Green water – the rainwater available to plants in the soil – is indispensable for life on and below the land. But in a new study, we found that widespread pressure on this resource has crossed a critical limit. By Arne Tobian, Stockholm University; Dieter Gerten, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and Lan Wang […]
A record run of wild spring run Chinook salmon turned into a disaster when 91% of the adult fish died before spawning during 2021’s spring Chinook salmon run on Butte Creek, a Sacramento River tributary, according to a CDFW monitoring report. By Dan Bacher The number of adult spring-run Chinook salmon (SRCS) that died before spawning […]
“Are you going to run out of water?” is the first question people ask when they find out I’m from Arizona. The answer is that some people already have, others soon may and it’s going to get much worse without dramatic changes. Robert Glennon, University of Arizona The Conversation Unsustainable water practices, drought and climate […]
Billions of people around the world rely on the ocean for food, income and cultural identity. But climate change, overfishing and habitat destruction are unraveling ocean ecosystems. By Kirsten Grorud-Colvert, Oregon State University The Conversation As a marine ecologist, I study ways to improve ocean conservation and management by protecting key areas of the ocean. […]
Farmers are coping with a fertilizer crisis brought on by soaring fossil fuel prices and industry consolidation. The price of synthetic fertilizer has more than doubled since 2021, causing great stress in farm country. This crunch is particularly tough on those who grow corn, which accounts for half of U.S. nitrogen fertilizer use. Kathleen Merrigan, […]
Welcome to another week, another episode of the EcoRight Speaks, this time featuring Dale Strickler, an agronomist for Green Cover Seed, a Kansas rancher, and author of the book The Drought Resilient Farm. The Drought Resilient Farm is a compilation of techniques for increasing the ability of soil to capture more rainfall, hold more moisture, and increase the […]
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has just published their monitoring report on 2021’s spring Chinook salmon run on Butte Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River in Northern California. By Dan Bacher The number of adult spring-run Chinooks that perished before spawning is worse than the preliminary estimate by the CDFW in October 2021, when the CDFW […]
It’s springtime in California, and bees are emerging to feast on flowering fields – acres upon acres of cultivated almonds, oranges and other fruits and nuts that bloom all at once for just a few weeks. Farmers raise these lucrative crops in monoculture fields, each planted with neat, straight rows of a single type of […]
Early on a cool June morning, heavy dew lies on the grass of rolling farm country somewhere in Tennessee, or Missouri, or Pennsylvania. Small patches of fog hang in low lying pockets of these fields. In the distance, hardworking farmers are starting their day. Farm equipment clangs, tractors roar to life and voices lining out […]
Press Release from the Karuk Tribe, Yurok Tribe • Hoopa Valley Tribe • Swiftwater Films: Bring the Salmon Home Tells Story 20 years in the making By Dan Bacher Klamath River Basin (Calif. and Ore.) – Bring the Salmon Home is a new short documentary by Swiftwater Films. The film chronicles Klamath River tribal communities’ 320-mile relay run from the redwood-shrouded […]
Limiting global warming to 1.5C or 2C would mean “rapid and deep” emissions reductions in “all sectors” of the global economy, says the latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Instead, emissions have continued to rise – albeit at a slowing rate – and it will be “impossible” to stay below 1.5C with “no or […]
As the record drought in California and the West continues and the Sacramento River watershed already begins to see die-offs of endangered Chinook salmon, Governor Gavin Newsom on March 29 announced that state, federal and local water leaders had reached “broad agreement” on a package of controversial voluntary agreements purported to provide additional water flows and new habitat […]
The fall of 2021 was a good season for adult Chinook salmon swimming up Auburn Ravine to spawn in the foothills east of downtown Lincoln, California, according to an update from Friends of Auburn Ravine. By Dan Bacher ”Over 200 large fall-run chinook salmon, some over 43 inches long, made the trip. The thousands of eggs […]
Even before the Russian army crossed into Ukraine, food prices had been on the rise for the past year. But the world has seen large jumps in the cost of food over the the last two months. By Alfons Weersink, University of Guelph and Michael von Massow, University of Guelph The Conversation Globally, food is […]
Low numbers of adult fall-run Chinook salmon returned to spawn in the Sacramento River in 2021, but the ocean forecast abundance for fall Chinooks is better than last year, according to federal and state scientists at the annual Salmon Information meeting held virtually on March 2. By Dan Bacher The 2022 ocean abundance projection for Sacramento River fall […]