.”

We receive funding from a diverse portfolio of sources, including foundations, public agencies, and conservation groups. Most work is funded by grants for particular projects, which helps the Center to do really interesting and significant work, but which generally doesn’t fund some basic and more innovative and pioneering needs. It can also be difficult to fund research and engagement travel for graduate students, vital for developing engaged scientists. Funding educational opportunities like our famous Ecogeomorphology class is always a challenge, especially for students of limited financial means. 

A graduate student sorts through zooplankton samples. PC Caroline Newell.

Water and environmental innovation in California requires gifts from individuals and foundations, beyond more staid and traditional agency-funded research. Some of our biggest historic contributions to California water and ecosystem management have come from such funding, seeding new ideas and extending applications from other work. If you’re excited about the Center’s work, getting students and academics engaged in California’s water and environmental problems, and if you enjoy this blog, we hope you’ll donate in support of our mission. The link below allows donations directly to the Center for Watershed Sciences.

Please give and encourage others to give!

https://give.ucdavis.edu/WATR/CWSGENF

https://giveday.ucdavis.edu/giving-day/85663/donate?des=618151&dept=85734
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Mornings at the Duck Pond

Posted on April 14, 2024 by Andrew Rypel

By Andrew L. Rypel

Fig. 1. Boardwalk leading to Julie Partansky Pond, Davis, CA. March 2024.

Each morning is similar, but different. As we approach the pond on the wooden catwalk, you can hear the birds calling, eventually you start to smell the freshness of the ecosystem, the glitters and splashing ahead gives some indication of bird activity on the water. Sometimes an alligator lizard scoots past along the floorwork – occasionally even two. Steam rises from my coffee cup, to varying degrees, depending on how quickly we got out the door. And then there are my three kids, also ever changing. Each day, one to three are in-tow, usually chatting it up about geology, Egypt, space, or the day’s most pressing sports news.

And so it goes on most mornings, ideally when the mist is still fresh or the winter fog lingering, the Rypel family ventures to the “the duck pond” aka Julie Partansky Pond in north Davis. The routine is partly about draining excess energy from the young kids while enjoying time with them. Yet I’ve also come to deeply value the chance to just be in nature every day, even if it’s fleetingly brief. Accomplishing that can be difficult with young kids, perhaps even more so inside the heavily developed northern California metroplex. On most days though, the fastest and most efficient escape, is to the pond.

The wildlife is better than one might think (Fig. 2). Because the pond goes bone dry in the summer, the fish are not usually the star of the show, although there are some seasonal aquatic biota (turtles, dragonflies, Sierra chorus frogs, even zooplankton). It is difficult for this fish professor to admit, but I’ve come to take great comfort in getting to know and learn the birds here. The ducks and Canadian geese are the regulars, but there have been some special visitors from time to time. A swamp sparrow last winter caused much ruckus among the birders. We watched that little bird for a solid week – its tiny legs hopping amongst the sticks and snags on the water’s edge. I’ve seen hooded mergansers, likely transients from the nearby Sacramento River. There are almost always woodpeckers and scrub jays present. At nighttime, there are owls. Last year, I encountered a coyote (young male of course) several times over the course of a month. The morning of writing this, I smelt and finally spotted a skunk lumbering through the shrubbery.

Fig. 2. Sampler of wildlife and views from Partansky Pond, Davis, CA.

The somewhat abundant wildlife here is yet another example of the power of water and wetlands to activate nature in a semi-arid region like California. During the dry season, when there is little water, there are also far fewer birds or wildlife. When it floods in the fall, the whole ecosystem comes alive. Seeing this is a daily reminder that we are on the right track when thinking about flooding wetlands and rice fields for birds and fish, and hopefully also snakes, turtles, bats, beavers, and bugs. It is just one small pond in the middle of a suburban community, but I can’t help think what many more of these ponds might do for our struggling wildlife communities. And of course, the reverse is also true – wetland losses continue to threaten biodiversity at all scales.

It is also incredible how rapidly the pond can (to use a Calvin and Hobbs term) transmogrify me back to my childhood, and to my Dad. Dad was a lifelong duck hunter and a huge supporter of Ducks Unlimited. Though he never lived in California, he was a fierce defender of wetlands, and understood the importance of conserving these habitats. And while he has been gone for 20 years now, each morning, when I see ducks, invariably I think of him. I can almost immediately smell the wax that he used on the back porch at “the cabin” to clean ducks in the fall. And I can feel the tippyness of the skift as we sat, father and son, motionless in a bed of semi-frozen cattails at dawn in October. It’s amazing how nature and water can so quickly re-animate these old and lucid memories.

Every day is similar, but different in nature. Something about experiencing that daily constitution must be good for the human condition. Thus, it is with astonishment that we so openly cede our rights to recover and be with nature, often to economic forces that benefit just the few. Even still, it is observable how resilient nature can be in its ability to bounce back once given a chance. The pond seems to teach this lesson every morning. It also makes me consider daily those who don’t have access to any nature – people whose lives are dominated by concrete, war, or are without time to slow down and think. Everyone should have public access to natural places. On the best mornings, I can see how novel ecosystems like these could propagate, and create interesting new landscapes where human structures blend into natural ones that are well-managed. I think of the great possibilities of new habitat for fish and wildlife within our idiosyncratic human cities. On other mornings, I just hope that the dew will last a little while longer, and that the kids refrain from screaming long enough to absorb a little more. 

Andrew Rypel is a Professor and the Peter B. Moyle and California Trout Chair of coldwater fish ecology at the University of California, Davis. He is a faculty member in the Department of Wildlife, Fish & Conservation Biology and Director of the Center for Watershed Sciences. 

Fig. 3. Author at Julie Partansky Pond, the week of writing this, March 2024.

Further reading

Alagona, P.S. 2022. The Accidental Ecosystem. University of California Press.

Austin, C. 2014. Reconciling ecosystem and economy. https://californiawaterblog.com/2014/07/23/reconciling-ecosystem-and-economy/

Jacinto, E., N.A. Fangue, D.E. Cocherell, J.D. Kiernan, P.B. Moyle, and A.L. Rypel. 2023. Putah Creek’s rebirth: a model for other degraded streams? https://californiawaterblog.com/2023/07/08/putah-creeks-rebirth-a-model-for-reconciling-other-degraded-streams/

Rypel, A.L. 2020. Field courses help young people see the real world. https://californiawaterblog.com/2020/02/14/field-courses-help-young-people-see-the-real-world/

Rypel, A.L. 2022. Being patient and persistent with nature. https://californiawaterblog.com/2022/10/16/being-patient-and-persistent-with-nature/

Rypel, A.L. 2023. Facing the dragon: California’s nasty ecological debts. https://californiawaterblog.com/2023/06/11/facing-the-dragon-californias-nasty-ecological-debts/

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Spinning Salmon in the Classroom

Posted on April 7, 2024 by jaylund

by Abigail Ward and Peggy Harte

Salmon face many stressors that significantly reduce their survival. Persistent challenges include habitat degradation, predation, pollution, and climate change that threaten already at-risk populations. Conservation efforts in California engage with the complexity of these stressors, yet in recent years, a new threat has emerged to salmon restoration in the Central Valley. The absence of a seemingly inconspicuous nutrient, vitamin B1 or thiamine, has been impeding restoration. The gravity of this situation becomes apparent when considering the analogous struggles of salmon populations in the Baltic Sea and Great Lakes regions, emphasizing the global ramifications of this emerging threat (Balk et al., 2016).  

Thiamine deficiency complex (TDC) was first documented in California salmon in 2020 when hatcheries in the Central Valley began noticing apparent lethargy, corkscrew swimming, and high mortality rates in their juvenile Chinook (Mantua et al., 2021). As researchers from UC Davis, NOAA, CDFW, and beyond sought to understand the causes and impacts of this vitamin deficiency, we saw an opportunity to engage youth in authentic scientific research. 

In fall 2021 the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences began collaborating with the Center for Community and Citizen Science (CCCS) to launch our Spinning Salmon in the Classroom program, where high school students in Glenn, Tehama, and Colusa counties joined a 50+ member research team working to understand how TDC affects California’s Central Valley salmon. This program has since expanded to five counties, engaging over 1,800 high school students and their teachers. This collaboration has led to many educational and scientific opportunities, allowing students to participate in collecting high quality data for scientific studies, teachers to receive professional development support, and promoting direct interaction between students and university and agency scientists. 

Building the Program

As researchers across the United States investigated the emergence of thiamine deficiency in California, a team from the Center for Watershed Sciences and Center for Community and Citizen Science at UC Davis, NOAA Fisheries, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, developed an observation protocol and lesson sequence for the CDFW Classroom Aquarium Education Program. This program was developed to help gather data on thiamine deficiency during early salmon life stages. Students’ data is used to quantify thiamine dependent early life stage mortality to calculate the concentration responsible for acute mortality in California Chinook salmon. Data submitted by students in this program is vital to understanding the effective concentration (EC50) of thiamine needed for fall run juvenile Chinook in the Central Valley, information not previously known (Fig. 1). 

Figure 1. (A) Distribution of thiamine concentrations in families of eggs raised by classrooms in 2021 and 2022, with the percent survival of fry from each family group color coded. (B) A conceptual dose-response relating concentration of thiamine to survival of fry. Dashed line shows EC-50 value, i.e., concentration where survival is at 50%. Data from subplot A will be used with other data to fit a dose-response curve for thiamine-dependent fry survival in the Central Valley.

Each participating classroom receives an aquarium and 30-35 fall run Chinook salmon eggs from Feather River hatchery untreated with thiamine supplementation. The classrooms then submit regular observations on mortality and behavior related to the symptomatic expression of TDC as the fish develop (Fig. 2). This mirrors thiamine-dependent mortality experiments at UC Davis, attempting to understand this same concept for our other salmon runs in the Central Valley. Throughout the program, students learn about the scientific method, data collection, and experimental design as they engage with the scientific practices aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). In addition to lessons in the program, students receive hands-on learning experiences through field trips, including the final release of the fish into the local watershed at the end of the program (Fig. 3). 

Figure 2. Tanks are set up in classrooms for students to record weekly observations about mortality, behavior, and water quality.
Figure 3. Students make observations about the salmon and record environmental conditions before releasing them back into the river.

Engagement with Researchers

After the pilot year of this program, we realized the great benefits of connecting students to scientific researchers on our team. Introducing students to a scientific community helped them realize the importance of interdisciplinary science and allowed them to ask questions and receive real time answers. Their questions helped show that science is not done alone when answers often had to be given by several researchers, each with a different area of expertise. While participating in this program, students and teachers communicate with researchers through email Q&A, classroom visits, and field trips (Fig. 3 & 3). Each classroom is assigned a specific researcher with applicable backgrounds and expertise pertaining to their taught subjects. This allows for direct and open communication while also removing barriers between the classroom and researchers. The benefits of engagement often go both ways, with students’ insightful questions sparking new lines of scientific inquiry for researchers. 

Figure 4. Rachel Johnson, NOAA Southwest Fisheries fisheries biologist and UC Davis affiliate, leads a field trip as each classroom gets connected to a researcher.

A Focus on Underserved Youth

During the pilot year, classrooms were recruited from College Opportunity Program GEAR UP, servicing first generation college bound students. In years 2-3 the program expanded to additional counties to engage students in continuation high schools, juvenile halls and deaf-hard of hearing programs. Resources for classroom engagement (https://sites.google.com/ucdavis.edu/salmonintheclassroomresources/home) centered on creating access for students often underserved by participatory science programs. We aim to explore ways professional development for educators and youth education programming could improve STEM learning and deepen students’ exploration of a range of college and career paths.

Community and Citizen Science focuses on how people who wouldn’t traditionally qualify as “scientists” are taking up tools of science to address environmental problems, locally, regionally, and globally. Traditional power structures in science need to be disrupted to include more voices, more sources of knowledge, more ways of thinking about environmental problems, no more so than youth. CCCS has recruited teachers working with student populations who are often the least likely to have had authentic environmental stewardship programming and have worked over the last year to refine and revise student and teacher supports for these populations. We built in additional opportunities for student voice to be brought to the forefront by designing resources and opportunities for outreach. Engaging under-resourced students and systems in our region, this program focused on lessons using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to support students as they begin to see themselves as having power to advocate within their own community.

Next Steps

Year three of our Spinning Salmon in the Classroom program was completed at the end of February, with over 370 student observations and 120 student questions submitted. We seek to expand this program to new schools and classrooms forming novel and exciting ways of engagement and inclusion. The data collected by these students has given our research team a new understanding of thiamine dependent mortality in California Chinook and their data will soon be published within our juvenile mortality model in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) (Fig. 1). We are excited for the future of this program and to learn more of how engagement in scientific research can benefit students in the Central Valley. 

Author affiliations: Abigail Ward, Assistant Specialist, UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences; Peggy Harte, M.Ed., Youth Education Program Manager, UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science

Further Readings

Balk, L., Hägerroth, PÅ., Gustavsson, H. et al. Widespread episodic thiamine deficiency in Northern Hemisphere wildlife. Sci Rep 6, 38821 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep38821

Mantua, N., R. Johnson, J. Field, S. Lindley, T. Williams, A. Todgham, N. Fangue, C. Jeffres, H. Bell, D. Cocherell, J. Rinchard, D. Tillitt, B. Finney, D. Honeyfield, T. Lipscomb, S. Foott, K. Kwak, M. Adkison, B. Kormos, S. Litvin, and I. Ruiz-Cooley.  2021.  Mechanisms, impacts, and mitigation for thiamine deficiency and early life stage mortality in California’s Central Valley Chinook salmon.  N. Pac. Anadr. Fish Comm. Tech. Rep. 17: 92–93.  https://doi.org/10.23849/npafctr17/92.93.

UC Davis School of Education Blog Posts: https://education.ucdavis.edu/ccs-salmon-classroom

https://education.ucdavis.edu/blog-entry/project-update-connecting-classroom-content-spinning-salmon-field-trips

Video of Carson Jeffres Describing the Program:

KCRA Broadcast: https://www.kcra.com/article/solano-county-spinning-salmon-high-schoolers-help/42760396

Solano County Post: https://www.solanocoe.net/Educational-Services/Curriculum–Instruction/Environmental-Education/Spinning-Salmon-Citizen-Science

Posted in Biology, Conservation, education, Fish, Restoration, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Manifesting Successful Aquatic Restoration

Posted on April 1, 2024 by UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences

by E.J. Baybe-Mahn

Successful aquatic restoration traditionally comes from extensive research and knowledge of the system, collaboration among stakeholders, and thorough planning. But what if there was another way to ensure restorations are creating the results we want to see? With increasing effects of climate change, urbanization, and other anthropogenic factors, aquatic organisms, especially ones that are endangered, need successful restorations more than ever to aid in their survival. One Ph.D. student at UC Davis, Madeline Eugenia Fallowfield— or Madge, says she’s studying the “power of positive thinking” to improve the success of aquatic restoration projects. 

“Well researched work plans and highly detailed designs that include the input of many stakeholders isn’t enough anymore. We need positive thoughts and wishful thinking.” Madge says. “It’s really upsetting to sit in on a restoration planning meeting and not see a single vision board.” But that’s something Madge is hoping to change with her dissertation based on novel approaches to aquatic restoration.

Figure 1 – Madge’s vision board for successful delta smelt habitat restoration.

Madge first became interested in the “power of positive thinking” after watching daytime television. “I was 10 years old and thought it was the greatest discovery ever,” Madge reminisces. Since then, Madge has been using the “power of positive thinking” to navigate life. “There can be a lot of pessimism around the state of our environment and ongoing efforts to restore habitat, and that’s when it occurred to me that I should bring the “power of positive thinking” to my graduate studies on restoration efforts,” she states.

Part of Madge’s study is to compare restoration projects that utilize the “power of positive thinking” against those that don’t. She expects to see very clear results between the two groups. Restoration designs that harness this power will employ several tactics to manifest success. Madge states the first step is to start each planning meeting with thirty minutes of thought work. “We’ll all sit in the room, or over video call, together and think really, really hard about how much we want this to work.” Madge goes on to explain that a main tenet of the “power of positive thinking” is that our thoughts create real energy and that energy travels out into the universe and collects and eventually manifests into reality. Madge states that each session should focus on a different aspect of the restoration that needs to be successful. 

Another important aspect is the use of vision boards to think about what needs to be manifested. “Take my delta smelt vision board for the Lookout Slough Restoration in the Delta for example.” Madge explains, “I’m putting all the things delta smelt would need to be successful in hopes of manifesting it. It’s got pictures of ice for cool water, some pictures of dirty water for increased turbidity, and lots of pictures of zooplankton so they have plenty of food. It’s like fifty-percent zooplankton on that board, I’m serious about that part.” Madge recommends vision boards with rushing water, gravel, and the molecule thiamine for restoration designed for Chinook salmon. For sturgeon restoration, Madge says images of dam removal and cool water are ideal. 

Madge wants to take things even further with the next chapter of her study. “We also need to work on the fish,” she says. “They also have to believe that things are going to be okay.” Madge recommends that fish in the restorations be spoken words of affirmation by biologists but adds that motivational podcasts on loop can work if people aren’t around all the time. Madge explains that just like our thoughts, our words create energy, and we can pass that energy onto the fish. Madge expects increased growth rates and reduced mortality for fish in treated restorations. “We supplement vital nutrients to fish with deficiencies, I don’t see how this is any different,” Madge says.   

While she has a positive outlook on her studies, not everyone is receptive of Madge’s manifestation work. She claims people accuse of her peddling pseudoscience and wasting precious resources like grant funding, but Madge counters that at least she’s trying everything possible to improve restoration efforts. “Sometimes I’ll just sit at restoration sites and spend hours working to manifest successful restoration. It can be really hard sitting in the sun for all day, but that’s how dedicated I am.”   

                                                             

Figure 2 – Ph.D. student Madge in the field manifesting.

Suggested Reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_thinking

Posted in April Fools' Day | Tagged | 1 Comment

California’s March Water Madness

Posted on March 24, 2024 by jaylund

by Jay Lund

March is usually the last month in California’s mostly unpredictable wet season.  A dry March can make a promising water year disappointing.  A very wet March can make a potentially critically dry year be only mildly dry, like the “Miracle March” of 1991 (with three times average March precipitation). 

Unlike basketball, nobody prevails in California’s annual March Water Madness.  The outcome is usually a combination, rather than unmitigated win or loss.  Below is a bracket for March 2024, where the outcome for the water year consolidates with time, with diminishing room for surprises.

Marches past and present

The distribution of March precipitation for northern California appears below. It averages about 6 inches per year and ranges from 0.5 inches (1923) to 23 inches (1995), big enough for floods.  The “Miracle March” of 1991, the 4th year of drought, was only 18 inches, but three times average March precipitation.  Last year (2023), was drier in northern California than in the San Joaquin Valley, but had 17 inches in March.  2017, the wettest water year on record for norther California, had only 17 inches precipitation in March.

Historically, there is only a 5% correlation between February and March precipitation, so we go into March as the last wet month hoping for the best, but not very confident of any predictions.  Beware the guides of March.

March this year

We are long enough into March to see that this March’s precipitation is unusually average, about 6 inches.  And for northern California, water year precipitation is also about average, with a little better than average snowpack.  The San Joaquin Valley is about 80% of average precipitation, with snowpack doing a little better, but slightly less than average, so far.  Southern California has had a wet water year, with floods.  California is too big and diverse to usually experience the same water year.

For 2024, no outcome has prevailed statewide.  We have outcomes that are average, a bit wetter than average, and a bit drier than average.  This is the hand we have been delt, which fortunately also included excellent reservoir storage left over from last year.

The major state and federal water projects announced an increase in allocations this week, doubtlessly satisfying to those with higher-priority contracts and disappointing those with lower-priority contracts. 

Another wet season is coming to an end.

Further reading

Precipitation:

Northern Sierras: https://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=PLOT_ESI.pdf

San Joaquin Basin: https://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=PLOT_FSI.pdf

Tulare Basin: https://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=PLOT_TSI.pdf

Snowpack: https://cdec.water.ca.gov/snowapp/sweq.action

Reservoir storage: https://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=RESSW

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