SCIENCE NEWS: Collaboration in a time of crisis: NOAA responds to Oroville Dam emergency; Back to the bones of the Delta; Satellites reveal bird habitat loss in California; Asian dust providing key nutrients for California’s sequoias; and more …

SCIENCE NEWS: Collaboration in a time of crisis: NOAA responds to Oroville Dam emergency; Back to the bones of the Delta; Satellites reveal bird habitat loss in California; Asian dust providing key nutrients for California’s sequoias; and more ….
In science news this week: Collaboration in a time of crisis: NOAA responds to Oroville Dam emergency; Fish and money: Consequences of the Oroville Dam emergency; Back to the bones of the Delta; Going local buys future for Bayshore; March issue of Estuary News now available; Satellites reveal bird habitat loss in California; PNAS Journal club: In some cases, water management practices exacerbated California drought, according to model; Asian dust providing key nutrients for California’s sequoias; Disappearing beaches: Modeling shoreline change in Southern California; Where states rank on Colorado River water rights transfers; NOAA publishes agency-wide framework to optimize and accelerate modeling; Chance find has big implications for water treatment’s cost and carbon footprint; Another study points to climate change’s direct role in fueling extreme weather; and Winter outlook 2017: So how did the Climate Prediction Center do?
The teamwork and coordinated response on behalf of the public and the resources were impressive, and we were proud to be a part of it.” … ” Read more from NOAA here: Collaboration in a time of crisis: NOAA responds to Oroville Dam emergency SEE ALSO: NOAA’s data story on the Oroville Dam Fish and money: Consequences of the Oroville Dam emergency: “The Oroville Dam made headlines this winter when Lake Oroville overflowed onto its emergency spillway for the first time in its history, raising safety concerns and prompting the evacuation of almost all residents of Oroville and some communities further down the Feather River.
The dam, constructed on the Feather River from 1962–1968 as part of the California State Water Project, is the tallest in the United States at 770 feet.
… ” Continue reading at ESTUARY News here: Going local buys future for Bayshore March issue of Estuary News now available: “This issue of ESTUARY News magazine debuts a new guide to how to repair and renew the Delta and examines stresses on Delta species, especially pesticides.
In it, the authors make one of the first attempts to quantify the effect that human water management has on the frequency and intensity of surface water drought in California–and in some cases, they found, management practices exacerbated drought conditions.
… ” Read more from the PNAS here: Journal club: In some cases, water management practices exacerbated California drought, according to model Asian dust providing key nutrients for California’s sequoias: “Dust from as far away as the Gobi Desert in Asia is providing more nutrients than previously thought for plants, including giant sequoias, in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, a team of scientists, including several from the University of California, Riverside, have found.
… ” Read more from PhysOrg here: Where states rank on Colorado River water rights transfers NOAA publishes agency-wide framework to optimize and accelerate modeling: “A new report describes high-priority recommendations to improve the way NOAA develops and operates models.
The first, obviously, is the actual post on the winter outlook describing what exactly we, at the Climate Prediction Center, were thinking when it came to temperature and precipitation for winter.
About Science News and Reports: This weekly feature, posted every Thursday, is a collection of the latest scientific research and reports with a focus on relevant issues to the Delta and to California water, although other issues such as climate change are sometimes included.

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