After nearly a century of people building dams on most of the world’s major rivers, artificial reservoirs now represent an immense freshwater footprint across the landscape. Yet, these reservoirs are understudied and overlooked for their fisheries production and management potential, indicates a study from the University of California, Davis.
Peter Moyle is widely considered the “godfather of California fish biology.” The UC Davis professor emeritus has been conducting native fish surveys here for more than 50 years. He also played a major role in restoring Yolo County’s beloved local stream, Putah Creek.
Spring-fed waters a critical habitat for cold-water fish
Rainbow trout like their water cold. As the climate changes and temperatures rise, cold-water fish species such as trout and salmon don’t fare well in waterways that run low and warm.
“Native fish in California are imperiled throughout the state,” said Carson Jeffres, field and lab director at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “During the drought, we saw a dramatic change in the aquatic habitats that were available.”
UC Davis Team Chosen as Part of Resilient by Design’s Bay Area Challenge
UC Davis faculty are part of a multidisciplinary design team chosen to develop solutions to strengthen the San Francisco’s Bay Area’s resilience to the impact of climate change, such as sea-level rise, severe storms and flooding.
Research on the Shasta River and in the Central Valley creates new knowledge to help iconic species
The rivers and streams of northern and central California once teemed with millions of salmon, mostly Chinook and Coho. But these fish are in trouble—many salmon runs are listed as either threatened or endangered. A few scientists even predict the demise of wild salmon in the Central Valley by the year 2100.
Benjamin Houlton has been named director of the John Muir Institute of the Environment.
The UC Davis Office of Research has named Benjamin Houlton as the new director of the John Muir Institute of the Environment, known as JMIE. Houlton takes over from Mark Schwartz, who has directed the program since 2009. Houlton, a professor in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, was named associate director of JMIE in January of this year.
