More than 100 million dead trees in California from drought.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Forest Service officials are seriously hampered not only by short-term budgets passed by Congress, but also a broken budget for the Forest Service that sees an increasing amount of resources going to firefighting while less is invested in restoration and forest health, said Vilsack.
"These dead and dying trees continue to elevate the risk of wildfire, complicate our efforts to respond safely and effectively to fires when they do occur, and pose a host of threats to life and property across California," said Vilsack.
Five consecutive years of severe drought in California, a dramatic rise in bark beetle infestation and warmer temperatures are leading to these historic levels of tree die-off.
Longer, hotter fire seasons where extreme fire behavior has become the new norm, as well as increased development in forested areas, is dramatically driving up the cost of fighting fires and squeezing funding for the very efforts that would protect watersheds and restore forests to make them more resilient to fire.
As the situation in the southeast demonstrates, the problem of shrinking budget capacity is felt across the U.S., not only in the western states.
The health of our forests and landscapes are at risk across the nation, and the tree mortality crisis could be better addressed if not for the increasing percentage of the Forest Service budget going to fight wildfire.
"More than 100 million dead trees in California from drought."
U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"More than 100 million dead trees in California from drought."

How tequila could be key in our battle against climate change.
Agave — the cactus-like plant which forms the base ingredient of tequila — has a nocturnal ‘body clock’ which allows it to ‘breathe’ at night and withstand the driest of conditions, new research has shown.
Publishing their findings in this month’s Nature Plants, the team from Newcastle University, UK, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, reveal for the first time how the stomata — or ‘breathing’ pores — on the Agave’s leaves are kept shut during the day to minimise water loss.
Newcastle University’s Professor Anne Borland, one of the authors of the study, explains: "Photosynthesis needs three key ingredients — CO2, water and sunlight — so it follows that most plants keep their stomata open in the day when it is sunny and shut at night when it is dark.
"But for a plant living in hot, arid conditions such as the Agave, this would be disastrous.
They need to conserve every drop of water they can and leaving their stomata open during the day would result in such rapid water loss they would simply die.
"If we can harness these genes and engineer new drought-resistant plants then the potential is huge in terms of developing crops and biofuels that are able to withstand the challenges we face from a changing climate."
Sequencing thousands of genes and proteins to understand the underlying metabolic processes, the team compared the Agave — or CAM — plant with Arabidopsis, a type of cress and a typical C3 plant.
"This is a really exciting discovery and a major breakthrough in our quest to create new plants that can cope in our future environment."
The study is part of a $14m research programme funded by the Department of Energy Office of Science Genomic Science Programme.

Rocky mountain haze.
University of Utah atmospheric scientist Gannet Hallar and colleagues find a correlation between the severity of drought in the Intermountain West and the summertime air quality, particularly the concentration of aerosol particles, in remote mountain wilderness regions.
The link between drought and haze is likely wildfire, the researchers write in Environmental Research Letters.
"If you take that into the future, we’re going to see significant hazing of the West," Hallar says.
Haze in the air is caused by small airborne particles — typically dust, soot, ash or smoke.
Aerosol particles made of organic carbon, such as soot or smoke, can absorb energy, however, warming the climate.
The team, consisting of hydrologists and atmospheric scientists, looked at climate and drought records for the West to see if they could find a connection to the summer mountain haze.
"It’s the fires," Hallar says.
"That has me concerned because climate models are predicting in the future a significant increase in organic aerosol loading."
Hallar hopes that her results highlight the importance of managing the relationship between drought, fire and haze in the West.

Pressures from grazers hastens ecosystem collapse from drought.
The researchers found that these tipping points can happen much sooner than current models predict because of the added pressures placed on drought-weakened plants by grazing animals and fungal pathogens.
The researchers performed a series of experiments before, during and after the drought to test how pressures from heavy grazing by crabs — the main natural enemy of plants in the protected marshes — affected resilience to and recovery from the drought.
"In test plots where crabs were excluded, we found that vegetation loss was significantly lower and many plants could survive the drought," said Qiang He, a postdoctoral researcher in Silliman’s lab.
"But in control plots, grazing by crabs decimated the drought-stressed plants, resulting in nearly complete vegetation loss," said He, who has studied the Chinese marshes for more than 10 years since he was a student at Beijing Normal University.
"Plants in forests and grasslands can also be decimated by natural enemies, such as insects and fungal pathogens, during droughts."
"The problem is that most of the plant-tolerance models we currently use to predict these outcomes are based on laboratory studies or plant physiological studies, so they often don’t factor in the compounding effects of simultaneous stressors like drought and pressure from natural enemies.
The result has been that ecosystems are dying well before our models predict they will.
"Pressures from grazers hastens ecosystem collapse from drought: Experiments show grazing pressures compound drought stress, delay recovery."
"Pressures from grazers hastens ecosystem collapse from drought: Experiments show grazing pressures compound drought stress, delay recovery."

State lifts drought declaration; what next for Cambria?.
Jerry Brown has lifted the official drought emergency declaration for most of the state, but some North Coast super-conserving residents and entrepreneurs say they’re not going to make many changes in how they’ve been using water in their homes or their businesses.
Board President Amanda Rice said by phone Monday that “I don’t see us going to zero (no drought declaration), but it’s a board decision.
The district has been operating under two separate water-restricting regulations, the drought declaration the board put in place in 2014, and the 2001 water-shortage-based moratorium on new water connections.
Sanders, who is an attorney, said, “no new hookups are permitted as long as the district is under the Water Code Section 350 moratorium declaration,” although “there are a few grandfathered water positions left from the moratorium declaration that would be permitted to hook up.” He believes “the moratorium can’t be lifted until a regular coastal development permit is approved for the SWF (Sustainable Water Facility) and the district is assured that there is sufficient water storage capacity for fire protection.
Dechlorinated backflow from the swimming pool is used to irrigate landscaping, as is runoff collected from ice machines, excess water served to restaurant customers and stored non-potable water.
Mary Ann Carson, executive director of the Cambria Chamber of Commerce, said Tuesday that the people likely to be most pleased about the governor’s action are the area’s visitors, some of whom were profoundly unhappy about having to use portable toilets in some places, instead of conventional restrooms.
However, “I think we’ve all learned valuable lessons from the drought, and we’ll continue to conserve … which we should do anyway.” State Parks Dan Falat, superintendent of the district that includes Hearst Castle and most state parks in the county, said Tuesday his staff is checking all park restroom and water-related campground services idled during the drought, doing repairs as necessary to “make sure the facilities are ready and fully functional for public use.” Once that happens at the Hearst San Simeon State Park campground, he said, the parks district will be increasing its use of water supplied by the CCSD.
The county The county Planning Commission and the public will be updated on Thursday, April 27 on three Cambria-area emergency permits for storm-related damage.
Those permits are for: ▪ Emergency drainage improvements at the CCSD Sustainable Water Facility, 990 San Simeon Creek Road.

(The Westfield News) – Last summer, a drought swept through Western Massachusetts and a number of other areas in New England.
“The drought on top of it, made the surviving fruit small,” said Tom Bashista, who owns Bashista Orchards in Southampton.
Blossoming Acres in Southwick, also had their own issues with the drought as their yields were down.
“The cost of irrigation was sky high,” said Bober.
Just on the other side of town in Southwick, Calabrese Farms had the same kind of struggles with a lack of yield.
“We had significant yield issues,” said owner Donna Calabrese.
“All our yields were down, everything was so stressed from the drought.” According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, at the start of the water year on Sept. 27, 2016, 100% of Massachusetts was at least abnormally dry, just over 98% was moderately dry, 89% was in severe drought, and 52% of the state was in extreme drought.
“Everything is nice and moist.” With the recent rainfall over the past couple of weeks, farms like Bashista Orchards are certainly hoping for more rain.
“At this point, we could use another week of warm weather,” said Bober.
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Then and now: California comes back to life after years-long drought.
News California’s dry spell is officially over, Gov.
Jerry Brown announced last week — and now the Golden State is experiencing its wettest weather ever.
Thanks to a spike in rainfall over the past two winters, the state is lush with greenery again after a five-year drought.
“We went from a driest-on-record scenario to a wettest-on-record scenario,” David Rizzardo, chief of the snow survey section at the California Department of Water Resources, told the Los Angeles Times.
California had such low rainfall between October 2011 and September 2015 that the state was forced to impose strict water regulations on its residents.
Despite more rain and snow, the state isn’t flushing out water conservation entirely.
Areas of the state still have extremely low groundwater supplies and climate change makes drought a future possibility, reported The Sacramento Bee.
“This drought emergency is over, but the next drought could be around the corner,” Brown said in a statement.
“Conservation must remain a way of life.” El Dorado Hills Lake Oroville Bidwell Marina Enterprise Bridge Bidwell Marina San Francisco Lagunitas Presidio National Cemetery Folsom Lake Marina Nicasio

Rick Scott declared a state of emergency Tuesday due to the recent surge in wildfires, the Florida Forest Service’s Myakka River District is expecting the dry conditions to continue until summer.
“This is the highest fire danger time in the year,” said Patrick Mahoney, wildfire mitigation specialist for the Myakka River District, which services Manatee, Sarasota and three other counties.
According to the Florida Forest Service, a wildfire can happen when two weeks pass without rain.
Due to the current conditions, the Florida Forest Service Myakka River District is not allowing pile burns, which require permission if the pile is greater than 8-feet by 8-feet.
So far this year, Manatee has had nine wildfires that burned 82 acres.
In 2013, there were 70 fires during the same time period, but they only burned 1,565 acres.
Scott, more than 100 fires in the state are currently burning more than 23,000 acres.
On standby at the Myakka River District office on 53rd Avenue West is ranger Eugene Clark, a 27-year veteran of the Florida Forest Service.
“What little bit of rains we get only lasts a few hours, and then the winds come right behind it and dries it all out like it didn’t even rain.” Most of the fires typically happen in the afternoon and inland, he said.
Related content Florida Forest Service expects drought conditions to continue wildfire prevalence

In support of Gov.
Jerry Brown’s call for all customers to make water conservation a new way of life, even as he declared the official end to the current drought, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is announcing new water management tools for agricultural customers.
These supplies will continue to be a challenge for the state.
That’s one reason why PG&E is working with Wexus Technologies to enable conservation of both water and energy, through an energy management software system that is now available to agriculture customers.
Wexus remotely connects pumps, buildings, PG&E electric SmartMeters and water flow meters via cloud technology.
"Water conservation and energy management go hand-in-hand.
We’re glad to be working with PG&E to make water and energy conservation a way of life.” PG&E will continue to work with the agricultural community to manage water and energy use through a variety of existing programs and incentives.
PG&E agricultural customers have saved more than 538 million kilowatt hours and 19 million therms of energy through the company’s energy efficiency programs and rebates since 2011.
That adds up to more than $81 million dollars in rebates in the last six years, since the recent drought first began.
For more information, visit www.pge.com/ and pge.com/news.

Kenya seen struggling with fiscal pressures as elections loom No ‘solid rebound’ expected in credit growth to private sector The World Bank cut its economic growth forecast for Kenya due to a slowdown in the expansion of loans to the private sector and a drought that may hurt output. Gross domestic product in East Africa’s largest economy will expand 5.5 percent this year, the Washington-based lender said in a report released Wednesday. This compares with an earlier forecast of 6 percent and estimated growth of 5.9 percent in 2016, the World Bank said. The world’s biggest exporter of black tea is experiencing drought and the Meteorological Department has warned that rains between March and May will be less than normal. While agriculture, which is dominated by flower-growing and fresh produce and accounts for about a quarter of Kenyan GDP, will be hit by the low rainfall, the drought will have a spillover effect on other parts of the economy, the World Bank said. “The drought will have knock-on effects on the rest of the economy through higher electricity prices, as…