Why Join the Naturalists?

We can’t survive without access to the fresh air, water, food, shelter, spiritual enrichment, aesthetics, personal restoration, and nature’s other essentials that allow us to celebrate life on this third planet from the sun. Our very physical and mental health depend on nature. But our popular cultures have detached us from Earth’s natural systems and cycles, the very forces and processes that rule our world, resulting in perilous dysfunctions that even AI cannot treat or resolve. And have you checked the news lately? Our nature deficit disorders are having tragic consequences that threaten humans, millions of other species, and the very future of our planet.

The UC California Naturalist statewide natural resource education and service program is coming to the rescue! This extraordinary program fosters “a diverse community of naturalists and promotes stewardship of California’s natural resources through education and service.” They draw you in with refreshing truth telling: “We cannot protect and restore California’s unique ecology without an environmentally literate, engaged public.” … and … “Becoming a naturalist offers a chance to explore nature and deepen your understanding of how nature works.” And then they make you offers you can’t refuse: “Are you interested in nature? Do you love CA’s diverse ecosystems? Embark on an immersive adventure with experts. Deepen your understanding of ecology and forge lasting friendships. This course has graduated career starters through retirees, all learning together to become a community of Certified California Naturalists.” How could we resist this magical week in Yosemite?

Follow Us on this Magical Natural History Tour

Join me on this journey as I share some of our day-to-day discoveries from the experts in the field who live this stuff. Images and excerpts from more than 32 pages of field notes prove that, even after leading hundreds of field classes and field trips with thousands of my students and colleagues over more than three decades, we and I will never stop learning. (The stories here are taken from my personal field notes and some occasional background research. All photos are mine and are not edited or manipulated in any way.) Let your curiosity fly like the clouds and wings over Half Dome in this Yosemite natural history expedition.   

Chris Cameron was our organizer, leader, and master instructor for these exceptional learning experiences. Without Chris, a one-of-a-kind tour guide and educator, we wouldn’t be able to retrace our steps because there wouldn’t be any. He demonstrated phenomenal skills in gathering seasoned professionals and curious students together to learn within nature’s living laboratories. And his people skills are the icing on the cake!    

Each day of our expedition gets its own page in this story; simply click to the page that matches the day and/or subject. You are encouraged to follow me chronologically to soak in the full benefits. Here’s how it’s all organized:

Day/Page One (Saturday, 4-12-2025): From the Central Valley up to ECCO in Oakhurst
Day/Page Two (Sunday, 4-13-2025): Geology, Creation, and More than 100 Million Years
Day/Page Three (Monday, 4-14-2025): Healthy Forests and Roaring Falls
Day/page Four (Tuesday, 4-15-2025): Cliffs, Bats, Fires, Technology and Botany
Day/Page Five (Wednesday, 4-16-2025): Following the Trail to Native Americans and American Settlers
Day/Page Six (Thursday 4-17-2025): Grazing, Logging, and Hunting, Oh My!
Day/Page Seven (Friday 4-18-2025): Sharing Our Discoveries

Day One (Saturday, 4-12-2025): From the Central Valley up to ECCO in Oakhurst:

A drive north along Hwy 41 from Fresno eventually takes you out of the Central Valley, which shines as the country’s most productive agricultural landscapes. This sprawling valley is vital in making California the number one agricultural state in the nation, as the state generates well more than $50 billion income per year from farm products.     

As the road gradually slopes up toward Sierra Nevada foothills, we find ourselves surrounded by open grasslands that recall the vast prairies that once dominated the Golden State’s inland valleys before the Spanish arrived. You will notice cattle grazing on pastoral rolling hills, landscapes occasionally interrupted and sliced by serpentine streams and rivers meandering from east to west, out of higher elevations and into the valley. (These lush narrow riparian strips are what remains (less than 10%) of the broad gallery forests that once extended on both sides of streams and rivers flowing out of the Sierra Nevada.) Today’s hills turn verdant green by April and erupt into rainbow displays of wildflowers such as lupine. But the grasses and flowers will soon dehydrate to the golden browns of punishing summer drought, leaving their seeds in parched soils, waiting for next winter’s rains and next spring’s renewed fantastical displays.

But another invader has recently rivaled the seasonal nonnative grasses on these gentle slopes at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains: humans and their developments. Developers are gobbling up some of these landscapes and attracting people who want to escape urban crowds, chaos, and traffic. “Build it and they will come” continues to spread across these landscapes that tourists have been passing by for decades on their way to the high country. Entire wannabe self-sufficient communities have been sprouting and extending over the grasslands and oak woodlands. And the changes are not coming without controversy. As these ecosystems are scraped up and paved, some locals are watching their reasons for living here disappear, while recent arrivals find relative peace and quiet in their perceived bucolic settings. Talk of limited water and other resources, habitat destruction, loss of open spaces, pollution, land values, affordable housing, and increasing traffic congestion is replacing the traditional agrarian discourse and cultures. Such noticeable changes are stretching and then redefining our perceptions of wildland-urban interfaces. The end of this world as we knew it may be just one more development away.

Once we get up above about 1,000’ elevation, where a little more precipitation falls and temperatures are a bit cooler, an assortment of scattered oak trees pops up above the ground cover. At about 2,000’, the woodlands thicken and diversify to include gray pine and other drought-tolerant trees. These scraggly pines with long, grayish needles and big cones often appear bent and twisted as though they were dancing through the night and were suddenly frozen in a pose by the morning light, waiting for summer’s fire or winter’s first merciful rehydrating showers. As we progress higher, slopes tend to steepen and we notice mixed pine forests as we look up toward snow in the distant high country. (We will revisit Sierra Nevada’s vegetation zones in more detail during the next few days.) We drop down into the town of Oakhurst (elevation 2,274’), nestled in its little valley that many consider the gateway to Yosemite. Traveling up and a little farther north, we finally turn off Hwy 41 and will settle, hang our hats, and share tasty meals at ECCO each night, which is a pretty typical option for tour and educational groups looking for base camps in and near Yosemite: “The Episcopal Conference Center Oakhurst (ECCO) has been serving the religious, educational and non-profit conference and retreat needs of Fresno, Madera, Mariposa and the rest of California’s Central Valley since 1982.”       

This is where we can hear Yosemite calling from just several miles away. The rolling landscapes in and around ECCO (about 3,100’ ASL) is populated with mostly open oak and pine woodland. The deciduous oak trees are just beginning to sprout by mid-April, careful to avoid any late-season freezes. A giant pond with a fountain demands attention, decorating the property and attracting more than our senses. Depending on the season, an assortment of waterfowl and other wildlife visit or live around the water (more than 100 species of birds have been recorded there), demonstrating animal behaviors that deserve a line or two in our field notebooks.

Wild turkeys are particularly entertaining as they dive out of their trees (where they roost at night to avoid predators) early in the morning and trot around during the day. Their toe-walking and dragging one foot in front of the other leaves an arrowhead-like trail. Turkeys are not native to California, but numerous attempts to introduce them finally became successful so that their numbers multiplied since the 1960s until they now total about 250,000 in the state. These omnivores mate and lay their eggs during spring. Gestation takes about a month and they are most vulnerable to predators (such as coyote, bobcats, foxes, some birds, and domesticated animals) after hatching. Adults may become nuisances around humans as they show aggression with their flapping and pecking; their droppings also get pretty messy. They’ve been known to damage gardens and attack their reflections in windows and on the sides of cars.  

The turkeys remind us that every species of plant and animal, every landscape, rock, cloud, water drop, and weather event have captivating natural history stories to tell. Informative and useful narratives grow from research that connects all of us to our natural world. We can see why this is just one of the naturalist programs across the US. Master instructor Chris Cameron started our course by summarizing how we celebrate biodiversity with environmental literacy, scientific and social understanding, by honing our interpretive skills, and practicing collaborative conservation. We reviewed our state’s bioregions and geomorphic provinces (from page 29 in our required California Naturalist Handbook), which coincide with the physiographic regions we have explored in numerous stories on this website and in my publications. And we recognized how the California Floristic Province, a biological hotspot with its thousands of species that include a large percentage of endemics, is experiencing a biodiversity crises as increasing numbers of those unique plants and animals are threatened with extinction. We recognize how naturalists’ work has become crucial as we observe, communicate, and act to build essential links between scientists and the average person. After dinner, our first day and evening ended with my presentation that summarized some fascinating properties of water and the weather patterns and climates that rule over our plant communities, topics we have highlighted on this website and in my recent California Sky Watcher book and statewide tour.      

Click (below) to the next page and day.

The post Cal Naturalists Invade Yosemite first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

Fire has been our friend for millennia. Humans have enjoyed the benefits of controlled fires used to cook our food, heat our spaces, comfort us as we sat around our campfires, provide light and protection, clear and manage landscapes, burn waste, and power our engines. By contrast, many of us have also been terrorized by the unforgettable life-and-death experience of getting too close to an out-of-control blaze. That’s when capricious fire can be likened to an unpredictable vicious predator that breaks out of its cage, or a scene from one of those Jurassic Park movies when Tyrannosaurus rex crashes through its confining barriers. Suddenly, anything goes and we are at the mercy of what we thought we had under our control. Fire is another example of how the very nature that nurtures us can suddenly morph into the misadventure or calamity that kills us. Humans’ relationship with fire has always been complex, but it would be difficult to imagine a place where this partnership has been more misunderstood, abused, researched, and reevaluated, than in California during the last several decades.

During the 20th Century, we began to better understand how wildfires play such vital roles in shaping our Mediterranean ecosystems and landscapes. We reluctantly acknowledged that they must occasionally and necessarily revisit our grasslands, woodlands, and even some forests, and how Native Americans, for thousands of years, encouraged fire’s eminence with their control burns. Until the late 1900s, much of the timber industry and some environmentalists ignored these realities, especially in our most cherished forests that include ancient redwoods. After all, forest fires can destroy beautiful trees and valuable timber destined to become forest products. The infernos kill precious wildlife and leave ugly open scars and charred landscapes that remind us of fire’s terror, death, and destruction. But we now better understand how, even in our redwood forests, wildfires establish delicate successional cycles, balances that must be maintained if California’s ecosystems are to survive and prosper.        

We can’t be blamed for the obsessive love we have shown for what remains of redwoods that weren’t cut down and sent to the mills. (Less than 5% of our old-growth coast redwood forests were spared from the saws.) California’s two redwood species represent the largest and tallest trees on Earth. On the surface, these majestic forests appear to be the last places where you would expect, much less want, to see a fire. So, we did our best to keep fire away from these stately behemoths that can grow to more than 2,000 years old. But it was fire suppression and other human interference (such as the introduction of volatile nonnatives) that set the stage for recent unprecedented conflagrations in California forests. The megadrought that extended through the first two decades of this century (enhanced by climate change on steroids) provided the blowtorch on landscapes with abundant accumulated fuel to burn. Scientists and nature lovers looked on in horror and then heartbreak as many of our ancient redwood forests were incinerated.

The largest, hottest, and most destructive wildfires in California history swept through from 2015-2021. But the long-term effects of these intense burns in our redwood forests have been quite different, depending on the contrasting species and plant communities: Giant Sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum) along the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada and Coast Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) along the north coast fog belt.

As winter storms drift off the Pacific and encounter the Sierra Nevada, air is forced to rise up western slopes, where it cools and condenses, dropping abundant orographic precipitation. Heavy snows are common, which gradually melt into the deep sandy soils as spring advances toward summer. Giant sequoias rely on this meltwater into the summer drought. Occasional summer thunderstorms might also briefly interrupt the seasonal droughts, but they are not such reliable sources of water. However, those summer storms also produce lightning that ignites fires in Sierra Nevada forests, producing a fire season that peaks during the hotter summers and often lingers until the first early winter-season storms can douse them.

Following decades of fire suppression and accumulating fuels since the 1800s, and the introduction and invasion of highly combustible nonnative grasses and other species, a devastating megadrought plagued California. It started around 2000 and lasted for more than two decades. (These weather patterns and their impacts have been highlighted in multiple stories on this website and in my new book, The California Sky Watcher.) Though this historic dry period was punctuated by a few brief wet episodes and floods fueled by powerful atmospheric rivers, gradually warming temperatures and extreme summer heat waves quickly evaporated water out of our ecosystems and into the atmosphere with increasing vapor pressure deficits. Weather stations across the state repeatedly recorded their hottest days, months, and seasons, breaking all-time records. Bark beetles and other opportunists exploited the moment, further weakening native species and ecosystems already under stress.  

From 2015-2021, at least six major fires raged through 85% of Sierra Nevada’s giant sequoia groves. The most destructive was the Castle Fire in August 2020, which killed 7,500-10,600 giant sequoias or about 10-15% of all Sequoiadendron giganteum on Earth. In September, 2021, the Complex Fire killed 1,300-2,400 giants and the Windy Fire destroyed another 900-1,300 of our cherished ancients that can grow up to 3,000 years old. All three named wildfires were ignited by lightning. By the end of 2021, nearly 20% of all giant sequoias had burned to death within only seven years. And now, it is feared that denuded ecosystems and other stresses could kill more fire-ravaged trees as we witness delayed mortality rates. I remember watching Christy Brigham (Chief of Resources Management and Science at Kings and Sequoia National Parks) on national network TV, as the media interviewed her in their stories about the devastating fires. Years earlier, Christy had worked with my students, helping to guide my field classes into her research. Fast forward and there she was again, the celebrity ranger and scientist under the Sequoias, attempting to educate a national audience about the importance of managing our forests and limiting climate change so that we might save what unique and precious resources remain.                       

We have learned how our giant sequoia forests, like other California plant communities, thrive with occasional wildfires. Older, tall sequoias have thick, fibrous, fire-resistant bark and they drop lower limbs as they grow so that fires can’t leap up from below into their towering crowns. Heat from the fires below encourages seed dispersal into recently-cleared soils. Over the millennia, these forest floors were regularly cleared by occasional ground fires that consumed accumulated fuels and took out smaller trees before they could act as chimneys to guide the flames higher. After more than a century of fire suppression, we realized our mistakes. But when the megadrought hit, it was already too late and it will take decades to reverse these trends that humans have set in motion. And so, the ancient giants burn and die.

Moving to the Coast

Coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) also benefit from heavy orographic precipitation (up to 100 inches/yr.) that falls when winter storms sweep off the Pacific and encounter coastal slopes. But snow is rare in these moist and cool, but milder climates. Instead, these forests remain damp through most of the summer drought season by catching coastal fog that drifts off the Pacific with the cool sea breeze and then drips down to the forest floor. Since these thick, shady forests appear relatively green and lush throughout the year, and they hold some the greatest biomass of any California terrestrial plant community, it is more difficult to imagine how fires could be such important players. But they are, especially after drought years capped by hot summers.

This is exactly what happened in August of 2020, when yet another summer heatwave sucked remaining precious moisture out of the redwood forests near the end of the megadrought. A series of thunderstorms with dry lightning drifted across California, igniting wildfires in already parched plant communities. The August lightning teamed up with the ongoing megadrought to make 2020 the worst wildfire year in state history. Nearly 10,000 fires burned over 4.4 million acres (about 4% of the entire state).

Multiple ignitions grew into three blazes that combined to form the CZU Lightning Complex Fire, which ripped through nearly all of Big Basin Redwoods State Park, including some of the most beloved coast redwood groves. As pictures filtered through the media, public shock turned to heartbreak. Intense, hot fires feeding off accumulated dry fuels sent flames high into the sky and into the canopy, torching magnificent coast redwoods that had stood for more than 1,000 years. Park headquarters, visitor centers, and other infrastructure turned to ashes. Everything in our cherished forest, where I had sought refuge decades earlier to admire and learn from the wonders of awesome nature, was burned to a crisp. Beloved Big Basin, home to the most southerly extent of our largest old-growth coast redwood groves, accessible to millions of city dwellers in the Bay Area, and treasured by millions of others in and beyond California, was gone. Or, was it?

Here is where the two fire stories diverge as we recognize even more glaring contrasts between the Golden State’s two redwood species and their plant communities. In the links that follow this story, you will see a Big Basin that appears to be burning to the ground. But new redwood growth appeared within weeks after the conflagration, such as basal burl sprouts and sprouts from tree trunks. Decades of carbon storage emerged to the surface as fresh green shoots. And by the time I returned to my cherished sanctuary, recovery and natural regeneration was evident everywhere, only four years after the inferno.

Though the firestorm killed understory species and most Douglas firs, nearly every scorched redwood was sprouting, evolving from snag tress that began to resemble bottlebrush trees. Not only were sprouts emerging from the base of the trees, but charred limbs were being covered with fresh, fuzzy green growth. This is not to understate the damage that had been done. It will take generations for these forests to recover. More xeric chaparral (such as ceanothus) and ecotone species had invaded open spaces that had previously been cool, moist, shaded enclosures sheltered by a redwood canopy. Invasive weeds included crowding opportunists such as French broom and yellow star thistle. Much of the former forest floor was now exposed to intense direct sunlight, encouraging sun-loving invaders that can withstand large daily and annual temperature swings. Exposed creeks and streams ran much warmer in the summer and carried high sediment yields during the winter rainy season. Just before I arrived in 2024, local air temperatures soared over 100°F during an early July heatwave. But the seared coast redwoods somehow survived it all, and a rich diversity of flora and fauna was returning and evolving in a fantastical story of rebirth. Birds and other wildlife, such as raccoon, fox, deer, coyote, and mountain lion were finding homes within the recovering diversity of habitats.

The two contrasting redwood fire regimes in this story leave us with plenty of science lessons about the natural systems and cycles that nurture such forests. As you might expect, these burnt landscapes are attracting researchers from around the world. They include scholars from the Stephens Fire Science Laboratory, the California Fire Science Consortium, and the UC Center for Fire Research and Outreach. The following are just a few summarizing thoughts.

Our most diverse forests represent more resilient plant communities capable of adapting to gradual and sudden extreme changes. Occasional cool fires encourage a diversity of habitats and plant species, which support more diverse animal species, ranging from bees and other insects to much larger predator and prey. By contrast, aggressive fire suppression leads to stagnation and homogeneity, which could lead to the demise of species and entire ecosystems. Likewise, if hot fires reoccur too frequently, introduced grasses and other invasive fire-loving species could encourage even more frequent fires that alter ecosystems. If you think this suggests a delicate and complicated balance, you nailed it. For centuries, most California ecosystems adjusted to relatively cool fires with spotty hot flareups; redwood forests had adjusted to high fire complexities with a large variety of burns that may have returned every 6-35 years or so. Suppressing such fires disrupts natural succession. However, super-hot, frequent fires everywhere can also disrupt natural cycles, leading to decreasing species diversity and ecosystems less resilient to changes that can destroy them. During the last two centuries, humans have interfered with these natural cycles, which has encouraged high fire intensities and severities capable of searing nearly everything in the forest.

In the bigger picture, there are many more examples of how humans have directly impacted California’s natural fire cycles. The most dramatic changes can usually be found in what has gained a most descriptive and popular name: the wildland-urban interface (WUI). We can’t allow wildfires to destroy billions of dollars in property and kill people as they sweep into our communities, so we try to stop them at our fabricated boundaries. But what is considered defensible space is negotiable in a fire regime where burning embers can be blown over a mile from the active front by high winds. These dilemmas become particularly evident as we encroach further into nature and extend our human footprints. How can we ever restore natural fire cycles when we inevitably find ourselves living adjacent to the very natural landscapes we wish to preserve?

Human impacts on particular keystone species have also changed our fire cycles. As just one example, wildlife officials are working to reintroduce the North American Beaver (Castor canadensis) into select waterways across the state. This keystone species is now considered an ecosystem engineer that expands diverse habitats that then increase and improve nature-based ecosystem services. Beaver dams and ponds widen water courses and raise water tables to irrigate larger, lusher, more diverse and productive riparian habitats and gallery forests. Wildfire behaviors change drastically when they approach such wider, well-watered green barriers. Imagine the countless other ways that assisted natural regeneration can increase ecosystem functionality after a forest fire and help reboot our wildlands back toward their natural fire cycles.

I’ve been walking into and gazing up to these magnificent wonders-of-our-world forests to admire and study giant sequoias and coast redwoods for five decades, assuming they would outlive me. I and some of my field students sensed the changes over time. During my next visit, I wonder if these venerable towering elders will be poking fun at me for thinking five decades is a long time. Only now, I must also wonder which of us might be first to decompose into the dust of future generations.  

Still looking for more? Check out the following rather exhaustive list of articles and videos summarizing recent research in California’s redwood forests. There is plenty to unpack here, but you are rewarded by hearing and learning from the experts. Following the links, join me again as I take you on more lengthy self-guided photo tours through these forests.

The first three links are to stories on our website (that now date back several years) highlighting California’s wildfires and/or redwood forests. You can also surf through our website to find multiple stories about weather patterns and climate change. Next is the list of articles and videos from the forests. The final links take you to the most recent researchers using geospatial technologies to help us understand how species are adapting to these changes.  

The Wildfires of 2020:

Forest management and research and perspectives from of one of my former students working in the redwoods:

Encountering coast redwoods with colleagues on a field trip in northwestern California:  

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks Research Projects

Fire Reoccurrence in the Sequoias

Good Article about Sequoias and Fire, with Video, from Outdoor Magazine

Save the Redwoods League

Here is an old NPS article describing the redwoods.

NPS on the Sequoia Fires 2015-2021

NPS on Giant Sequoias and Fire

Castle Fire Research Video from Scientific American

The following three articles focus on Big Basin:

Fire recovery survey, April, 2022, written by Biologist Steve Singer

Fire Recovery in Big Basin

Save the Redwoods League Article Summarizing Recovery at Big Basin

More on California’s Coastal Redwoods:

Nature Plants Article on Regrowth in Coastal Redwoods

Indigenous tribes rekindle control burning in northwest California forests.

Northwestern California Karuk and Yurok tribes revitalize cultural burning.

If you can navigate through the commercials, “It’s History” recalls what happened to most of our coast redwoods.

Do you want to dig deeper into recent related research projects? It turns out that California has become a laboratory for using cutting-edge geospatial technologies to map our evolving plant communities and their thousands of species. Scientists and citizens are using these new technologies to track species as they adapt to climate change, fire, and a host of human impacts. Check out these links, but give yourself some time if it’s all new to you:  

The summary sent from Bill Bowen

The PNAS Article

You could start here if iNaturalist is new to you.

Evolutionary adaptation of species to climate change at the MOILAB

For you more curious and adventurous folks, the following photo essays take you through several of our redwood forests. These colorful tours represent a lifetime (decades) of adventures, field trips, and research projects in California’s redwoods. I used some of the signage in each park to take the place of captions and to give you the sense that you are walking with me. You may notice that no photos were manipulated. Here’s your chance to lose yourself and learn from the forest. Click on each page to walk through a different region.          

The post Fire in the Redwoods first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

The development and use of affordable renewable energy and our increasingly more efficient use of resources is keeping tons of pollution out of our air, water, and soil, while saving Californians billions of dollars in the long run. Millions of people and entire ecosystems are healthier as California helps to lead the nation and the world toward a cleaner and more promising energy future. As the state’s per capita energy use and greenhouse gas production continues to decline, individuals, households, and businesses have discovered a treasure trove of long-term savings that can be routed to improve the quality of our living and working environments. But since the devil is often in the details, what are these sources of energy and how reliable are they?   

The Golden State is progressing toward a challenging goal of 100% “clean” electricity by 2045. But it is important to note that, by 2022, such “clean” sources (according to the California Energy Commission) included all renewables (39+%), large hydropower (≈11%), and what remains of nuclear (≈11%) in the state. Solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and small hydropower are considered renewables. But there’s something missing here that I’ll call small solar power (often referred to as passive), though it isn’t small at all, since it’s working for us everywhere on every day and it is the source of almost all the energy that surrounds us. 

The energy industry often divides active solar into two categories: solar thermal and solar photovoltaic. The larger projects have generated tons of controversy. For instance, the Ivanpah solar thermal facility, with a price tag of more than $2 billion, was touted as the world’s largest. You can’t miss it if you are driving through the Mojave Desert along Interstate 15 just before crossing into Nevada. This is where once wild open desert has been covered with giant mirrors to focus intense sunlight toward 450-foot towers where high temperature steam turbines generate electricity. The electricity is sold to you through companies such as PG&E and SCE, but millions of dollars of electricity are lost through wires transmitting it to distant urban centers. Meanwhile, the desert along Interstate 10 to Arizona is being covered with photovoltaic panels on BLM land that is now known as The Riverside East Solar Energy Zone. This includes the sprawling Chuckwalla Valley, which has become a sea of solar panels that has also been advertised as the largest such project in the world. In both of these gargantuan solar energy “farms”, enormous expanses of open public desert ecosystems have been sacrificed to gather and concentrate solar energy and convert it to electricity that then must be sent out to urban areas more than 100 miles distant.  

As with other major power plants, these solar “farms” come with plenty of baggage. Habitat destruction haunts each project. Thousands of birds and other wildlife have been unintentionally killed each year by these behemoth projects. Precious groundwater supplies have been threatened. Desert dwellers and cultures that include Native Americans have also been impacted.

Desert devotees wonder why more solar panels are not being installed on top of existing warehouses, parking structures, homes, and businesses, in urban areas where the energy is being used. Even when the cost of storage batteries is added to solar installations, the payoff time is often less than 10-15 years, when consumers begin getting their solar energy for free for the life of panels that can last more than 30 years. And when homes or businesses with existing solar systems are sold, the seller gets more than their investments back from the added sales prices. Those who don’t want to pay upfront costs and take responsibility for owning and maintaining their solar systems are enticed by lucrative leasing arrangements; customers benefit from less expensive energy after paying a monthly fee to the companies who own and lease out the systems. Millions of rooftops and other urban spaces (including those for vital battery storage) are still waiting to harvest and store otherwise wasted and increasingly competitive solar energy for the taking. So why aren’t more families and businesses being encouraged to make such smart investments in otherwise underused urban spaces that can guarantee long-term profits?

You can see why the chorus of concerned citizens and energy experts advocating for more efficient, local energy production is growing louder. They argue that many of the most competitive sources of future energy can be found on our roofs and in our cities where energy is used and that destroying distant public lands and ecosystems is not sustainable. They also argue that local energy issues and problems can be more efficiently addressed with local solutions that help consumers gain control of their power sources. Similar controversies have swirled around some of the ubiquitous wind turbines that have sprouted above rural and remote regions across the state. I address some of these issues in my new book, The California Sky Watcher.   

And that leads us to the simpler and more pragmatic sustainable energy solutions sometimes known as passive solar. They often involve common-sense and time-tested planning with nature in practical ways that will allow us to save money, gain control of our energy destiny, and improve the quality of our living and working environments. Such solutions have been under our noses and calling out to us all this time.  

Many of us have already discovered the advantages of greenhouses, skylights, sunroofs, and sunrooms that allow natural sunlight in, rather than relying on artificial energy-consuming light and heat sources. And this reminds us that almost all the energy surrounding us is direct or indirect solar. It’s the energy plants use to grow and that animals store as they eat. Whether you are a vegetarian or an omnivore, you are using indirect solar energy to read this page and walk across the room. As covered in stories from my new book and on this website, solar energy creates temperature gradients that build pressure gradients that propel the wind. The sun’s energy evaporates water and lifts moisture into the air to fuel storms that provide life-giving precipitation. There it is, always surrounding us. Because there’s far more solar energy than we will ever need, we need to continue to find more efficient ways of harvesting, storing, and using it.

The simplest acts include opening windows during the day and closing them before sunset during the cool season. During warm summers, keep them open at night through early mornings and then close them when daytime temperatures rise outside. You will keep fresher, healthier air circulating during the comfortable open times and prevent sick building syndromes that can develop in closed spaces. Investments in efficient ventilation systems also cut AC costs in the long run. Plant deciduous vegetation along south-facing walls to shade the hot side of the house during summer; they will lose their leaves to allow more light in during winter. Follow the source of light and heat by keeping track of the sun’s location in your sky as it changes during the day and the seasons. Eaves and overhangs can be just the right length to shade walls and windows from high summer sun during summer afternoons and then allow direct sunlight to warm those surfaces when sun angles are lower during winter. Think of the dozens of other ways you can reconnect to the natural world in and around your own living and working spaces, relieve nature deficit disorders, reap the physical and mental health benefits, and save money in the process. After all, we are fortunate to live in plein air California, not Chicago.

The best California architects know how to design smart buildings with more sophisticated passive solar features. It might take a little more planning ahead, but such short-term investments will lead to long-term rewards that just keep on giving. Double-paned energy-efficient windows (with Energy Star ratings) and doors and improved insulation have become the standard for good reasons: these upgrades cut energy costs as they allow you to better regulate the air in your home or business when temperatures become uncomfortable outside.  Here is just one website from the U.S. Department of Energy that summarizes passive solar strategies. Here is another good introduction. You can also encourage efforts to become more efficient by supporting nonprofit organizations such as Sustainable Works. They have helped thousands of students, residents, and businesses save money while they also cut pollution and save our valuable resources.

We all use energy that can have negative impacts. But we are rediscovering how to create more comfortable, healthier living environments that will limit those impacts and save money in the long run. Sometimes it’s as simple as going back to nature. But it also requires that we work together. And in the bigger picture, that’s where Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) has made major progress across the state. At least 25 CCAs serve more than 200 communities in California that work together to pool their electricity loads, increase efficiency and grid resilience, and encourage renewable energy projects. The combination of simpler solar solutions outlined here, CCAs, and countless related efforts are moving the state toward a much greener and cleaner energy future … and proving how every Californian can make a positive difference.    

Check out these sources for more:

Community Choice Aggregation (CCA)

Inside Climate News reports on groundwater stresses from desert solar projects.

California Energy Commission

Passive Solar

A Passive Solar General Intro and Summary

NOAA Solar Calculator

Sustainable Works

California Academy of Sciences
The Academy’s Green Roof

California Air Resources Board Greenhouse Gas Inventory

US Green Building Council

One Architect’s Top 15 California Showcases

The Guardian Article

The 2023 Annual Global Climate Report summarizes how California is just another example of more general temperature trends around the globe.

The post Simpler Solar Solutions first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

We add this September 1 update. The Caldor Fire made history by burning all the way across the west side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and over the crest to the east side. (The larger Dixie Fire on the northern fringe of the Sierra Nevada may have been the first in recorded history to accomplish this, just weeks earlier.) As it expanded to more than 200,000 acres and raged toward Lake Tahoe Basin resorts, the Caldor Fire took center stage in media coverage. When about 21,000 people were evacuated, California’s beloved South Lake Tahoe became a ghost town. The following excerpt, from an August 31 New York Times article about megafires, summed up the latest western fires nightmare: “No matter how many people you have out on these fires, it’s not a large enough work force to put the fire out,” said Malcolm North, a fire expert with the U.S. Forest Service and a professor at the University of California, Davis. “You can save particular areas or particular homes,” Professor North said. “But the fire is pretty much going to do what it’s going to do until the weather shifts.”

When red flag conditions spread, all National Forests in California were closed while exhausted fire crews fought on into September, 2021. It is little surprise that inland weather stations were recording their warmest three combined summer months (June, July, and August) in history. That included the National Weather Service in nearby Reno, where average temperatures of 77.4 F (25.2 C), and average highs near 94 F (34.4 C), broke 2017’s hottest three summer months records. By mid-September, state fire statistics were daunting: more than 7,000 wildfires had burned more than 3,500 square miles (9,065 square kilometers). By then, temperatures were down, humidities were up, and red flag warnings disappeared across the state, allowing fire crews to contain the blazes, while most national forests reopened. Anxious Californians were left to anticipate autumn’s offshore wind events that might rekindle another wildfire year already gone mad.

We have dedicated an enormous amount of time and space on this web site to these reoccurring calamities during the last several years. You might consult our publication for more detailed scientific explanations. Our weather, climate change, and wildfire stories on this web site have included abundant research and analyses with a wide range of perspectives. You can click back to them for a better understanding of how we got here and where we might be headed. In this story, we briefly focus on the latest round of catastrophic wildfires in northern California (as of August), the weather patterns that incited them, and the impacts they are having far beyond the Golden State.

(Where you see numbers blocked in parentheses in this text, you might consult Page 2 of this story for some more detailed definitions and explanations.)

Shasta Feels the Burn
Mt. Shasta, 2021, serves as just one example of how extreme weather patterns are reshaping landscapes around the state. By July, snow packs that usually cover and help insulate Shasta’s glaciers had disappeared, leaving the icy masses vulnerable to accelerated melting during this latest historic summer of heat and drought. Ash and soot, falling out of smoke from the region’s epic fires, darkened surfaces, cut albedo, and hastened the melting. By late summer, meltwater carrying mud and debris flows was spasmodically cascading down the volcano. Roads, bridges, and other infrastructure were especially threatened by debris flows along Mud Creek and around the town of McCloud from sudden outbursts off of Konwakiton Glacier. As the media searched for some explanations from the experts, this quote from the L.A. Times, published on September 8, 2021, was repeated in various forms within local and national news stories: “It’s scary. The pace of change right now on Mt. Shasta seems very fast, and its glaciers are getting smaller at a rate that makes me sad,” said Andy Calvert, scientist in charge at Mt. Shasta for the U.S. Geological Survey. “The principal problem now is mudflows,” he said. “They are sudden releases of water that scour out stream channels and pick up rocks and dirt on the way down, leaving a muddy mess.”

According to scientists studying these changes, such as glaciologist Mauri Pelto, Mt. Shasta has lost at least 50% of its glacial ice volume in the last 20 years. More glacial ice was lost on Shasta in this summer of 2021 than in any other year in recorded history. The few remaining glaciers nestled against California’s other high country peaks have been retreating at similar rates.

Setting the Stage for Fire
We start with another exceptionally dry 2020-2021 rainy season throughout most of the state. Stubborn high pressure vacillated over us or just to our west, repeatedly forcing winter storms to our north, up over the resilient ridge, and then back down to our east. With some exceptions, much of the rainy season was dominated by relatively dry “inside sliders” that dropped into Nevada, lacking substantial sources of moisture, but circulating high winds. (1) Parts of central and southern California were left with less than half of their annual average rainfall and some weather stations were closer to 1/3 of average. Then, early summer started with a bang in the form of massive high pressure systems that produced record heat domes. This included the historic heat wave that broke all-time records from the Canadian Border, through Washington and Oregon, down into California’s inland regions. Heavy, dense air sinking out of the strongest high pressure was compressed all the way to the surface, creating adiabatically-heated ovens. Record high temperatures were recorded across our deserts, inland valleys, and up to our mountaintops. After a punishing June and July, mid-August high temperatures in the northern Sacramento Valley and other northern inland valleys soared well over 100 F, even with veils of smoke shielding the most intense sunlight.

Relief near the Beach
The only “good” news we have about these summer heat waves is that, at least into August, temperatures along the immediate coast frequently remained relatively mild and even below average in the fog belt that stretched along many beaches all the way down to the Mexican Border. These shallow, fresh sea breezes stood in contrast to the plumes of thick smoke circulating farther inland. We explore this cold coast oddity in another adjacent story within this three-part weather series on our web site. Check it out.

Fires Behaving Badly
As expected, the prolonged drought and searing inland heat waves led to another summer of “we’ve never seen wildfires behave like this.” The first one to be called the biggest was the rather odd Lava Fire that was sparked by lightning on June 24 and burned into August. Firefighters had already noted conditions in June that more resembled August as the fire burned around and up the slopes of Mt. Shasta, northeast of Weed. The fires burned all the way up to the tree line on steep, inaccessible, craggy lava terrain with limited water sources. As more threatening fires erupted throughout the surrounding region that includes northern Californian, the Sierra Nevada, and Oregon, adding to the thick smoke clouds, attention turned away from this slow-moving Lava Fire.

Larger Fires, Spreading Smoke Clouds
Among the growing conflagrations, the Dixie Fire exploded to a single record 600,000+ acres by mid-August, creating its own weather systems. Choking smoke plumes had mushroomed, spread across northern California, and then merged and traveled farther north into inland areas of Oregon and Washington. For weeks, prevailing winds spread the smoke from California and Oregon fires north and then east, across Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. Persistent high pressure capped the smoke, causing poor air quality and blocking views throughout and beyond those states, spreading the red veil of gloom over an area larger than anyone could remember. (2) Big Sky Country had turned to big smoke country in the hot, dry air under relentless high pressure. Visitors and locals in and around National Parks (such as Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Glacier) made famous for their blue sky views and definitive cloud formations, coughed their way through the smoky haze. Denver and Salt Lake City recorded some of the worst air quality in the world. By mid-July, noticeable smoke clouds had already arrived on the East Coast, in a repeat performance reminiscent of last year’s firestorm stories. The ominous summer of 2021 wore on as firefighters and just about everyone else began to dread the next building high pressure system and summer heat wave, while shifting prevailing winds determined who would suffer most from dangerous smoke. We were all connected again by the local and global changes that are impacting all of us.

It Doesn’t Stop Here.
We wish the story could stop here. By August, the Dixie Fire alone had destroyed more than 1,000 structures and the entire town of Greenville. Its smoke plume formed a thick line of condensation all the way across Nevada. (3) But there may be more ominous warning signs on the immediate horizon.

Looking for Miracles in all the Wrong Places?
Without some sort of anomalous – or perhaps miraculous – weather pattern shift, California will experience another punishing autumn that will go down in the record books. All you have to do is observe the parched slopes and alarmingly desiccated plant communities in southern and central California…illustrating the cumulative effects of successive droughts and record heat years. Cooler temperatures with exceptional and substantial early season rains must arrive before autumn’s dry offshore Diablo and Santa Ana winds erupt to whip up the peak fire season. The annual race to see what comes first has never been more consequential. And should the next wet season end with more improbable drought, many of our reservoirs and other sources of water will dry up. Is this sounding too familiar in this state where the unprecedented has become the normal?

Follow the latest California drought on this web site: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA

Jing Liu Connects Dots Leading to the Pika
We continue to recognize how accelerating climate change and these epic fires are impacting and even threatening such a wide range of plant and animal species. Jing Liu has written a story about what some people might consider to be one of the most adorable: the American Pika. You won’t be disappointed if you take a little time to learn some animal science from Jing’s enthralling story, exceptional maps, and attached videos. This little pika lives around the very habitats that have been incinerated this summer and featured on our web site. Here is the story: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/5d70673f2ab641b389dcd15e4779bdb7

The post Unprecedented Drought, Heat, and Fire Repeat in the West, 2021 first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

Let me introduce myself. I am a California water drop. I condensed from billions of water vapor molecules in the air above the North Pacific Ocean to become embedded in the clouds that evolved into a large storm system. Through alternating ups and downs, and freeze and thaw cycles, I was carried in a rotating middle latitude wave cyclone as it drifted southeast and toward California. As the storm swept across the Golden State, I was forced to rise higher over the mountains and I grew as a giant ice crystal until I fell as a fluffy-turned-heavy snowflake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

After weeks of resting in the snowpack just above 9,000’ elevation, I emerged in the spring thaw, melting into Yosemite’s subalpine ecosystems. I flowed down the slopes under the force of gravity and merged with similar water drops until we accumulated into rivulets that merged into tributary streams that finally joined the Merced River. The river, swelling with spring’s snowmelt, cut through spectacular mountain canyons and valleys and tumbled over waterfalls. After flowing west through Yosemite Valley, I finally glided through the gentler-sloping foothill country and into the Central Valley. After maneuvering through various reservoirs and other human obstructions, I joined the larger San Joaquin River. From there, I flowed northwest on the valley floor and into the storied Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. There, I merged with Sacramento River water and gradually meandered through San Francisco Bay, under the Golden Gate, and back out to sea.

I drifted south in the cold California current and began veering to my right and farther out to sea off Baja, Mexico. Caught in the giant clockwise pinwheel that is the North Pacific Gyre, I turned farther west toward Asia and then north. My saga “ends” where it started in the North Pacific Ocean. But, my story doesn’t really “end” there any more than it “started” there, since I am playing an active role within Earth’s interconnected, perpetual water cycles.

As you follow my path in the more detailed account that follows in Parts I and II, the author will map out the many other routes I could have followed, with suggestions about how other water drops traveled in many different directions to experience their many very different fates. It is a classic California water story.

So, put on your seat belt, enjoy the ride, and don’t forget to show your appreciation, as you may run into me at any time on any day.    

Preface: Following the Water and our Story

Here is a story about a drop of water that happened to pass through California during its wild ride within Earth’s great water cycles. As with other visitors to the Golden State, it undergoes many different phases and metamorphoses as it passes through an astounding variety of environments. And similar to other residents of and visitors to California, our water drop cannot remain isolated, as it often interacts and merges with other drops and its dynamic surroundings. This is a captivating story of adventure that alternates from scenes of peace and quiet solitude to extreme turbulence and chaotic violence, all powered by nature. The difference between our drop and your favorite superhero story is that this saga is plausible and our water drop and others like it are having direct and indirect impacts on all of us every hour of every day. 

Our story is organized into three parts. The first part (Web Page 1) is mostly a meteorological experience that follows the water as it rides through the atmosphere above the North Pacific Ocean all the way to California and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The second part (Web Page 2) is mainly a hydrological adventure that shadows our water as gravity pulls it down the mountain slopes, into the Merced River, through Yosemite and into the Central Valley, and finally back out into the Pacific Ocean. The third part (Web Page 3) is a sort of glossary that explains some of the more technical terms and concepts used throughout this riveting saga; it is intended to provide you with a clearer understanding of the science behind the story and the scenery. When discussions deserve more detailed scientific explanations, they are flagged with “(E)” and a numbered notation in the text so that you can quickly refer to the glossary in Part III on Web Page 3, where you will find a more thorough explanation that might prove helpful.       

Every day, 40 million Californians watch water flow out of their faucets or down their streets or through streams or in to various reservoirs and lakes. They might catch raindrops or snowflakes and then marvel at how water in the soil is absorbed by all the plants and animals around them for essential nourishment. Where did that water come from and where is it going? The mystery unfolds here as we follow a California water drop.

Part I: A Wild Ride to California

It all “started” in the North Pacific Ocean when surface water gained enough energy to evaporate into a passing air mass that was not yet near saturation. Another way to word this is that the air temperature was higher than its dew point temperature, so that the relative humidity remained below 100%; and so the air retained its capacity to hold more water vapor, or water in the gaseous phase (E1). Countless billions of water vapor molecules that added up to tons of H2O were absorbed by this air mass as the total amount of water vapor in the clear air (E2) increased over time. As more water molecules were absorbed, the cooler air parcels eventually approached saturation and a few variable, innocuous clouds began to condense in some of the air parcels at various altitudes in the stable air column.

Then, a very cold, dense, heavy air mass slid east off the frigid Asian continent and over the North Pacific and changed everything. It wedged under our relatively warmer and lighter air column and lifted it, creating instability and turbulence (E3). As our air mass ascended, it quickly cooled to its dew point temperature. Each of the innumerable billions of tiny water droplets organized around water-seeking condensation nuclei known as hygroscopic nuclei and our water drop was no exception. It condensed and grew and successfully competed for available moisture by forming around a tiny, suspended, salt particle (E4). As the slightly salty water drops grew in the saturated air, accelerated condensation released latent heat, adding more energy to the surrounding clouds during the change of state from vapor to liquid water drops (E5). Many of the drops, including ours, began to freeze as they were lifted to higher altitudes where temperatures were well below freezing, releasing a little more latent heat during their change of state, encouraging more vertical development in the clouds. 

This became an unstable environment where towering clouds were organizing into a massive low pressure system with its rising air masses. The growing storm took on characteristics of a middle latitude cyclone. Our water drop-turned –ice crystal was caught in the winds spiraling into the low in a counterclockwise direction. Stronger pressure gradients pulled the ice crystal’s air parcel toward its left and into the center of low pressure, but the Coriolis effect (caused by the spinning Earth) was simultaneously pulling our ice crystal and its surrounding air parcel to its right (E6). This natural tug-of-war was joined by centripetal and frictional forces that exerted their influence as our ice crystal and its air parcel continued spiraling counterclockwise toward and around the strengthening low pressure storm. It was caught in fierce, gale-force winds as it collided with billions of other water drops and pieces of ice in the clouds. Our ice crystal alternately ascended and froze in updrafts and descended and partially melted in downdrafts; but it never made it to the surface, as opposed to some others that precipitated as snow, sleet, rain, or hail, or others that evaporated into the air before reaching the surface (E7).                

Our developing middle latitude wave cyclone was considered to be an Aleutian Low since it originated near the Gulf of Alaska. It grew to more than 1,000 miles in diameter as appendages of warm and cold fronts organized and spiraled around it (E8). Upper level winds began steering the entire system east, toward the West Coast. These powerful high-altitude winds, which peak in a cylindrical core that we call the jet stream, sheared off tons of ice crystals and carried them away to the east from the top of the storm. Simultaneously, more water vapor was being absorbed and incorporated into the base of the storm from the moist environment closer to the surface. Still, our ice crystal/water drop managed to hold together and remain in the storm system. As those upper level winds shaped a deeper longwave trough in the westerlies (E9), the entire system began drifting southeast toward the West Coast. Our storm system was transporting our water drop/ice crystal to California as the wild ride continued.

As the storm approached California’s north coast, its counterclockwise rotation pulled in a plume of warmer, moist air from the subtropics up ahead of it. Our ice crystal was caught near this intrusion and it nearly melted back to become a water drop…until it swung around the low and encountered a colder air mass pulled down from the Gulf of Alaska, freezing it again. Through days of freezing and thawing and growing larger and smaller around that initial microscopic salt particle, racing around the low and across the Pacific with surrounding air parcels, our water drop/ ice crystal had somehow survived. And now it was embedded in a definitive cold front associated with the mother low, all marching across the California coast. It rode in the towering and turbulent cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds of the cold front as it swept down the coast and inland.

As the front carried up and over the Coast Ranges, embedded air masses were forced to rise even faster, creating more instability (E10). Ours became one of the tons of ice crystals that grew larger by accretion in the ascending saturated air until it was so heavy, it fell toward the ground near the Bay Area. Though many other giant crystals landed there just after melting, ours encountered another powerful updraft that lifted it higher into the clouds. It rode these clouds with the cold front all the way over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where they were lifted even higher, up to 30,000 feet. During this orographic lifting, additional moisture attached to our ice crystal so that it finally grew too heavy (E11). And so it fell into the high country of Yosemite, crunched between tiny air pockets with billions of other snowflakes that may have similar stories (E12).

That winter storm delivered copious amounts of low-elevation rain and high-elevation snow as it swept through northern and central California. Water drops and ice crystals similar to the one we have followed soaked into soils and accumulated on surfaces from the Klamaths and Cascades, to the Coast Ranges and Sierra Nevada, and in the valleys that separated them. The cold front even held together long enough to spread lesser amounts of precipitation into thirsty southern California (E13). But as the upper level trough continued drifting east, the storm and cold front that it carried was forced up over those major mountain ranges. The rising air on the west side of the mountains squeezed out and then dumped most of the remaining moisture there in the form of orographic precipitation. In contrast, by the time the system cleared the peaks and descended down the leeward, or rainshadow, sides of the mountains, it was in disarray and moisture starved (E14). Though some showers would also fall over the mountains of the Basin and Range to the east, our ice crystal had already dropped out over Yosemite, just before the at least temporary demise of this once-powerful Pacific storm system.

Our large snowflake that fell out of the storm that winter night entered a dramatically different environment in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It settled and piled up with billions of other snowflakes and ice pellets into Yosemite’s high country, a place of solitude with a kind of striking calm and quiet that few of today’s humans will ever experience. There were no people for many miles in this mountain wilderness, where even the animals had taken shelter. It was a deafening silence, as the fluffy snow seemed to absorb any sound that dared propagate through this frigid winter wonderland. An occasional clump of snow would fall to the surface from the limbs of a nearby overburden Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) or other tree species in this subalpine forest. Our giant snowflake was eventually buried below layers of other snowflakes delivered from this and subsequent winter storms. Quiet and calm buried in more silence, squashed together, waiting for a warming sun that wouldn’t come for weeks.

But as with the other raindrops and ice crystals that fell across the state during this latest winter storm, there are plenty of surprises, dramas, and excitement to come in our story, as we follow the continuing adventures of this water drop in California.

The post Adventures of a Water Drop, California Style first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

It was dinnertime when serpentine seismic waves suddenly began rippling and then rolling through our creaking house. We watched and braced ourselves as the light fixture hanging above the trembling dinner table began swaying, as if to dance in choreography with other objects that were not solidly secured. Seasoned Californians who have experienced too many tremblors over the decades recognize these seismic waves, lasting several seconds or more, as eerie messengers propagating from a strong but distant earthquake, perhaps hundreds of miles away. This version of California vertigo is quite different from the short jolts and lurches of smaller quakes originating from nearby epicenters. Thankfully, the undulations subsided several seconds later, leaving little or no damage here, so that we could connect to the best media to answer our questions: How big was this one, who and where were the latest distant victims, and could we expect more or even greater terra convulsions? Thanks to technologies scientists have developed in recent years, and we have explored in previous stories on this web site, the answers came within minutes, a mere instant compared to the hours of anxious anticipation that would pass after sizable earthquakes in past decades. 

Though some shaking was felt as far away as Sacramento and San Diego and Las Vegas, the epicenter and greatest damage was located in the sparsely populated desert about 120 miles (195km) north of major southern California cities. Their seclusion could not spare the victims of small communities around Trona and Ridgecrest or the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake from violent shaking that cracked buildings, set fires, crumbled walls, threw mobile homes off their foundations, and destroyed infrastructure until more than $1 billion damage was done. It would be recorded as another powerful earthquake, but perceived as another case of how most Californians dodged the dreaded “Big One” bullet. 

This was the largest (M7.1) in a series of earthquakes that fractured and violently shook the mostly remote desert floor of Searles Valley and the adjacent rugged desert mountains to its west during the first week of July 2019. It was also the largest earthquake to hit within the borders of California in two decades. Interestingly, the Hector Mine earthquake of 1999 and the Landers quake of 1992 were similar temblors just above magnitude 7 that also sheared dramatic cracks and horizontal and vertical displacements of several feet on the desert floor to the south; they also tore through remote desert regions, sparing distant population centers from major damage. An image in our publication shows this author standing next to a vertical fault scarp of more than 6 feet (2 meters) high, lifted in less than 30 seconds by the Landers earthquake. These major seismic events in our remote deserts contrast with the disastrous and deadly 1989 Loma Prieta quake (M7.0) in the Bay Area and the 1994 Northridge cataclysm (M6.7), two of the most costly natural disasters in U. S. history up to those times, both with epicenters under or near major cities, but both leaving less conspicuous surface fissures that were a lot more difficult to find and measure. 

Scientists named these more recent July 2019 tremors the “Ridgecrest Earthquake Sequence”, including that largest July 5^th M7.1 event described at the start of this article. It was preceded by a major foreshock of M6.4 about 34 hours earlier, which had likewise been preceded by a series of smaller foreshocks. That first big M6.4 tremor on July 4, and its foreshocks, activated a southwest-northeast-trending fault across Searles Valley, causing noticeable left-lateral displacements. The larger M7.1 main event and its aftershocks spread along a northwest-southeast-oriented fault with dramatic vertical and even more dramatic right-lateral displacements on the desert floor that were locally greater than 12 feet (>3.5 meters). These two perpendicular faults cross in Searles Valley; the complexity of these displacements resembles major geologic structures in the region. They are all part what geologists have labelled the Eastern California Shear Zone.

Just to the south of Searles Valley, the east/northeast-trending Garlock Fault (transverse to most other California geologic structures) is the most dramatic left-lateral feature on the state’s landscapes. A series of aftershocks were measured along this Garlock Fault as part of this sequence that started with left-lateral faulting in the Searles Valley. In contrast, north and northwest of Searles Valley are the numerous Basin and Range horsts and grabens of uplifted rugged mountains and down-dropped desert valleys cut along more common right lateral and vertical faults that trend north into the Basin and Range’s Death Valley, Panamint Valley, Owens Valley, and their adjacent mountain ranges. The main 7.1 earthquake (more aligned with tectonic activity and geologic structures common to the north) was followed by aftershocks that eventually rippled all the way up toward Olancha and the Owens Valley, which is also being dropped down below the dramatic vertical faulting that lifts the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. You might imagine how extensional forces are tearing at the crust in this region as the Pacific Plate to the west shears toward the northwest and away from this western edge of the North American Plate. And so, there is Searles Valley, at the northern edge of the Mojave Desert and the southern edge of the Basin and Range, being broken by tectonic forces common to two major physiographic provinces.

Such recent and ancient tectonic activity has lifted adjacent and more distant mountain ranges above a downwarped Searles Valley. An amazing mélange of rock formations many millions of years old have been exposed on these desert mountain slopes. Those rocks with their assorted chemistries continue to weather and crumble into smaller pieces that can be transported by wind or the rare downpours that will deliver mud and debris flows through desert canyons and into the valleys. These materials are further broken down into finer sediments and dissolved chemicals that can be deposited on valley floors. With no outlets to drain these inland basins, they are stranded and often baked into desert playas with their high concentrations of salts. 

But it hasn’t always been so dry here. More than 11,000 years ago, when the climate was cooler and wetter and glaciers were carving the distant Sierra Nevada, a chain of Pleistocene lakes connected many of these desert basins. You can also learn more about them in our publication. Searles Valley filled with more than 600 feet (about 200m) of water. These inland lakes would eventually vanish as conditions evolved into the warmer and drier periods that ended the Ice Ages and characterize today’s climates and landscapes. Thick layers of minerals were precipitated as the trapped waters evaporated over thousands of years. Brief wetting and shallow flooding during occasional wet periods delivered and concentrated more minerals into these desert basins to be dried and baked. These carbonates, sulfates, borates, and halides rich in sodium and potassium have encouraged commercial mining operations here ever since prospector John W. Searles recognized their value. Searles established the San Bernardino Borax Mining Company in the 1870s and gained attention for using his mule teams to haul borax out of Searles Valley, through Salt Wells (AKA Poison) Canyon, so that it could eventually be delivered all the way to San Pedro.  

After Searles’ death and throughout the 1900s, mining companies that operated in this valley evolved through good and bad times with different owners and names. The small company town of Trona also grew as the railroad made it more accessible since the early 1900s; the highway (today’s 178) made further connections. By the mid-1900s, Trona had become a mining boom town with a population soaring over 6,000. Today, Searles Valley Minerals continues to pump brine from below the mostly dry lake so that it can be processed into an astonishing variety of tons of valuable mineral products that include borax and boric acid.

And it’s not all about work. More than a thousand mineral and geology enthusiasts flood the valley during the annual October Gem-O-Rama, when Trona and surroundings are packed with excited visitors who participate in field trips sponsored by the Searles Lake Gem & Mineral Society. The few small local museums, stores, and eateries become the center of at least 36 hours of fame when folks show and share their rock and mineral and lapidary arts collections, and venture out on the playa. They are guided to collect spectacular crystals that include some of the finest samples of six-sided hanksite in the world and beautiful specimens of pink halite that have been stained by salt-loving bacteria. These annual gatherings are advertised as the most exciting mineral collecting field trips in the U.S. (After more than 75 years of tradition, these treasure hunts were temporarily cancelled in 2019 due to lingering infrastructure damage from the earthquakes, and scratched again during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.)  

We can appreciate that had it not been for the tectonic activity that has been dropping and isolating these desert basins and lifting surrounding mountain ranges, these mineral-laden desert playas would not exist. It is more than ironic that the seismic activity of July 2019 we examine here had visibly damaged one of the tall Searles Valley Minerals chimneys that erupt as dominant landmarks above this valley, as if humans were trying to recreate the nearby Trona Pinnacles.

The July 2019 Ridgecrest Earthquake Sequence even knocked a few of the more precarious rocks and boulders down from those Trona Pinnacles across the valley. This is a roughly 15-square-mile accumulation of tufa spires that rise over 100 feet above Searles Dry Lake. These towers that define natural landscape oddities were forming more than 11,000 years ago as underground springs transported calcium up to meet the carbonates that were becoming more concentrated in the evaporating inland lake. Algae bonded to these calcium carbonate deposits, growing the tufa reefs that emerged as the drying and warming climate finished off the lake. (You might notice some of the stranded ancient shoreline contours, or strandlines, along slopes that ring the valley.) As a National Natural Landmark, the Trona Pinnacles have earned recognition from landscape admirers and gained attention in the numerous movies and TV productions that have exploited them, often as background scenery to simulate the topography on other planets, at least in our imaginations.

We can also blame tectonic activity for building the Coast Ranges and Sierra Nevada Mountains to the west, as they have been blocking moist air masses that would otherwise invade from the Pacific and bring precipitation and accumulated runoff that might dissolve and dilute these mineral deposits.  As with other California desert basins, air masses can only invade Searles Valley by flowing down the very mountains that have already wrung out moisture from otherwise promising storms, resulting in more compressional heating and drying by the time they reach the valley floor, at about 1,700 feet above sea level. With average annual precipitation below 4 inches (<10cm), exceptionally low specific humidities, and relative humidities frequently below 10%, this alkaline dust bowl remains nearly as dry as Death Valley and one of the driest places on Earth. You can also thank the dry continental air masses for summer daytime high temperatures that average well above 100 degrees and overnight lows in winter that average around freezing. Winter’s coldest storms can even deliver a rare dusting of “dry” snow. Abundant sunshine rules year round, but radiation escapes quickly and temperatures usually plummet after sunset. Add the occasional fierce winds and you have classic desert extremes that many people, plants, and animals may consider hostile.

And so it is not surprising that the plants and animals that survive around here must be adapted to extreme aridity and the wild variations in radiation and temperature. Although you may encounter Joshua Trees and other high desert woodlands while climbing into cooler and more moist surrounding mountains, the valley is only decorated with the most resilient desert scrub (such as desert holly) and brief spring wildflower blooms. As you approach the floor of the valley, limiting factors multiply, as only the most salt-tolerant plants can survive in what becomes an increasingly toxic soil. Parts of this desert erupt with activity during the brief spring blooms that can attract many animal species. These include a wide variety of insects, various herbivores, and their predators. Ravens, prairie falcons, and peregrine falcons may soar above horned lizards, desert iguanas, kangaroo rats, desert tortoises, coyotes, and kit foxes. Some species, such as falcons and tortoises, are highly sensitive to human disturbances in these fragile ecosystems. Please remain especially distant from falcon nests, as they are often built in the very cavities that people enjoy exploring.

Beyond social media, today’s Searles Valley and its Trona is connected to the world mostly through the many human passersby on Hwy 178 who are headed for Death Valley National Park or other popular ecotourist hot spots. Still, more powerful global connections exist that may not, at first, be as evident in this isolated desert town. The dominant company (Searles Valley Minerals) is a subsidiary of a major international corporation as it ships tons of mineral products each day to California ports and then to at least 52 different countries. The community is dependent on this company that provides necessities for its residents and employs more than 700 people. Many of the other families are anchored by workers who provide essential services in this company town.

After the July 2019 earthquakes hit, Trona’s people (less than 2,000 within census-designated Searles Valley, but thousands more in surrounding communities) and its schools and its cultures were thrust into the national and global spotlights. Clamoring for the latest compelling stories, national media converged on and then unveiled what some popular culture urban observers considered foreign or unimaginable, as folks weighed the advantages and disadvantages of living in such seclusion. For instance, it was shown that roughly 250 students populate the Trona Joint Unified School District that includes one elementary and one high school. When the local high school (The Tornadoes) football team gained praise for training on the only known all-dirt field in the nation, the power of limitations quickly became apparent. The harsh climate and high salt content in the soils and the lack of financial resources eliminated traditional turf options on what became known as “The Pit.” Unreliable attendance from the small pool of young athletes necessitated 8-man football. As unlikely students and other locals were interviewed, a common thread emerged: the kids and adults here are tough and their resilience would carry them through earthquake recovery in this place that requires adaptations to limitations.

The power of social media continues to add to the push and pull factors that tempt young people and others to move out and on, toward what they may perceive as better and more exciting opportunities. It certainly is not the booming mining community that grew to over 6,000 people in the mid-1900s. But you will also find great pride within the people and cultures that have developed in this community. You don’t see locals running on the endless treadmills that torture California city dwellers struggling just to make ends meet so they can pay rents or mortgages that rank highest in the nation. Here, the average cost of a home is well below the national average; you can still buy a modest house on a large lot for less than $100,000. There are multiple apartments and small houses around the greater region (that includes Ridgecrest) renting for less than $1,000/month. Seismologists and engineers have already used some of them as examples of how modern earthquake building codes kept damage and losses in the region much lower in the relatively new construction, compared to the oldest structures. The result is more housing inventory remained after the earthquakes so that fewer people were tempted or forced to move on to those other horizons and opportunities. 

This dusty, solitary place feels perfectly separate and disconnected from the mild climates and overcrowded, unaffordable giant urban centers closer to the coast, on the opposite sides of the great California ranges. Searles Valley may even appear other worldly to urban dwellers celebrating their popular cultures. Here is where primary extractive industries fuel a different kind of economic system where the cost of living and household incomes remain well below the state average. It’s easy to find peace and quiet, there are more than enough bright stars to count at night, and a wealth of desolate, crystalline desert and mountain landscapes call out to the adventurer. Life is slower paced within these more traditional cultures where neighbors know one another and people may live and celebrate “Trona Strong.”

Searles Valley and other remote places may define the other California, but they are powerfully connected to the world and to rest of us by a lot more than natural resources, the chemicals we use each day, and social media. These connections become especially evident when seismic waves ripple through our communities from another distant and different place. They will announce the latest earthquake that is building mountains and rearranging landscapes and creating new victims of the very powerful forces that continue to sculpt such a spectacular and diverse California. Nature will connect us whether we like it or not. We wonder: which landscapes are soon to be rearranged and who might be the next “victims”?

This story was informed by scientists from the United States Geological Survey, Seismological Society of America, Southern California Earthquake Center, California Geological Survey, Bureau of Land Management, and the Searles Lake Gem and Mineral Society. 

A few other sources:

View this short video about Trona, created by ghost towns and mines enthusiast Ray Dunakin, just three weeks after the earthquakes:

Here is the Bureau of Land Management introduction to Trona Pinnacles: https://www.blm.gov/visit/trona-pinnacles

Here is information about the Searles Lake Gem and Mineral Society’s Annual Gem-O-Rama Field Trips: http://www1.iwvisp.com/tronagemclub/General-info.htm

Check out the Kim Stringfellow’s Mojave Art Project and her coverage of the annual Gem-O-Rama on KCET:
https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/gem-o-rama-mojave-playa-interventions-part-ii

The post Desert Quakes and Ancient Lakes: Geopostcards from Searles Valley first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

The stories and images and data continue to resemble science fiction rather than anything we thought we could experience, even after the warning signs from previous years that have been outlined in our publication and this project. As of this writing, more than 20 out-of-control wildfires have been burning for weeks that include the first, third, and fourth largest wildfires in state history. By the middle of September, 2020, more landscape burned (well over 3 million acres, more than 3% of the entire state) compared to any other year as we just entered into our traditional fire season. (By mid-October, more than 4 million acres (4% of the state) was scorched.) Though California fires raged from Oregon to the Mexican border and from the coast to the Nevada border, neighboring western states were also burning, roughly doubling the total charred acreage. Entire towns have been leveled in Washington and Oregon as 1 out of 10 residents in Oregon were under evacuation orders. Heroic firefighters and other public servants and volunteers have been exhausted trying to establish a sense of order while surrounded by an atmosphere that feels as out-of-control as in any time in state history. The apocalypse red and orange skies of smoke that blanketed our state have sickened millions. How did we get here so quickly and how will we get out of this mess?

We have dedicated a lot of time and space in our publication and on this web site to research that might help us understand the fires we are experiencing. We know that four of the big culprits are climate change, forest and wildland management, the introduction of nonnative invasive species, and our reckless encroachment into wild places. (You will find a more detailed essay about forest management after the end of this story.) But it is our unforgivable historical ignorance about the natural systems and cycles that surround us in Mediterranean environments that are adapted to and even sculpted by occasional fires, which brings these factors together to create the most deadly and disastrous fire storms.

We know that our cool, wet winters nurture growth, but are followed by long, dry summers that can dehydrate the hardiest plant communities and challenge them to survive, even in average years, until the first rains of autumn. The iconic climate that helped make California powerful and famous has partnered with climate change, and is now threatening to destroy us. The curse of the wildlands urban interface (known as WUI) is that we dared long-established natural forces by ignoring them to develop and expand our at-risk communities, forcing nature to teach us painful lessons about who is in charge.    

This summer’s nightmare started last winter when parts of central and northern California (such as the Bay Area) suffered from another record drought that included the entire January-February period that normally marks the peak of the rainy season, and the first February ever with no recorded precipitation. By spring, expanses of northern and central California were left with only about half of their average total precipitation and far less than even southern California received for the season. We walked you through this geographically inverted rainy season in a previous story on this web page.

Summer began relatively mild, but there were hints of trouble to our east. A strong and stubborn high pressure system anchored over the desert southwest and occasionally wobbled toward southeastern California during July. This blocked out most monsoon moisture and compressed the air to produce record heat in Arizona and New Mexico that encroached into California’s southeastern deserts. By the end of July, much of Arizona (including Phoenix) had broken several high temperature records, including the hottest month ever recorded and – by far – the greatest number of days with temperatures above 110. Their heat continued into August, but the ominous high pressure system began to expand and migrate west toward California and Nevada.

California’s deserts had already been baking, but the high center was strengthening and its compressionally-heated air masses were nudging toward the Golden State. Inland temperatures sizzled until Death Valley topped out at 130 degrees in mid August. This approached the hottest temperature (134) ever recorded there, but it could be the hottest temperature ever confirmed on Earth at an official weather station with a reliable thermometer (see an earlier story on this web site). By this time, record high temperatures were being recorded around the state, particularly at inland stations closer to the center of upper level high pressure.

The strength and position of this high pressure system was remarkable, not just because it clamped a lid on the already heated air masses that plagued California. The clockwise motion of air spinning around the high connected with tropical moisture and disturbances west of Mexico, driving them from south-to-north off and along the California coast. (This monsoon-style moisture train usually flows from Mexico up into the desert southwest during late summer as a smaller high pressure center normally positions closer to the four corners region.)

Moist, unstable air masses gradually veered toward the northeast around the massive high and ahead of a counterclockwise spinning low pressure system off the Pacific Northwest coast. Batches of subtropical moisture, exhausted tropical disturbances, and instability flowed up the coast and inland into central and northern California. The bands of moisture had just enough energy to trigger spectacular electrical storms that trained off the ocean toward the coast (where summer thunderstorms are almost unheard of in the normally stable summer air masses) and over inland mountains. But the mostly high-based cumulonimbus clouds often didn’t drop enough rainfall to snuff out the hundreds of fires sparked by thousands of lightning strikes that lit up mountain slopes from the coast to Nevada. Last winter’s drought would conspire with the unusual “dry” lightning and the intense heat wave to produce the most destructive series of fires in California history.

Eventually, the powerful high pressure system that helped produce these conflagrations weakened and backed off. A relatively cooler onshore flow gave especially northern Californians a brief chance to catch up with the numerous fires.

But, another powerful high pressure quickly built over the state by early September before the fires could be controlled. As forecast, it eventually anchored just inland over Nevada and wobbled over California and Oregon, eventually squeezing up against a deep, early-season upper level low dropping down the east side of the Rocky Mountains. Intense pressure gradients between the two systems compressed very dry air masses and sent them toward the coast as an offshore flow that was further compressed down mountain slopes, heated, and dried. National Weather Service warnings had become reality.

These unusually early-season Diablo winds in northern California and Santa Ana-like winds in southern California rejuvenated the existing fires and fanned new fires like blowtorches. It is notable that firefighters in Oregon used “blowtorch” to describe “powerful winds from the east that blasted fires down mountain slopes to incinerate entire towns.” These accounts from Oregon are very familiar to Californians during autumn, but this was only Labor Day weekend.

Aloft, the center of the towering, high pressure air mass even breached historic thresholds of 600 decameters (or 6,000m) altitude. This measures the height of 500mb pressure (roughly halfway through a column of air in our atmosphere, that midpoint averaging around 5,600m altitude (about 18,000 feet)). Temperatures soared over 100 degrees along the coasts from San Diego to San Francisco.

A few miles inland, scores of records were broken, and some of them were the highest temperatures ever recorded for those locations. In southern California, the hottest temperatures ever recorded west of the low deserts included Woodland Hills at 121 F (highest ever in L.A. County) and Chino and Fillmore at 120. Downtown L.A. peaked at 111 degrees, while numerous coastal valley locations also breached 110. Just across the border, coastal Tijuana, Mexico, reported 109 F. Farther north, Solvang and San Luis Obispo breached 120 degrees. Stockton heated to 111 and Napa hit 120. UC Berkeley Lab, at about 888 feet elevation, experienced one day with a high of 108 degrees F and an overnight low of 87. Calfire crews and local firefighters were outgunned by nature as fires exploded and tore through plant communities and human communities. All of this leaves us with scenes of unprecedented devastation. 

Besides the communities and homes that have burned throughout the west, an area larger than some eastern states has been scorched. Entire national forests were shut down to protect visitors from getting trapped after so many were rescued, while the less fortunate never made it out of more remote landscapes. It would take weeks or more to find the remains of all the missing victims.

Meanwhile, it is not surprising that the measured air quality had never been so bad across the entire state for such a long period. Layers of smoke particles that had already interfered with the shorter-wavelengths of the visible spectrum (such as blues) are efficient in selectively scattering the longer-wavelength (closer to 0.7 micrometers) yellows, oranges, and reds of ROYGBIV toward the surface (known as Mie scattering), illuminating our skies in those colors. As multiple smoke plumes with particles of various sizes towered up through different layers of atmosphere, they encountered wind shear that spread them in different directions until smoke blanketed the entire state. The layers of smoke clouds grew thicker until forecasters had trouble predicting daytime temperatures that were more than five degrees cooler than under a smokeless sky. The smoke produced condensation nuclei that mixed with the marine layer to create thicker haze and smoky fogs near the coast. Subdued daytime high temperatures inland resulted in weaker afternoon temperature and pressure gradients that further calmed winds during the day.

The stagnant, capping high pressure system that followed the record heat wave resulted in gentle pressure gradients with relatively calm winds away from the fires that oscillated from slightly offshore to slightly onshore for days, swirling and settling the accumulating smoke. Besides the falling ash, smaller particulates lodged into our lungs. The eerie red and orange haze may have lasting effects on Californians’ health, just as the destruction of our ecosystems and landscapes will have lasting effects on plant communities, wildlife, and anyone who attempts to connect with nature in California. However, health officials’ research suggests that most of us will recover relatively rapidly compared to the slower process of succession that heals scorched ecosystems over many years. By the middle of September, a low pressure system approaching the Pacific Northwest would eventually usher in some refreshing breezes off the Pacific that pushed much of the smoke away and to the east of northern California. Traces of that smoke were noticed and measured across the continent all the way over the North Atlantic (see the NASA images at the end of this story).          

We will mourn the victims and use names to remember the largest fires (such as the August Complex that burned through September) in history. But every one of these latest worst “natural” disasters challenges us again to rethink our relationships with nature and to better understand the natural systems and cycles that determine whether and how we will survive and live and thrive in the Golden State. Our most recent jargon-gone-popular term, wildlands-urban interface (WUI), must also refer to the sky and the weather and climate that we all observe and interact with every day. So, we might not know what the coming autumn and winter have in store (except for the inevitable Diablo and Santa Ana winds and then the debris flows that will pour out of freshly-burned landscapes during winter storms), but we know that nature won’t be waiting for us to reconnect. We will continue our attempts to reconnect with you through our project and this web site. The following essay about forest management is one example.            

Our Tragic Comedy of Errors Goes up in Flames: An Additional Essay on Forest Management in 2020

It is necessary to pause here and respond again to the media and political frenzy that has erupted over the management of California’s forests. The story is complicated and there is plenty of finger-pointing to be done. But the research always directs us back to some fundamental historic problems caused by our national obsession with chasing short-term profits and solutions that have cost us lives and fortunes in the long run.

More than a century ago, the nation’s seemingly endless western forests were viewed by many as inexhaustible resources to provide building materials and other timber products. Our national forests were often valued by the tree and the acre as dense tree farms to be cyclically logged and replanted with the fastest-growing, most valuable species in homogeneous forests that produced the greatest short-term profits, sometimes at the expense of multiple uses. It was quickly recognized that fires cut in to those profits. One of the primary reasons for establishing and funding what became the U.S. Forest Service was to organize efforts to extinguish fires as soon as they erupted. Little was known about the long-term consequences of these policies, but we now know that they disrupted thousands of years of natural evolution and succession that had produced diverse, resilient forests with rich mixes of species adapted to occasional fires. Recently, we have realized the unfortunate results of this colossal experiment that was accidentally launched during the 1800s.  

Too often lost in these debates is how many of our trees grow on private lands in a state where only slightly more than half of the forests were managed by the U.S. Forest Service and more than 90% of our original forests have been logged at least once. Responsible, local, private timber companies know that sustainable logging results in healthier forests that retain their long-term value. But some of these smaller companies were consumed (especially in the late 1900s) by distant absentee Wall Street financiers and larger multinational corporations to pay off debts and gain quick quarterly profits. Too often, long-term forest sustainability was a second thought. This led to more reckless overlogging and mismanagement that we are still living with.

During recent decades, California has responded to these historic debacles with controlled burns and other forest thinning policies over relatively small areas. But, due mainly to lack of funding and pushback from local communities, ecotourist industries, air quality management districts, and other multiple users who are temporarily inconvenienced and negatively impacted by these efforts, scientists estimate that less than 10% of our forests are being properly managed with our more informed policies. Meanwhile, U.S. Forest Service funding for these healthier forest programs has been cut as federal budgets are depleted in attempts to extinguish conflagrations that are consuming communities and threatening lives. These short-sighted funding policies have led some to sarcastically rename the National Forest Service the “National Fire Service”.

Recently, local communities have been successfully organizing to decrease fire risks, in cooperation with the state and USFS, through the California Fire Safe Council. This is a big development in many of those wildland-urban interface (WUI) communities, where they have been thinning trees and brush and creating defensible spaces within and around their neighborhoods. These efforts even include annual property inspections with requirements that residents maintain defensible spaces around their properties. Note these excerpts from their web pages:
“The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) formed the California Fire Safe Council with the intent of seeing that local fire safe councils were formed with the single charge of educating the local public about fire abatement practices that can save their homes in the event of a fire.”
“Fire Safe Councils throughout California educate homeowners about community wildfire preparedness activities while working with local fire officials to design and implement projects that increase the wildfire survivability of their communities. Many Fire Safe Councils have successfully implemented such projects as hazardous-fuel-reduction projects, Community Wildfire Protection Planning, and homeowner training.”

You can see that, in recent years, many Californians have been actively and often aggressively implementing policies that decrease fire risks in their communities. But, within landscapes riddled with poorly regulated developments encroaching into fire-prone ecosystems, accumulated historical mismanagement, a political atmosphere that rewards short-sighted budget cutting, and accelerating climate change, it has been too little, too late for too many communities. We face an uphill battle even with aggressive, all-out, no-holds-barred course corrections, due to the synergy of other factors that we have repeatedly outlined in our publication and this web site.  

This is also because so many California fires start and burn in grassland, coastal sage scrub, chaparral, and woodland plant communities that will always grow dense and ripe for fire, but don’t involve forests of trees. Add aggressive, nonnative, invasive species (such as cheatgrass), that quickly dehydrate into flammable matchsticks from early summer until the next rainy season. Add other species that attack, weaken, and destroy our trees during unprecedented droughts, such as the bark beetles that feed on our conifers, and the mistakenly introduced Goldspotted Oak Borer that is now chewing through our Black Oaks and Canyon Live Oaks in some woodlands. Add climate change that is sucking the moisture out of plants and soils and you have the perfect science-fiction-like reality that we are living through.

Oversimplified stories about how Native Americans managed some California landscapes with fire are informative and useful, but they are only starting points in a state where more than 90% of fires are already started by humans. Things have changed. It’s the end of the world as we knew it and our short-term thinking and policies have created some complicated problems. We already understand how healthy humans need healthy ecosystems. Our challenge is to find long-term solutions and make long-term investments that will blend us back into the natural systems and cycles that nurture us, just as climate change transforms those systems.  

NASA Images Use Science and Technology to Display Awesome Nature

By the end of September, NASA had built some incredible images (using the latest remote sensing technologies) displaying how our biomass was burning into the atmosphere. They show West Coast smoke plumes as they were steered by surrounding pressure systems and transported east. We must share these remarkable images from that three day period, marking the end of our record heat and wind storms.

The post California Burning, 2020 first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

The two previous stories on our web site used NOAA National Weather Service data to focus on the latest 2019-2020 rainy season and then to examine long-term temperature and precipitation trends for selected California locations. These stories quickly generated a series of questions that must be addressed if we are to understand the science behind climate change in California. We thank the students in Dr. Jing Liu’s Weather and Climate class for asking the questions that inspired this latest so-obviously-necessary follow-up story.

Here, we will use some of the results from a comprehensive research project, Indicators of Climate Change in California, published by the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment in May, 2018. This wide-ranging study gathered available data and research, from a wealth of diverse sources, about how our climate has been changing and the impacts these changes are having on the Golden State’s natural systems and cycles and its people.

Discussions about climate change have too often become emotionally and politically contaminated, so we will strictly adhere to the scientific method as we present the facts and evidence that combine to help us understand climate change science in California. Our goal here, as always, is to maintain our integrity and build trust by presenting an objective analysis of another common issue or problem. So, we will stick to the facts to answer your questions. We challenge you to at least briefly put aside your political and personal biases so that we can objectively share this scientific analysis of climate change that is affecting every Californian, whether plant, animal, or human.

What are the natural causes of climate change in California?

Earth’s natural systems and cycles were causing and adapting to many types of dramatic climate change long before humans arrived and such fluctuations will continue long after we are gone. These gradual natural cycles that occur over many thousands or millions of years include changes in Earth’s tilt on its axis and its elliptical orbit around the sun and gradual changes in atmospheric chemistry. You only have to examine the spectacular glacial landscapes of the Sierra Nevada and Trinity Alps or the ubiquitous Ice Age fossils at such locations as the La Brea Tar Pits or Diamond Valley Reservoir to see that California was cooler and wetter just more than 11,000 years ago and again through cycles dated hundreds of thousands and even millions of years earlier. We examine much of this science and many of these landscapes in our publication.

Through succession, our ecosystems are capable of gradually adjusting to these oscillations that may take many thousands of years. But they are punctuated by shorter-term events such as the rare larger objects from space that can impact and devastate Earth, or the greatest catastrophic volcanic eruptions that spew climate-changing volcanic debris and gases into our atmosphere and can cause immediate global cooling lasting for many months. Sun spot cycles are among the perhaps less significant natural short-term climate influencers. Our recent understanding of ENSO (El Nino-Southern Oscillation) and PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) cycles remind us that large-scale changes in ocean currents off the California coast can also drive dramatic short-term shifts in our state’s weather and climate. But as scientists gathered more reliable evidence toward the end of the 1900s, it became apparent that the combined long-term natural oscillations alone would likely drive Earth into a cooler period. Just the opposite happened. 

What are the main causes of climate change today?

At the same time, meteorologists and chemists were measuring troubling changes in Earth’s atmosphere that were driven by human activity. For many prior decades, scientists understood that our atmosphere was not primarily heated directly from the top down by shortwave radiation emitted from the hotter sun, but primarily from the bottom up by longwave radiation emitted by land and ocean surfaces warmed by that initial sunlight. We all know this as the greenhouse effect. Without those greenhouse gases that allow sunlight in but then selectively absorb longwave radiation from Earth’s surfaces, California would freeze over and life as we know it would be impossible. The Golden State would quickly become the Frozen State.

We know that these greenhouse gases that include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrogen oxides, are the thermal regulators for our atmosphere and their concentrations are increasing fast. We now have far more CO2 in our atmosphere than during at least the last million years, as technologies help us push those reliable measurements further back into the geologic record. And we have measured and confirmed that the main source of these growing CO2, methane, nitrogen oxides, and other greenhouse gases is human activity that includes our burning of fossil fuels. Put into crude and oversimplified language, it’s as if we are rolling up the windows of our car on a sunny day. The shortwave heat from the sun enters through our transparent windows to heat the inside of our car, but the longwave heat energy can’t get out. As humans dramatically change the chemistry of our atmosphere, more heat is trapped and climates are adjusting relatively quickly while nature distributes this additional energy.

How is climate change affecting California compared to world trends?

In California and most of the rest of the world, we have warmed by more than 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (or about a degree Celsius) during the last century or so, although the rates of warming have dramatically increased since 1975. The many impacts include more frequent and dramatic weather anomalies that are challenging our natural and human systems to adjust and/or suffer severe and possible permanent damage. One of the many reasons we have labelled this new age the Anthropocene is that human-driven climate change is impacting every environment, every landscape, and every person, especially in California. Those noted natural cycles are still working in the background, but they seem to be overshadowed by human interference that is forcing this different kind of climate change. There are many other climate changes caused by humans beyond the chemistry of our atmosphere, such as the alteration of surfaces that is impacting Earth’s albedo and water cycles. As an example, robust urban heat islands are being measured in almost every California city. 

(It is important not to confuse our discussion here with the separate problem of ozone depletion high in Earth’s stratosphere, where, thanks to heeding and applying our science and technologies, we have found helpful solutions and have made life-saving progress over the last few decades.) 

Is the increase in greenhouse gases in California similar to global trends and how does this affect our climate?

Industries and other human activities emit more greenhouse gases around our urban areas, and so there are minor short-term spikes and dips that reflect human schedules and patterns around those areas. This is why we measure from remote stations, such as at the top of Hawaii’s volcanoes, far removed from those local sources and anomalies. But most greenhouse gases are quickly mixed and transported around the world and that is why the more recent measurements around California roughly match those made at more remote stations. This is also why we could shut off all emissions of greenhouse gases from California and see little immediate change when we measure their concentrations in the atmosphere. Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases everywhere in the world, their levels would only begin to slowly decline and it would take many decades before they returned to anything near their preindustrial revolution levels. After all, photosynthesis and our oceans can only gradually absorb the excess CO2. When you compare the GHG graphs to the earlier temperature graphs, you can see why the science points to the increasing global concentrations of greenhouse gases as driving forces responsible for most of California’s climate change today.

Are other pollutants causing climate change?

Yes, there are dozens of air pollutants that impact our health and some are contributing to climate change. For instance, some air pollutants that cause millions of respiratory illnesses and premature deaths are also reflecting solar radiation back into space before it can heat Earth’s surfaces, which may result in some cooling effects. These are examples of negative feedback mechanisms that can slow warming. It is ironic that necessary and successful efforts to clean up these particular air pollutants around our urban areas are making millions of people healthier and saving lives, but negating the pollutants’ sunlight-reflecting effects that could have slowed global warming a bit.     

Black carbon is a different example. Some types of black soot and other dark particles that are expelled from diesel engines and other human sources are capable of absorbing direct solar radiation and then reradiating it to heat our atmosphere. These darker particles are especially efficient absorbers of sunlight when they settle on snow and ice surfaces, decreasing albedo, causing them to heat and melt faster. This is another reason why our snow packs and ice fields are, on average, melting faster each year and our few remaining glaciers are retreating. Likewise, smoke and ash drifting from larger and more frequent wildfires in our state has also settled on snow and ice surfaces, accelerating their melting. These are examples of the synergy of positive feedback mechanisms that can speed warming. And the data show they are dominating the climate change balance sheet.

The good news is that California has drastically cut black carbon emissions that once settled in the homes and lodged into the lungs of people who lived near or downwind of the state’s major transportation corridors and ports. And, unlike greenhouse gases such as CO2, these pollutants usually settle out of the atmosphere within days.

How are California’s Precipitation Patterns Changing?

Previous stories on our web site addressed the wild annual swings in precipitation that are common in California. Most southern California stations exhibit a slight decrease in average precipitation when these extremes are smoothed during the last century or so, but statewide trends beyond the extreme years are not as notable as the increasing temperature trends.

Scientists recognize that rising temperatures are lifting snow levels as storms produce less snow and more rain events. Higher temperatures are not only forcing earlier spring melts and runoffs, but they are increasing evapotranspiration rates. This decreases the total water available for runoff and further dehydrates ecosystems dependent on water supplies, especially into later summer months. This is another reason why water-starved plant communities have been burning hotter and more frequently as the fire seasons have expanded and become more severe.

How Do These Changes Affect Our State’s Hydrology and Water Supplies?

California’s hydrologic environments are evolving with the changing climate. As less water is stored in snow packs, peak discharge in mountain streams and rivers is higher and occurs earlier, with more water flowing during and directly following storms. Gradual releases from watersheds that once nurtured ecosystems are being replaced with alternating severe floods and droughts. This is challenging the Department of Water and Power and other water agencies in their efforts to balance flood control, water storage and distribution, ecosystem management, and power generation.  

Is this why our droughts and floods seem to be getting more frequent and severe?

Viewing this data, it is no surprise that dramatic extremes from severe drought to flooding have cost California lives and many billions of dollars during single years of the last decade. Within the last ten years, the state’s worst drought in history ended with record flooding from relentless atmospheric rivers that nearly destroyed water project infrastructures, including Oroville Dam’s spillways.  

How are Our Ecosystems Responding?

Biologists, biogeographers, and other scientists are recording and researching how nearly every California plant community is in a process of accelerated succession, responding to these changes. In general, plant communities and their flora and fauna are migrating north and to higher elevations where possible. Semi-arid regions are turning more arid, grasslands are replacing chaparral and oak woodlands, chaparral and woodlands are replacing marginal pine forests, and drier pine species are invading some higher elevation conifer forests where average tree height is decreasing.

Are These Changes Causing More Devastating Fire Seasons?

Fire ecology is complicated, but the climate change examined here is clearly encouraging the increasing severity and frequency of our fire seasons. Some non scientists outside California have blamed the state’s forest management, but most of the recent largest and most devastating fires have ignited and burned through grassland, coastal sage scrub, chaparral, and oak woodland plant communities. Some others burned through pine and other forest communities that were carefully managed since they were adjacent to vulnerable developments. Others started and burned through forests that are managed by the Federal Government. All of these ecosystems and landscapes have one thing in common: they are adjusting to climate change and other human impacts that include the introduction of invasive nonnative species.

, seasonIs climate change altering California landscapes in other ways?

Yes. One example is how our few remaining high country glaciers have been dramatically receding in the Sierra Nevada. Once again, this is a common trend around the world and the data previously examined here explains why. As high country slopes are increasingly exposed, these gradually disappearing glaciers and ice fields will no longer supply precious late summer meltwater to riparian ecosystems at lower elevations, further exacerbating the warming and drought problems.

Additionally, sea levels have already risen up to 7 inches along parts of our coast as global ice melts and as sea water expands when it warms. This results in increasing frequency of coastal flooding events and the inundation of landscapes farther inland during storms and high tides. The rate of sea level rise is also increasing, but these rates vary by location. For instance, the far north coast around Crescent City experiences little total change as mountain-building tectonic activity has simultaneously been lifting that local coastline above the ocean surface. 

Accelerated groundwater pumping to alleviate water shortages during droughts has particularly impacted California valleys dominated by agriculture. As water table drawdowns have been measured in meters per year, surface subsidence up to several meters has been measured over many decades in places such as the San Joaquin Valley. In some coastal plains, such as the Salinas Valley, saltwater intrusion has contaminated aquifers several miles inland. Diversions of fresh water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, combined with other human activities, especially during drought years, continue to threaten water supplies, ecosystems, and landscapes as saltwater encroaches. Water insecurities resulting from less reliable rainy seasons and runoff years have exacerbated these problems.

Where in the state is climate change least and most noticeable?

As is the case globally, some California microclimates are changing faster than others, while a few may notice very little warming. Data suggests that warming in particular and climate change in general is less severe on the north coast and relatively greater as we move inland and toward the south. Decreasing average mountain snow packs are examples.

Is it possible that these climate change trends will end or even reverse?

This is an experiment that we have never run on such a grand scale, perhaps the greatest scientific experiment that humans have ever conducted on Earth, and so no person can predict the exact results in California. But the wealth of scientific studies confirm that the changes considered here will continue to accelerate as long as we continue adding GHGs to our atmosphere faster than nature can cycle them out. As an example, the COVID-19 pandemic at least temporarily slowed our production of all air pollution from transportation and industrial sources. The Golden State’s air quality improved and our production of GHGs slowed, but we continued to produce GHGs faster than nature could absorb them back into the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems and landscapes. No person knows if this will result in any noticeable slowing of climate change compared to what we would have otherwise experienced, but it certainly won’t stop it.           

What is the most impactful change that will make the greatest positive difference?

The common sense solutions to these problems are much easier and less controversial than we have been led to believe. First, use the energy we have as efficiently as possible. In the old-fashioned spirit of waste not, want not, we must require our engines and machines to do the maximum work while using the least energy possible. This goes much further than saving our natural resources and improving our air quality: it will save everyone a lot of money in the long run. This includes the simplest smart decisions such as buying cars and other vehicles that fulfill our needs while demanding the best mileage, and building the healthiest living and working spaces that waste the least energy.

Encouraging proper insulation, passive solar designs, and air flow that celebrate the microclimates where we build are other examples of investing in the short term to save in the long term, while improving our health. The COVID-19 pandemic brought our savvy architects back into the forefront, those who have pushed us to create living and working environments that are positioned and opened up to allow natural light and the fresh air flow that we know creates healthier, more productive indoor spaces. It is unfortunate that some Californians were misled into emulating the costly, closed-up built spaces common to more hostile climates such as Chicago and New York, only to look out the window to healthier and more comfortable California air that could flow in for free. There is no excuse for repeating these mistakes, particularly within our mildest-climates-in-the-world coastal regions.   

And, thanks to vastly improved designs with increasing efficiency, solar panels on roofs exposed to sunlight have become some of the least expensive sources of electricity and most rewarding long-term investments for homes and businesses. Today’s new solar panels often pay for themselves within ten years so they can deliver more than 20 more years of free power without generating all that air pollution. Building any new structure exposed to sunlight without solar panels in today’s sunny California helps define penny wise and pound foolish. 

These practical, common sense decisions signal our intelligence, as opposed to the insanity of sticking with outdated methods and technologies that trash the planet and our state and drain our bank accounts. It is nonsensical that some in our popular culture and media are still debating whether to pick these easiest, no-brainer fruits from the tree while they choose to remain stuck in vicious cycles of waste and destruction that result from short-term thinking. Just as with any attempts to improve our health and financial stability and well-being, we know that these practical long-term investments are not only the keys to our security, but they will help us blaze our path toward a brighter future. 

The good news is that California continues to lead the country and the world away from those archaic debates of 50 years ago and into a more promising twenty first century. Let’s hope that other states and nations will follow as the scientific evidence proves how Californians’ long-term future also depends on their short-term decisions. Since we have just scratched the surface here, we must now debate how we can use our ingenuity to further push that envelope of innovations that will allow us to reach toward a cleaner, healthier, and more efficient Golden State. We know that nature won’t be waiting around while we are debating.

Numerous California cities have built more secure futures by cutting waste and becoming more efficient. As an example, the organization known as Sustainable Works in Santa Monica has helped many thousands of individuals, businesses, students, and institutions save small and large fortunes as they also save natural resources and create healthier, more productive living and working environments. This success explains why Sustainable Works continues growing beyond any borders. Community organizations such as Climate Action Santa Monica have also successfully worked to educate and empower the public about these problems and their win-win solutions. These are examples, originating from within just one city, of the countless similar organizations and efforts in every region spreading positive ripples across the state. Meanwhile, government agencies are sharing best practices about how to become more efficient while we all save bundles of future taxpayer dollars.

There are also a host of independent cutting-edge communities in California that have made short-term investments to implement more sustainable and efficient energy practices, resulting in enormous long-term savings that drastically decrease residents’ carbon footprints. They include several Mutual Housing Communities around Sacramento at http://www.mutualhousing.com/
Additionally, though Muir Commons in Davis was the first new-construction cohousing development in the U.S., these communities have since appeared in nearly every California city: http://www.muircommons.org/
Though these communities that push the envelope and take us back to the basics may not be for everyone, they offer plenty of lessons about how we can more efficiently generate and use our energy resources.

We hope you have benefited from this California climate change question and answer session that wraps up our series of three weather and climate stories. We again thank all the people who gathered the wide range of research that was assembled in the publication of Indicators of Climate Change in California, published by the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment in May, 2018. We used many of their graphics here to answer questions since theirs represents one of the most comprehensive and credible publications that managed to assemble some of the most diverse research covering climate change in California to date. If you would like to see more details, go directly to the publication at: https://oehha.ca.gov/media/downloads/climate-change/report/2018caindicatorsreportmay2018.pdf

You might also consult the California Climate Change Center, a clearinghouse for climate change research in the state.

The post Climate Change in California: Questions and Answers first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

Since this story is only a quick snapshot in early April, 2020, we don’t know how much pain and suffering and destruction COVID-19 virus will finally leave in its wake. But as people (especially the most vulnerable, such as the already ill and elderly) are sick and dying, medical services are being strained beyond their capacities. Mental health experts are urging all of us to reevaluate and differentiate between what we perceive as inconveniences and real problems in our lives.

Our reactions to this pandemic are transforming the state’s people, cultures, landscapes, and economies faster than most could have imagined. How can anyone attempt to describe or predict the final extent of COVID-19 impacts on our state at this stage in the battle? We have an obligation to share at least a few relevant observations here as we continue to consider and research new ways to rediscover the Golden State. You are welcome to fill in the many gaps as we also invite you to explore with us a few iconic landscapes at this pivotal time in California history. All images (unless otherwise noted) were captured from the Malibu hills and coast to Santa Monica and Venice Beach during the first days of the lockdown. They were all taken from legally-accessible sites during early stages of the pandemic response, while adhering to all health guidelines. Some sites have since closed. We are all reminded that public officials are struggling to do their jobs, so be responsible and stay safe.

It is already clear that our state and our Rediscovering the Golden State project, at least for 2020, has evolved into two narratives: before and after COVID-19. The new Coronavirus and our responses to it are rewriting the human geography that we have researched and shared in our publication and our web page.  

An eerie, foreboding quiet has been cast over our city streets and many other private and public spaces, featuring odd AWOL-like human landscapes. It reminds us of those science fiction movies with images of hunkered-down neighborhoods waiting for the terrifying monster to stomp through. This tempts the geographer in us to rename the virus Godzilla-19. Will the monster destroy us or will we destroy ourselves and our communities preparing for and fighting it? After this pandemic spreads so much inconvenience, pain, and suffering, can a new and improved California emerge? If you are reading this after the crisis, you may already have formulated some answers.

As of the start of April, how have 40 million people in the most culturally diverse place on the planet reacted to our state shut down? At first, within otherwise seemingly abandoned cities and suburbs during daylight hours, some families could be seen walking and playing together in parks, beaches, and the other open public spaces that have become so precious to Californians, especially as we were blocked out of those meticulously planned private landscapes that were designed to encourage us to spend our dollars. More recently, officials have been closing even our shared public outdoor spaces to keep the virus from spreading, as some became overcrowded with visitors trying to escape their limited confines.

Rural Californians working in primary industries may have, at first, had to make the fewest adjustments to adhere to the temporary COVID-19 protocols. You might not have even noticed pandemic symptoms in some of the state’s more rural and remote communities where annual incomes and the cost of living are relatively low. The big exceptions include communities dependent on tourism and ecotourism, where their streets and hospitality businesses are left empty and severely damaged.

Common sense must rule as geographical and spatial epidemiologists monitor Godzilla’s destruction and work to educate us about the details. Will the monster have its way with California cities as it did NYC? Will the pandemic quickly infect the densest urban neighborhoods and gradually trickle into rural areas? Will it hit certain ethnic groups harder than others? We already know that the elderly are most vulnerable. Will the per capita infection and illness rates be higher in working class or wealthy communities, homeless or prison populations? Will changing seasons slow or accelerate the spread? Did our quick, proactive response slow (flatten) California’s per capita infections and deaths curves compared to many other states and nations, or was there something else about our geography that made us unique? There are too many questions and unknown variables in these uncharted waters during this uncertain spring, but the final maps promise to reveal fascinating mysteries and hidden tragedies.

We already declare many losers in economic geography, particularly in a state where such activities as tourism, transportation, manufacturing, international trade, entertainment, and services (each worth hundreds of billions of dollars) recently fueled our economic engines to soar over $3 billion, more than 14% of U.S. GDP. Sober fiscal realities become clear when you check the economic specifics in Chapter 10 of our publication: our state’s economy is being crippled by this devastating Godzilla. And the catastrophe is spreading faster than at any time in history: note the millions of able workers applying for unemployment.  

Past mistakes haunt us…again. While California was smart to boost its rainy day funds during the last decade of growth that built the 5^th largest economy in the world, the Federal Government debt was allowed to balloon in reckless fashion. The Godzilla-19 crisis promises to quickly deplete our once impressive state surplus, while the nation’s debt will skyrocket to historic and perhaps unmanageable or even unimaginable levels. We will all have enormous debt burdens that could last for generations and it will show in every future decision we make, from building infrastructure, to supporting education, and from funding our parks, to supplying vital social services. It is too late to encourage the discipline that could have built rewarding household and government rainy day funds. The rainy day has arrived.

Other industries, each worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually, are playing key roles in keeping us alive, sometimes literally. The global epicenter of biotechnology industries is in the Golden State, particularly from southern Orange County through San Diego County. Will treatments and cures for the COVID-19 scourge be discovered here? The high technology capital of the world remains in the Silicon Valley and has spread beyond the Bay Area, spilled in to the Central Valley, and leaped into coastal Southern California. These technologies have become crucial in supporting the schooling and working and social networking from home that has kept our economy from crashing, while guarding millions from getting sick. As just one example, it is no surprise that Zoom Video Communications is headquartered in San Jose. Other communications technologies and delivery companies have allowed millions of Californians to purchase and receive vital products without risky human contact. So it is true that if California sneezes, the nation will get sicker. All eyes necessarily turn to our overburdened health care industry.

The crash in service industries that require human contact and the inaccessibility of many technologies to low-income Californians promises to increase inequities, poverty rates, and the already record gap between the rich and poor. Those ubiquitous delivery trucks that have converged on higher income neighborhoods are serving far fewer working class households where there are people who have lost their tips and weekly paychecks and now can barely afford their necessities, much less pay for deliveries. Smaller, struggling businesses are folding or being gobbled up by those with the capital to ride out this unprecedented storm.

This pandemic offers too many opportunities to reexamine ourselves, our priorities, our neighborhoods, our landscapes, and how we evaluate the issues and solve the problems that confront us, the very topics we have been addressing in this project that has evolved throughout its more than 20 years. We are forced to consider potentially devastating impacts on the most vulnerable populations that include those stuck in poverty without adequate health insurance, more than 100,000 homeless people, and more than 100,000 prisoners in the state. We are startled to see how our living environments improve without the congestion, traffic gridlock, and air pollution that plagued many of our cities when the economy was growing full steam ahead. The pain and suffering brought by COVID-19 offers renewed opportunities to apply geography and “to place California’s human and physical resources, issues, problems, and landscapes in a geographic perspective”, as stated in the last chapter of our publication.

When faced with such a crisis, we are forced to refocus on geographic realities that we have too often ignored. In the long term, unfortunate synergies are growing from local to global scales, such as the effects of climate change, pollution, habitat destruction, the introduction of aggressive non-native invasive species, and our accelerated encroachment into wild spaces. These trends that define the Anthropocene also conspire to produce even more potent future Godzillas than the one we are fighting. And is everyone recognizing the uncanny parallels in our debates about how to handle this crises and more long-term environmental challenges such as climate change? Overreact by investing now and we might save ourselves in the long term at some short-term expense; underreact and we might allow an uncontrolled experiment with unknown consequences to run amok and destroy us. Should we ignore the scientific evidence that commands us to flatten the curve, we risk unleashing an unimaginable wrecking ball into our communities. This Godzilla has reminded us that nature is in charge no matter how we might try to ignore her. And so, as of today, most of our overreactions to this pandemic have turned out to be the proper reactions.

In a state and a world with economies that are fueled by trade and travel and other human interaction, there are many logistical reasons why we can’t erect the perfect barriers such as travel restrictions and quarantines that could quickly end future threats from the outside. But we can work to eliminate islands of inequities that exist in our health care systems, because these may be the petri dishes that nurture the next monster that erupts to produce the next pandemic. So much of our health and survival depends on our ability to – with clearer lenses – rediscover our surrounding environments and reimagine our communities as we view into this new world. Such success will require that we rely on the evidence and science-based decision making that makes us smarter and stronger so that we may better understand these complicated problems and muster the social cohesion required to solve them.    

This is more than our chance to become better prepared to fight an even deadlier biological Godzilla-20 or 21 that epidemiologists warn could attack us in the future. We might use this opportunity to reestablish healthier families and cultures, as the importance of household and neighborhood communication replaces alienation and isolation. Cooperation and community could replace selfish cynicism, tribalism, and hyper-competition for the few remaining scraps. Through it all, our appreciation and love for geography can be rekindled as we become more prepared for future disasters such as that catastrophic earthquake that is in our future. The least imaginative leaders have already forced us to confront moral and philosophical questions about the importance of money and wealth versus life and health, as if they could be neatly separated for conflict. This might be an opportunity to recognize how our economy AND public health are powerfully connected: sick workers operate sick economies; healthy Californians are more productive Californians.

While keeping my social distance in the checkout lines, I have done some rough surveys. Why were so many people hoarding products that are easily restocked by reliable supply chains, even during a crisis like this? After all, farmers must continue to bring their food to markets as it becomes edible. The California Grocers Association reassures us and demonstrates how the supply chain is intact and reliable, so what is fueling this irrational and wasteful panic buying? The other day, I asked the person in front of me why he had filled his cart with so many plastic bottles of water. He blamed it on orders from his wife, but like every other bottled water hoarder I’ve asked, his only answer was that “everyone else was doing it.” Yet anyone knowledgeable about our state’s water delivery systems knows that our inexpensive tap water is usually as good or better quality than plastic bottled water that costs as much as gasoline, except for very few neighborhoods and isolated communities suffering from locally contaminated water (especially groundwater) supplies. Still, companies pushing their bottled water have made fortunes off convincing millions of clueless Californians to waste their hard-earned money to buy something that is already offered to them almost for free, with or without a home filter. Meanwhile, the unnecessary plastic bottle waste piles up in our landfills and on our beaches while consumers drain their wallets to pay for something they don’t need. It’s another Tragedy of the Commons drama that can be eased with some knowledge of geography.

And spatial epidemiologists can tell you that riding your bike or walking with your family on the beach or a mountain trail is perfectly safe as long as you keep your safe social distance. Especially during these times, everyone can benefit from decreasing stress hormones, blood pressure, and heart rates in open and natural environments that can strengthen our natural immune systems and quell our nature deficit disorders. Enjoy neighborhood walks, find a garden, but keep your safe social distance. Still, there is pressure to close all of our calming public spaces during this crisis at the expense of our freedom to stay physically and mentally fit. Conflicts and debates quickly erupt as medical experts tell us there is no threat to anyone who observes proper social distancing in open air environments, while these activities often result in enormous improvements to our physical and mental well-being. What do you think is healthier personal and social behavior?…remaining cooped up behind four walls, or walking along an open trail in fresh air under an open sky with or without your family, while maintaining safe social distances?…disconnected inaction or engaged participation? A little bit more knowledge about diseases and our need to connect to our surrounding environments would help us make better choices.

Geography helps us understand why particular public parks and trails were forced to close after selfies and social media over-advertised them as escapes from the Godzilla drama. Parts of Marin County to Pt. Reyes, Newport and Laguna Beach, and other popular local, state, and national parks and nature trails adjacent to our largest urban areas were overrun and then first to close when the hordes were crammed dangerously closer than the social distance required. This heaps greater burdens on the fewer public spaces remaining open until they are forced to close under a cascading negative ripple effect. Unintended consequences take over. One- or half-day journeys to the open, expansive, calming places have been thwarted by closures sometimes encouraged by wealthy locals who are fortunate to live adjacent to the resources, but who might fear the crowds more than the virus. Tragedy of the Commons revisited.

We are challenged to imagine more sustainable ways of reacting and how we might eventually reopen our state and our lives, especially as this crisis carries on for months, particularly when the curve is finally falling. When the threat eases, more effort can be made to warn potential visitors about overcrowded open spaces so they can be avoided. Officials might coordinate with local volunteers to direct, disperse, and educate visitors along one-way loop trails and other outdoor experiences that encourage social distancing so that all parks and beaches might reopen. Alternating parking days permitting only odd or even license plates or birth years could cut crowds at other public areas. There are many other examples as simple as this one smart sign that read, “Our public parks are open. Please maintain safe social distance.”, until even that park was later closed. If you think these ideas are unworkable, here’s a chance to propose your own solutions instead of sitting back, watching, and complaining.

A wave of volunteers, cooperation, and social cohesion will be required to avoid dangerous congregating in our cherished open spaces so that we can conquer this monster. Our path toward freedom and sanity will require a bold vision and strategy, a labor-intensive effort that we haven’t seen in many decades. It will necessitate unprecedented coordination between local, state, and federal agencies and officials. But we cannot let this attack from nature further disconnect us from our physical geography, from what is really vital to our health and survival, the natural world that nurtures us. Without these herculean efforts, we may become the latest victims living through our five stages of grief over our many losses within our manufactured Tragedy of the Commons in a sort of Godzilla Meets the Twilight Zone landscape and culture.

Visiting any store, business, neighborhood, or public place during this crisis, you can’t help wishing that the late screenwriter, Rod Serling, could have lived to witness real people behaving as the characters in the stories he once imagined for us, the stories that could make us look in the mirror and love what we could be or hate what we have become.

You can see that there are many new and urgent reasons why we will be sharing more of our own stories about the Golden State to inform and to explore with you while we are all fighting together and finally recovering from this Godzilla-19 monster. It is a perfect opportunity to imagine how we can open a new door and live up to our potential to become the state we want to be. And as Rod Serling once declared, you unlock this door with the key of imagination. Stay tuned.

This snapshot story ends with the late Maya Angelou’s words that seem more relevant than ever: “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”

The post COVID-19 Attacks California first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.

By the time they swim all the way up the river, they are already turning dark and decaying as they are ready to spawn and running out of energy after an extended period of fasting. Human obstructions on the river that include the nearby Oroville Dam block them from making it farther upstream, so they are helped to spawn here. After the salmon enter the trap, CO2 puts them to sleep. Once out of the trap, males and females are sorted and their egg sacks and milt are extracted. Approximately 7/10 eggs will survive here, compared to only about 1/10 in the wild ,where the female must drop her eggs in choice stream locations and the scent or hormone must attract the male to fertilize them in a tempest of environmental hazards and uncertainties. In contrast here, small fish are nurtured within their yolk sacs within the controlled environment of the hatchery.

These programs became necessary when salmon populations were decimated by a familiar list of human impacts that include water pollution, climate change, introduced non-natives, overfishing of dwindling species, and one of the greatest threats along this river: habitat destruction especially caused by dams. Members of this new generation of maturing salmon are eventually released back into the river, where they will swim out to the Pacific Ocean to live for 3-4 years until many will again return right back up the very stream courses where they were hatched. (Note that this 3-4 year period sets delays in the effects of annual changes such as drought and flood. For instance, the low numbers expected for 2017 and 2018 were in response to the record drought that had ravaged the state a few years earlier.)       

It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of these specific efforts to save our state’s valuable waterways and fishing resources. Within our updated 4^th edition, we survey (in Chapter 6) California’s water resources, the ecosystems that they shape, and the great water projects that have transformed many of these landscapes. We also (in Chapter 9) survey the state’s commercial fishing industry that totals hundreds of millions of dollars each year. We show how fishing organizations and their publications have used surveys by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to underscore fishing’s importance. Using mapping and population software, they have estimated that about 2,800,000 anglers fishing in California spend about $2.4 billion supporting more than 35,000 jobs with a total economic impact of $4.6 billion in the state each year. This admittedly expanded multiplier effect considers manufacturers, boat builders, sales of fishing gear, and lodging and food services. The data prove that nurturing our waterways and fisheries is more than good environmental stewardship; it is essential to the long-term health of our economy and the health and quality of life for millions of Californians.                         

By March 2018, efforts to restore winter-run salmon were made public in the article with the link that follows. Though Battle Creek is north of the Feather River and Coleman Fish Hatchery is a national fish hatchery operated by the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife, the issues are hauntingly similar as various agencies and organizations must cooperate to solve these problems.        

• One Step Closer to Reestablishing a New Population of Endangered Winter Run Salmon
• The Battle Creek Plan
• Visit the Feather River Fish Hatchery

The post Got Salmon? Why We Should Save the Fish first appeared on Rediscovering the Golden State.