Author: tgrantham

A new paper from our research group, led by graduate student Brian Kastl, was recently published in Ecosphere, Migration in drought: Receding streams contract the seaward migration window of endangered salmon. The study explores how the migration of juvenile coho salmon from tributaries in the Russian River in springtime is affected by streamflow and temperature. We found that low seasonal streamflow and warm temperatures associated with drought resulted in an earlier and contracted migration of coho salmon smolts from the system. The research suggests that protecting environmental flows by limiting surface water diversions and reducing groundwater withdrawals could help expand the outmigration window for coho salmon smolts and mitigate the effects of drought in this system and in other salmon-bearing streams projected to experience more severe droughts under climate change.

The study was also covered in a story in the San Francisco Chronicle, “California drought poses more obstacles to young Russian River coho salmon.

Wildfires are an increasing threat to people’s lives, property and livelihoods, especially in rural California communities. Cannabis, one of California’s most lucrative commercial crops, may be at a higher risk of loss from wildfire because it is mostly confined to being grown in rural areas, according to our new article led by Chris Dillis and published in Ecosphere. Check out the paper and UC press release!

PhD candidate Hana Moidu explores this question in her article on California WaterBlog and a recent paper published in Water Resources Research! And an amazing graphical summary of her study is provided here:

We recently published a series of papers in a Special Issue of Frontiers in Environmental Science focused on “Environmental Flows in an Uncertain Future.” Stein et al. (2022) provide an overview of the California Environmental Flows Framework (CEFF). Grantham et al. (2022) describe the modeling approach to predict functional flows in California streams and inform development of environmental flow recommendations under CEFF. And Yarnell et al. (2022) present case studies for how CEFF can be applied to groundwater-influenced stream ecosystems. More to come!

Chris Dillis, a postdoctoral researcher in our lab and affiliate of the Berkeley Cannabis Research Center, led a study documenting how the geography of legal cannabis market is changing in California. The study suggests that the cannabis industry is following two divergent paths: one in which smaller farms in the traditional epicenter of illicit production of northern California enter the legal market and another in which larger, new farms become established in agricultural lands that have previously not grown cannabis, especially on the central coast. Read more here!

A new study led by Lise Comte shows how the establishment and spread of non-native fish species is explained by introductions by people coupled with alteration in flow variability and seasonality. Read more here!

In the face of climate change, biodiversity loss and conflict over water, California urgently needs to rethink how it manages water for the environment. Read our recent blog in CalMatters.

Peter Moyle (UC Davis), Jeneatte Howard (The Nature Conservancy), and Ted Grantham argue that now is the time to consider the importance of biodiversity protection in an article on the CaliforniaWaterBlog.

The latest issue of Breakthroughs, the Magazine of the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley, highlights the work of Assistant Cooperative Extension Specialists Dan Sanchez, Ellen Bruno, and Ted Grantham. Read the story here.