Climate change and drought concerns persist despite record-breaking precipitation

By YAN YAN HUSTIS HAYES — city@theaggie.org

On Oct. 24, Sacramento received a total of 5.44 inches of rain. This marks the largest 24-hour precipitation in over 100 years, breaking the previous record established in 1880. The weekend of rain also provided the North Sierra half the amount of rain in just one weekend than the entire region has received over the entire last year.

While it is tempting to view the rainfall as a turning point in California’s ongoing drought emergency, it follows an extremely dry period beginning in 2019. Associate professor of climate change impacts, Erwan Monier, warned that we should not expect the rain to continue into the winter season.

“We expect these coming months/year to continue to be drier than usual—the 2019-2021 period has been extremely dry,” Monier said via email. “The recent precipitation is an anomaly and should not be seen as the beginning of a wet year.”

The rainfall on the weekend of Oct. 23 was an extreme event, but one that we should expect to see more of. With climate change, extreme events such as these will become increasingly common in the coming years, according to Monier.

“We don’t necessarily expect substantial changes in the total amount of annual precipitation in California, but we expect the rainy season to shorten, meaning we expect more intense precipitation when it falls,” Monier said via email. “Similarly, we expect a longer dry season, meaning Fall and Spring will experience less precipitation.”

In addition to more extreme floods and droughts, California should expect increased heat waves, major snowpack loss and increases in wildfire severity. Climate change has created conditions in which environmental events tend to become more extreme, according to Monier.

“Essentially, we expect increases in both flooding and droughts, however counterintuitive it may be,” Monier said via email. “Think: when it rains it pours, and when it’s dry it’s extremely dry. Climate change has been and will continue to intensify these two extremes.”

Fifth year computer science major Stephanie Do was glad for the rain after the dry conditions of the past years, but also noted how quickly the rain subsided.

“I definitely think the rain is super good because of this drought we’ve been having,” Do said. “It’s so weird because Sunday was so rainy, but then it was normal the next days.”

With an increase in wildfires, drought conditions and record breaking heat waves to name just a few extreme events, the past three years have been especially difficult and unpredictable. Do explained that the coronavirus pandemic changed her outlook.

“It’s crazy because you obviously never know what’s going to be next,” Do said. “With everything that’s happened, the most pressing issue is COVID. That has really messed up my perspective.”

In addition to her concerns about the drought, Do explained that the wildfires are also a primary issue.

“I feel like all of my social media there’s been at least one person who’s been affected by the fires,” Do said. “The past couple of years we’ve seen how climate change has affected our experiences especially with the fire[s].”

Like Monier, faculty professor and cooperative extension specialist in water resources, Samuel Sandoval Solis, stressed that the recent rain does not mean the end of California’s water problems.

“This rain is not breaking the drought,” Sandoval Solis said. “It is a good start and it replenished the deficit in moisture in Northern California but we are by no means in a position to replenish two years of below normal conditions.”

Sandoval Solis emphasized that fighting climate change and mitigating its effects are not easy fixes.

“Modifying legislation and making a change takes time, takes time for us to figure out how to take showers, it takes effort and a change of mindset,” Sandoval Solis said. “We need to start thinking about how to cut down our water use”

It is important that individuals recognize the small ways in which they can use water smarter, rather than looking to the rainy season to alleviate the stress from California’s drought. Sandoval Solis encouraged people to try and reduce their carbon footprint as best they can.

“Support local agriculture by buy[ing] local,” Sandoval Solis said. “Take shorter showers, use the dishwasher and maintain drought resistant landscapes. Your decisions will make a difference.”

The changing and increasingly extreme weather conditions that are worsened by climate change are not natural nor are they unique to California. Sandoval Solis explained that because of this it is important that we all do our part to combat climate change

“These [extreme weather] events happen once in a lifetime, not once in a decade,” Sandoval Solis said. “It is not normal. We easily forget that we’re in a drought, but no one can pull out.”

Written by: Yan Yan Hustis Hayes — city@theaggie.org

Six million waterfowl arrive every winter in California’s “Serengeti migration”

By RACHEL SHEY — city@theaggie.org

Every winter, birders flock to the Davis area to see the native waterfowl populations, according to UC Davis Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology faculty Robert Furrow.

“There’s a lot of managed wetlands in the Central Valley, that’s a specialty of the Central Valley in general,” Furrow said. “Historically, the Central Valley used to be a huge wetland in the wintertime. It used to be a riparian forest with big floodplains along the edges of creeks that flooded over and made big marshy areas.”

Now that California is largely developed, these wetlands have vanished. They’ve been replaced by special agricultural measures to ensure habitats for the flocks of migratory waterfowl.

“We don’t have anything like the natural wetlands that would occur anymore, but a lot of agricultural fields are flooded to prevent weed growth,” Furrow said. “It’s super water intensive but simultaneously has an ecological benefit, so it’s often done in conjunction with waterfowl management groups to make sure that there are certain fields flooded in the winter and spring for the ducks and geese.”

Huge flocks of waterfowl travel to the Central Valley every winter from their nesting grounds in Canada, Alaska and as far north as Russia, according to UC Davis Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology Curator Andrew Engilis Jr.

“This is called the Pacific Flyway,” Engilis said. “There’s probably something around 6 million waterfowl that come and winter here over the course of a year. One of the best places to see them that’s close by Davis is the Yolo Bypass wildlife area. There’s an auto tour route so you can drive around a three or four mile tour route that, if the ponds are flooded, is a great bird watching location.”

The Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area is one of the managed wetlands that Furrow mentioned.  It is supplied by the water in Putah Creek, and intended as flood protection for people living in the Yolo Basin. It now has a secondary purpose as a “duck stop” for wild waterfowl to rest up and prepare to raise their young in the spring.

“While it retains its flood-control priority, [the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area’s] seasonal and permanent ponds have been sculpted from fallow farmland, and they are designed to play a role in reaching the wintering population objective for the Central Valley of 4.7 million waterfowl,” Peter J. Hayes wrote for Outdoor California.

While the species that migrate here are not rare or unusual, such large numbers arrive every winter, which makes their arrival into a fascinating spectacle of nature, Engilis said.

“I think of the Pacific Flyway as California’s Serengeti. In the Serengeti you have wildebeest and zebras that migrate and the predators follow them. It’s kind of similar to here, except the birds are the animals,” Engilis said. “The geese and ducks come down by the hundreds of thousands and the eagles and hawks and falcons follow them down, so they’re here as well. They’re an important component to the migration that we see here in the Central Valley.”

Furrow explained that much of the waterfowl diversity is in ducks.

“In terms of what we actually have breeding here, in most patches of wetland that we have year round, we’ll have mallards,” Furrow said. “And we also have wood ducks along Putah Creek, in part supported by efforts at UC Davis to install a bunch of nesting wood duck boxes along the creek. In winter, we have more than twenty species. You can open a field guide and almost every species of duck, you can find in some number here.”

Geese are also represented in the Davis area. The five common species are widespread in the Pacific Flyway.

“At the Yolo Bypass, you can see snow geese and greater white-fronted geese, sometimes tundra swans, a smaller number of Ross’s geese and cackling geese,” Furrow said.

What’s the difference between geese, ducks and swans? These three main groups of waterfowl generally differ in neck length, with swans having the longest necks, geese having an intermediate neck length and ducks having the shortest necks. They also differ in bill shape; geese tend to have conical bills, whereas ducks have wider, flatter bills, according to Furrow. Furrow also delineated the two categories of ducks.

“Dabbling ducks typically feed on the surface, on vegetation, and they do a sort of upending and pluck on vegetation, browsing and filtering through muddy water,” Furrow said.  “That contrasts with diving ducks which typically will be eating animals of some sort, invertebrates, molluscs, some fish [and] amphibians.”

Written by: Rachel Shey — city@theaggie.org

Studies suggest ways to curb squirrel infestations and explain how personality affects squirrel behavior 

By SHRADDHA JHINGAN — city@theaggie.org

Harper Junior High School, located in the Davis Joint Unified School District (DJUSD), has had a squirrel infestation that led to three of its fields becoming unusable, according to an article from the Davis Enterprise.

In 2008, UC Davis launched a research program to investigate how to stop a large increase in squirrel populations, specifically in tree squirrels that are non-native. Sara Krause, a doctoral student at UC Davis who led the project, explained in the news statement that at the time, there was a large increase in the number of eastern fox squirrels, to more than 400.

“This is an introduced species that has demonstrated elsewhere that it is prolific, adaptable, invasive and problematic for many reasons,” Krause said in the news statement.

The news statement also lists the impacts that the eastern fox squirrels could have on the campus, such as competing with other plants and native plants or damaging facilities on campus. Though Harper Junior High School did not identify the breed of squirrels that was causing the infestation, the article explained that the infestation has prevented students from using the affected facilities, and thus, they are trying to find a solution, according to interim superintendent Matt Best.

“Since the summer, we’ve been working to mitigate the squirrel problem,” Best said in the Davis Enterprise article. “It’s a challenge that if you don’t have the infestation under control, you’re just throwing money away for maintenance.”

In the 2008 research program, division director Sal Genito explained that the aim was not to hurt the squirrel or wildlife.

“Our goal is not to hurt the animals that find our grounds so attractive,” Genito said in the news statement. “It is to limit their ecological and human-health impacts as effectively and humanely as possible.”

According to the Davis Enterprise article, the school board has been trying multiple methods to help curb the squirrel infestation, such as putting water and sand in the burrows, live-trapping and more. A recent UC Davis study, for which the news statement was published on Sept. 10, detailed that squirrels have personality traits, which can affect how they use space.

These four personality traits are “boldness, aggressiveness, activity and sociability,” according to the study’s YouTube video. According to the study, these traits can have an impact on “wildlife management,” especially when considering the additional impact that human activities can have. Jaclyn Aliperti, the lead author of the study, detailed this idea further in the news statement.

“This adds to the small but growing number of studies showing that individuals matter,” Aliperti said. “Accounting for personality in wildlife management may be especially important when predicting wildlife responses to new conditions, such as changes or destruction of habitat due to human activity.”

Abigail Garofal, an energy and environmental stewardship educator at the University of Illinois Extension, explained in a webinar part of the reason why squirrel populations are so extensive.

“Starting in Central Park, actually in New York City, they introduced gray squirrels, flying squirrels and chipmunks, and then they actually started doing this in other cities as well,” Garofal said. “And so these squirrels were so successful in this urban landscape that they actually ended up having to coal a few of the species back because they were actually causing damage to some of the park landscapes, but at that point, it was too late […] so we started incorporating new trees into new neighborhoods as cities expanded.”

Dirk Van Vuren, a professor of wildlife biology at UC Davis, explained that the habitat may be conducive for squirrels and that from Google Earth, there seems to be “some great squirrel habitat on the south side of the school.”

“California ground squirrels prefer open, grassy habitats,” Van Vuren said via email. “They need open habitats. Their food is herbaceous vegetation such as grasses, and the seeds they produce. They especially like grazed areas, but looking on Google Earth, it seems there are plenty of ag fields nearby, which might be a source of the squirrels.”

Van Vuren said that the increase in squirrel populations was in response to the environment. A good habitat can lead to an increase in the number of squirrels.

“These squirrels don’t often dig burrows in lawns, but they certainly like to live in nearby burrows, and feed on lawns,” Van Vuren said via email. “So, the setting of Harper seems to have provided good quality habitat for California ground squirrels, and they responded accordingly.”

Written by: Shraddha Jhingan — city@theaggie.org