3524. Consequences of the Drought in California: Rattlesnakes Everywhere

By Gabriel Cannon, The Guardian, June 26, 2021

Wildlife vets have reported big changes in the numbers of abandoned babies or injured animals brought into their centers and sightings – especially of bears. Photograph: Noah Berger/EPA

Len Ramirez stalked through the dried landscape, scanning the ground ahead searching for movement. Called out to an estate in Napa Valley, the owner of Ramirez Rattlesnake Removal company was finishing up his last job of another busy day wrangling, removing and relocating snakes from homes across northern California. He’d found three in just this yard, including one nestled roughly 1,000 yards from the pool.

Rattlesnakes are everywhere these days, he says – on front porches, in potted plants, and under children’s play equipment. “I am busier than I have ever been. Complaints are coming in from all over the state.”

Ramirez believes the drought may be partly to blame. He opened his business in 1985, and has seen spikes before. And while he doesn’t think the rattlesnake population is necessarily growing, snakes are increasingly finding their way into urban environments in search of refuge from the rising temperatures and relief from the drying landscape.

And it’s not just snakes.

California and other states across the south-west are in the grips of a historic drought. The conditions have produced consequences that extend beyond the risks of a decreased water supply and worsening wildfires. And as urban development creeps further into once-wild areas, the drought has also increased negative interactions between people, animals and pests – who are all trying to adapt.

“Rattlesnakes are becoming more common in the places where we live, work and play,” Ramirez says. After opening his business in 1985, he’s become a go-to source for removal and public education about the snakes, speaking to the media and producing safety videos for California’s office of emergency services. He clears snakes from properties and public areas and relocates them to uninhabited areas.

‘Rattlesnakes are becoming more common in the places where we live, work and play’ Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images

Ramirez worked through California’s last drought – which stretched from the end of 2011 to 2019 – and saw similar patterns. But now it’s gotten worse, mostly because he says, “there is so much development taking place, and that’s going to displace wildlife, including rattlesnakes”.

Ramirez says he’s had jobs when he has had to remove more than 60 snakes at a time. “I always remind parents to be a good scout before your kids go out to play,” he says.

As essential water sources start to run dry, other wild animals have also been spotted searching the suburbs for water, sustenance and reprieve from the intensifying conditions. Wildlife veterinarians have reported the numbers of abandoned babies or injured animals brought into their centers and animal sightings – especially of bears who are venturing deeper into urban areas – are surging.

“The bear population is expanding its range, so bears are showing up in areas where they’ve never seen before,” Rebecca Barboza, a wildlife biologist who studies the trend for the California department of fish and wildlife, told ABC News this month.

Smaller animals and insects are also coming closer in search of water – and some have the ability to cause a lot more damage. Song birds carrying the West Nile virus, which can cause a deadly and debilitating neurological disease, are increasingly showing up in back yards.

“Because there’s limited water in the environment and everything is dry, the birds go looking for water and refuge,” says Cameron Webb, a medical entomologist and senior investigator with the Centre for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology – Public Health who studies the mosquitoes that transmit the disease. “You get this combination of factors that means not only are conditions suitable for mosquitoes, but also the birds that carry the virus are more likely to be in higher concentration closer to where people live.”

Surprisingly, disease-carrying mosquitoes, which most people associate with wet times rather than dry, thrive in cities during times of drought when waters recede and grow still. Webb explains that human-made structures like pipes, pits and ponds are prime spots for stagnant water to become a breeding ground for the insects. “Fish and other animals that live in these systems die and the mosquitoes have free rein”.

In California, public health officials have already warned residents of an increase in virus activity and scientists believe the threat of transmissions of West Nile will increase with climate change, especially in coastal areas of California.

Less perilous pests may also pose more problems during drought conditions. Ants, cockroaches and rodents and other visitors also need water to survive and human homes are typically where they go to find it when it’s absent in outdoor environments.

“Drought conditions not only mean that a pest’s water supply dries up, but natural food sources can also be harder to find as well,” Mike Bentley, an entomologist for the National Pest Management Association, says. “Drought often drives pests into homes or other structures in search of these resources to survive”.

Not only does the drought mean an increase in unwanted houseguests, but it’s changing the behavior of critters themselves. They are “incredible at adapting to change”, he says. “This can mean rodents nesting in wall voids versus underground burrows and feeding from garbage bags rather than fallen fruits and seeds. Or, ants moving into potted plants to nest and feeding on last night’s leftovers.”

2061. Beavers: A Potential Missing Link in California's Water Future

By Alastair Bland, Water Deeply, October 16, 2015

A beaver adds a stick to its lodge on Tolucay Creek in Napa, Calif., on July 23, 2015. Photo: Rusty Cohn.

On California’s central coast, a region that usually receives drenching rainfall or fog for most of the year, some forests are now as arid as a desert. Streams that once ran at least at a trickle through summer have vanished in the ongoing drought, and environmentalists and fishermen fear that local salmon will disappear if climate conditions don’t improve.

The landscape desperately needs rain.

It could also use beavers, according to ecologists who say the near eradication of Castor canadensis from parts of the West in the 19th century has magnified the effects of California’s worst dry spell in history.

“Beavers create shock absorption against drought,” says Brock Dolman, a scientist in Sonoma County who wants to repopulate coastal California with the big lumberjacking rodents.

Beavers are a hated pest and a nuisance in the eyes of many landowners and developers, and the animals are regularly killed with depredation permits and by fur trappers. However, they are also a keystone species whose participation in the ecosystem creates benefits for almost all other flora and fauna, Dolman says. This is because of the way beavers’ hydro-engineering work affects the movement of water.

“Beavers aren’t actually creating more water, but they are altering how it flows, which creates benefits through the ecosystem,” says Michael Pollock, an ecosystems analyst and beaver specialist at the National Marine Fisheries Service Northwest Science Center.

A beaver snacks on a leaf in front of its pond on Tolucay Creek in Napa, Calif., on Oct. 4, 2015. Photo: Rusty Cohn.

By gnawing down trees and building dams, beavers create small reservoirs. What follows, scientists say, is a series of trickle-down benefits: The water that might otherwise have raced downstream to the sea, tearing apart creek gullies and washing away fish, instead gets holed up for months behind the jumbles of twigs and branches. In this cool, calm water, fish — like juvenile salmon — thrive.

Meanwhile, the water percolates slowly into the ground, recharging near-surface aquifers and keeping soils hydrated through the dry season. Entire streamside meadows, Dolman says, may remain green all summer if beavers are at work nearby. Downstream of a beaver pond, some of the percolated water may eventually resurface, helping keep small streams flowing and fish alive.

Dolman, co-founder of the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center in Sonoma County, says this water banking process could even, in theory, partially offset the worrying shrinkage of mountain snowpack, historically California’s most important water source.

Dolman and his colleague Kate Lundquist, who are leading their organization’s “Bring Back the Beaver Campaign,” would like reintroduction of beavers from other regions to begin now as a measure for restoring salmon populations and building general drought resilience into the landscape.

In Oregon, something along these lines is happening. Here, a newly proposed Coho recovery plan would make it illegal to kill or harm beavers within the geographical range of the imperiled fish.

But in California, there is a problem: Government biologists aren’t entirely sold on the virtues of beavers. Kevin Shaffer, a fisheries biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, believes that beavers can have benefits for a watershed that is temporarily deprived of rainfall. Eventually, though, even beavers cannot cancel out the effects of long-term drought or climate change.

“As the drought gets worse, their ponds will dry up and the animals will just move somewhere else,” he says. “They won’t stay because there is no more water.”

Shaffer adds that introducing beavers into an environment that has been seriously stressed by drought may benefit nothing — not fish, not plant life and not the beavers themselves.

Releasing beavers can also create conflicts with people, especially in heavily populated watersheds like the Russian River, just north of San Francisco.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife classifies beavers as a “nuisance” species. That’s because, Shaffer explains, the animals’ activity can have direct negative impacts on people. Dams can inundate properties, and falling trees could potentially land in roadways.

In spite of agency uncertainty, the benefits of beavers on a landscape are considered fact by scientists in California’s North Coast region. Sarah Beesley, a fisheries biologist with the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program, has been running a habitat restoration effort on the lower Klamath River system, where a small beaver population currently resides. Her goal is to increase the presence of year-round water, especially in slow-moving wetlands, by building stick dams that closely mimic those built by beavers. In the future, her project hopes to reintroduce beavers themselves to streams that the animals don’t frequent.

In several stream systems in the region, says Beesley, the only places where salmon — especially endangered Coho — have survived after four years of below-average rainfall are beaver ponds.

“Wetland features, whether built by people or by beavers, are definitely what’s getting the salmon here through the drought,” says Beesley.

Beavers still live in the Klamath drainage system. They also occur, among other places, in the Central Valley, near the Mexican border and in parts of the Sierra Nevada.

A beaver eats the bark off a twig at its pond on Tulocay Creek in Napa, Calif. on May 12, 2014. Photo: Rusty Cohn.

However, there is ongoing debate about where beavers historically lived — a debate that could hinder progress in any reintroduction campaign.

Dolman and Lundquist contributed to a report published in 2013 in the journal California Fish and Game that revealed evidence of beavers having inhabited regions of coastal California where they don’t live today. The evidence included beaver remains and accounts from early explorers. Similar literature has been produced making the case that beavers lived throughout the Sierra Nevada. As a prelude to reintroducing the animals, they hope to establish as fact that beavers once played key ecological roles in many watersheds.

Beaver reintroduction has seen success in Washington, where the Methow Conservancy has identified beavers as a valuable tool for restoring damaged watersheds. The organization has participated in relocating more than 300 beavers into the headwaters of the Methow River system, which feeds the Columbia River.

Heide Andersen, stewardship director at the conservancy, believes the ongoing decline of salmon on the West Coast began partly as a result of losing beavers.

“Beavers impact almost every aspect of the watershed,” says Andersen. “They lower stream temperatures, retain sediment, create refuge for fish, and create groundwater percolation that reappears downstream later in the year. When beavers disappeared, streams became channelized, we lost our flows earlier in the summer, and temperatures went up.”

While rain is sorely needed throughout California, the absence of beaver infrastructure could make the landscape less able to rebound should a more generous hydrological period resume. Dolman explains that, without woody debris in the creek gullies to slow water down, the land has less opportunity to soak it up when rain does fall. The result is raging floods in the winter and, once summer comes, a watershed that rapidly goes dry again.

“Losing beavers is a double whammy for a watershed,” Dolman explains. “You get exacerbated flooding, erosion and sediment, and reduced groundwater recharge, in the winter. Then, in the summer, you have land that dries up faster because you didn’t get that winter recharge. We’ve created a landscape much less resilient to drought.”

Alastair Bland is a freelance writer based in San Francisco. He can be reached at allybland79@gmail.com or via Twitter at @allybland.

2035. Raging Wildfires in California: Part 2: Regenerative Disturbances and Building Bridges Across Cultural Divides

By Erik Ohlsen, Resilience, Septermber 23, 2015

For Part 1 click here.  KN

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A “regenerative disturbance” is a management regime or natural occurrence that provides a degree of disturbance to an ecosystem that in turn encourages conditions that lead to better health, resilience and regeneration. Multiple regenerative disturbance techniques are introduced in this article.

The issues of wildfires, forestry, drought, and climate change are highly complex, and their solutions are just as complex—and highly debatable. These issues are at the nexus of a variety of political, social, cultural and economic challenges in our communities. The opportunity is to build bridges across these cultural divides - to unify historically opposing groups towards common goals and solve some of these problems as a result.

Nobody wants to see their own or someone else’s home burn to the ground. Nobody wants to see a person's livelihood decimated. Nobody wants to see wildlife and forest ecosystems destroyed. Whether you're a forester, an environmentalist, an indigenous community member, a firefighter, a homeowner or a government official, these are places where we have common ground.

There are real solutions being modeled out there and we need to remove the political obstacles and financial shackles that keep them from being implemented at the scale that will provide real benefit to people and planet.

It is vital to understand that every ecosystem on earth has its own unique set of circumstances, issues, and management needs. Any solutions we talk about here or elsewhere may be appropriate in some areas and inappropriate in others. And because of the inherent complexity, it’s not enough to solely focus on the physical needs of an ecosystem, but it is just as important to look at the economic, social, and political will as well.

We are not going to agree about all of these things but hopefully we can at least try for the sake of our communities and our ecosystems to take serious action on solutions that care for both.

To be clear, I'm not a professional forester or firefighter. Rather, I’m a professional ecological land manager who's been practicing land stewardship for nearly 20 years in forest management, watershed restoration, pastoral restoration, and landscape development. I've worked alongside professional foresters, certified rangeland managers, and indigenous land managers.

Years ago, I had the honor of taking training from Dennis Martinez, an indigenous land manager and the chairman of Indigenous peoples restoration network. Organizations like IPRN are vital for leading us in the right management direction of our landscapes. The integration of indigenous wisdom for the modern day crisis, and bridging Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) with Western science is key to unlocking solutions moving forward as Dennis writes so eloquently on their website. To be clear, Dennis and Indigenous Peoples Restoration Network have not endorsed this article. I am highlighting them as an important resource for this discussion.

Prescribed burning (large-scale solution)

Many First Nation communities in the United States sustained extremely long cycles of ecological health for themselves and the ecosystems they were maintaining. We need to harness the wisdom of indigenous communities who managed California and U.S. landscapes for tens of thousands of years with prescribed burning and other forgotten methods. No Western civilization has any chance of achieving this with our current land management practices as we’ve destroyed much of our ecology in just 150 years and counting. We must immediately shift our practices of land management towards ecological place-based appropriate management techniques with a timescale managing health for multiple generations into the future.

Prescribed burning is the practice of intentionally setting low intensity fires in the forest to consume and reduce the accumulated fuel load of dead limbs, thatch and outcompeted smaller trees. The timing, technique, and location are thoroughly assessed for optimal effect and mitigation of catastrophic consequences. These burns are often carried out in spring when plants are still green and humidity is present in the ecosystem to ensure the fire cannot spread into the canopy of established trees and people managing the prescribed burn can keep it controlled. There’s no way I could do justice in describing this ancient practice here. To learn more, watch the video Catching Fire, which I just saw after posting my original article.

Ecological Forest Thinning (large-scale solution)

I have intentionally avoided using the term "sustainable thinning" in this article. Much of what is shared here does fall into that category, but that term may have been co-opted by the logging industry in the past to open up harvesting of old-growth trees. From an ecological perspective thinning trees to provide a more open canopy, less fuel load, and more light to the forest floor, if done right, provides a host of benefits for the forest, wildlife, and human communities that live there.

When we talk about fuel load management through ecological thinning I'm not talking about large-scale commercial logging activity, although logging companies may be some of the best situated to provide ecologically based thinning practices in our forests.

Nor am I advocating for clear cuts or cutting old-growth trees in any way shape or form. Instead, I am advocating for a systems-level view of forest health. A healthy forest does not feature only mature or only young trees. Rather, it will have a succession of different-aged trees to provide a multi-generational outlook of the forest so it can live for tens of thousands if not millions of years into the future if that is appropriate to a place.

This view can be controversial and both those in the logging industry or communities affect by logging will likely have strong feelings about “thinning.” When we talk about thinning a forest in an ecological way we are talking about removing second and third growth trees, and dead and diseased trees that were never removed from the system early on due to fire suppression lack of large animal disturbances and regenerative human driven management practices. In many cases our forests have become congested with hundreds or thousands of stems per acre. This creates a host of ecological problems such disease, lack of diversity, erosion, soil acidification and the threat of catastrophic fires.

To manage a forest with ecological thinning practices takes a very informed view of what trees to remove and to leave. In many cases forests are so congested that they have become fuel load nightmares. Fire ladders are now in such abundance that if a fire came into such a congested forest it may quickly become a crown fire, swiftly escalating to the kind of catastrophes that are seen throughout California and other parts of the world right now.

So what is a healthy forest? A healthy forest is one that has fewer stems per acre and where there's more space in between the trees. The question of how many stems per acre depend on the species of trees, the climate, and many other factors. The best place to learn what is the right balance for a place is to work with the indigenous communities of that place who have tracked these forests for tens of thousands of years.

An ecologically thinned forest (fewer stems per acre, balance of different ages of trees) also has the benefit of increased light on the forest floor and an increase of air. Airflow helps reduce disease and parasites from establishing themselves in the forest. Just as houses with poor ventilation can be subject to mold, the same goes for forests. In keeping the forest light, not congested and in a healthy balance we allow for a reduction of potential disease and pathogens. Many of our forests today are severely infested with either pathogens or parasitic insects as a result of forests that are too dense.

Light on the forest floor is key because the floor is home to a staggering diversity of native vegetative life. This native vegetation is often edible, medicinal, and provides incredible food source for wildlife, as well as many other ecological processes that we are still learning about

Ecologically based forest products as a result of thinning may provide a small-scale economic solution to some of the financial obstacles to making this work happen. Entrepreneurial thinkers made be able to make small-scale businesses selling furniture, tools, soil building products, mushrooms, sustainably harvested building materials and other potential value-added products that come from ecological management of the forest.

Animals in ecosystem management (large-scale solution)

As described in part one of this article, large animals have played an important management role in our ecosystems for millions of years. Extensive hunting and industrialization have wiped out many of these important species in our ecosystem.

Grazing ungulates like elk and antelope stomp accumulated and dead organic matter (fuel load) into the ground where it can come into contact with soil-level moisture and microorganisms that will cause it to further decompose. Other animals like bears have always been important forest managers as they break down the low branches and small trees in the forest as they scavenge for food. As a result, material that would otherwise volatilize and release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere—namely, CO2—instead builds organic matter and stores carbon in the soil.

Elk and antelope never "overgrazed" areas because they were followed by wolves, coyotes, and mountain lions that kept these hooved animal herds bunched up and on the move. This predator-prey relationship results in a beautiful and dynamic ecosystem management pattern that has been lost in our contemporary ecosystems.

Putting all debates around humans eating animals aside for now, if we specifically look at the activities of well-managed animals in the right environment and the impact it has on an ecosystem we can easily see that from an ecological point of view integrating animals (even domestic) into land management may have huge benefits if managed appropriately.

Models like the Dehesa systems in Spain and Portugal have been incredibly effective in regenerating devastated landscapes while being economically and ecologically sound and managed over many generations. Another benefit of using ruminants to manage landscapes is that in the dry season the guts of these animals actually provide the bacterial decomposition function of the ecology. Therefore as they eat down grasses, forbs, leaves and branches they are actually decomposing that material in their guts whereas in the middle of summer many temperate ecosystems don't have the moisture level to decomposes material any other way.

To be realistic, it's unlikely that we will see a huge resurgence of elk and antelope in the California environment in the near future. So, in the near-term, we may need to utilize domestic animals to provide some of the same functions and management regimes as these amazing animals once did.

Pigs, goats, cow and sheep could all play important roles on public and private lands in managing fuel load and getting carbon into the ground. The realities of such endeavors will have to be specific to each site and carefully monitored by the community for optimum ecological health. There will be plenty cases where the use of domestic animals in managing our ecosystems may not be appropriate either from social or economic issues or cultural and ecological ones. In all cases success depends on understanding the specific needs of an ecosystem and community to decide on the best practices for that place. The Holistic Management model provides a great framework for decision-making in this regard.

Managing carbon (small to large scale solution)

It's important that we look at the solutions to these issues through a systemic lens. If we manage our fuel load ecologically, and look at this material as something beneficial rather than "waste" then we have an opportunity to not only mitigate destructive fire but also address drought at the same time.

When it comes to managing carbon, we get to create a scenario where the benefits of the whole are greater than the sum of the parts. A forest is made of many tons of carbonaceous material. Forests and pastures are magical in their ability to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and transfer it into matter, creating a carbon sink for long-term storage. The matter the carbon is getting locked into is of course in the roots, trunks, branches and leaves. It's important to understand how these ecological processes relate to climate change.

On smaller scales, we can actually manage this material without burning it which enables us to halt carbon from escaping into the atmosphere altogether. By accelerating decomposition instead of burning material, we not only avoid the risks posed by fire but we can build topsoil as a result. Adding carbon to the soil also increases the soil's ability to absorb and hold water. In this way, we can think of soil as a carbon and water battery or storage device. An improved capacity to absorb and hold water in soil means that there's more humidity in the landscape, supporting more productive land and protecting against catastrophic wildfires and drought.

At the home scale, we need to look at woody material as an abundant source for a variety of potential functions: edible mushrooms, soil building, mulch, basketry material, craft wood, erosion control material, and more. This is a great example of moving from just restoration towards regeneration and must be the new standard for how we manage landscapes. Humans have been such a destructive force on ecosystems for the last 150 years that it's not enough to just restore ecosystems, we have to regenerate the ecological functions and processes of our environment in order for future generations to live on a healthy planet, we need to increase biological and ecological productivity for the sake of the earth itself.

Prescribed burns have an important role in managing the fuel load of multi-acre ecosystems. But if at all possible, not burning fuel load material and either chipping, inoculating with fungi, or strategically burying it on contour can all provide opportunities where we vastly increase topsoil and soil's ability to absorb storm water as part of our efforts to sequester carbon and mitigate drought.

Below are a few methodologies for doing just that.

Biochar

In other parts of the world Biochar has been used as a way to sequester carbon and build topsoil for agriculture productivity for millennia. Biochar may offer huge potential in combination with prescribed burning. This is an exciting innovation to combine these ancient management practices to manage fuel load while sequestering carbon, building topsoil and retaining water.

In simple terms a burn pile (often utilized in prescribed burning) can be created in such a way to tightly stack logs and light the top rather than the bottom of the pile. A pile like this burns off the least amount of carbon while still burning the rest of the fuel load of that material. What's left is a kind of charcoal where the carbon is so strongly bonded to the material that it takes hundreds of years to release into the atmosphere. Once this material comes in contact with microbes it becomes a highly sought after host for beneficial microorganisms. Used to amend soil to boost fertility, support the living biology in the soil, and improve water retention, this method has amazing potential.

In a strategic way we may be able to create large amounts of biochar and manage forest fuel load at the same time. Biochar is already an accepted and marketable soil amendment throughout the world.

Erosion solutions utilizing woody debris

Erosion has its own devastating effect on our ecosystems and relates to the mismanagement of our forests. Part of the devastation we experience, especially throughout Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, is erosion due to old badly graded logging roads. The way many logging roads convey water can vastly increase erosion in a watershed. Often this results in huge and deep gullies that continually destabilize parts of the forest and carry sediment into local streams and watersheds.

We can use some of our fuel load management techniques and ecological thinning practices by taking woody debris and literally using it to pack large erosion gullies. It's important when packing a gully to ensure that the organic material has direct contact with the earth at the bottom of the gully and that any winter moisture and fungal activity can wick into the material and sustain through the entire pile of debris. This helps reduce the fire danger in the area as the more moisture and fungi amongst and inside this debris will make it less likely to burn.

If there is great concern for fire you can also blow chips over the top of the systems and further increase the ability for this material to absorb water and stay moist. This is very effective in stopping erosion, and over time the gullies actually fill back up with sediment. The water slows down when it hits all the brush inside the gullies and the sediment carried by the water actually deposits and fills up the eroded area again over time. The flow and velocity of water, the size of the gully, and other factors may or may not make this approach appropriate. Again, solutions need to be matched to place.

Brush Check Dams

The erosion issue we see with logging roads is generally because of the way that the surface of the road is graded to slope into the hillside (in-sloping) with large ditches and culverts used to convey this runoff water away from roads into surrounding environments.

In some cases if we are unable to re-grade roads to slope away from the hillside (out-sloping) and pull out culverts or utilize other beneficial road management techniques, we will have areas where there are high volumes of water moving through drainages and gullies unnaturally. Where appropriate, we can take large logs and brush (again utilizing nearby fuel load material) and actually “key” (trench the ends into both banks) them into the banks of these unnatural drainages. Once we've keyed them in we can place perpendicularly across the drainage with logs and brush material to make a permeable dam. This will slow down water during storms and deposit sediment behind the check dams to help in repairing the erosion gully.

These brush check dams are permeable, meaning water is able to slowly pass through the material thus slow the water that would otherwise erode the banks to get around a non-permeable dam. At the center of these check dams are low points so that in large storm events overflow water pours down the middle and does not try to erode the sides where logs are keyed into the bank. This technique is only to be used in non-named, non-mapped unnatural eroded drainage ways. These drainage ways are not to be confused with natural creeks, streams and waterways where these sorts of systems may or may not be beneficial and permits would be required.

Carbon Sponges

To increase the ability of this water to stay around in the dry season, carbonaceous woody debris material (again, what would otherwise be fuel load) can be used to pack water retention structures placed in the landscape. Water retention structures can be a contour ditch, seasonal pool or rain garden and are ideally placed to capture surface runoff from roads or other structures. Again, the material must have ground contact and not be sticking up above the natural grade to avoid adding to fire danger. We can even inoculate these systems with desirable and beneficial fungi in order to yield edible mushroom crops and aid in decomposition where pollution is not present. Keep an eye out for my new article titled “From Drought to Deluge” in the near future to learn in detail about mitigating drought and harvesting water.

If the aesthetics of a system like this are of concern we can always cover the woody debris with wood chips or other material so that you do not see the debris; often, they just look like pathways. This material breaks down fairly quickly over a few years. As it breaks down, it builds topsoil in the surrounding area and provides for extra moisture absorption acting like a huge sponge for trees and shrubs planted in or near these systems to utilize.

Creative Economics for Management

As was discussed in Part 1 of this article, the amount of money spent to suppress fire and handle emergencies and rebuild infrastructure is astronomical. If governments and communities could act to fund fuel load management and ecosystem management techniques as part of mitigating disaster it's very likely that we can avoid the catastrophic fires currently threatening California. The mechanics of how this actually plays out is beyond my scope of knowledge and understanding. What I do know is that historically opposing groups need to come together to pressure decision-makers under unified banners to make funding for these management needs happen.

How do we integrate the management needs of the forest with creative and innovative ecological product production? As you can see, on the small and in some cases large scales there are so many potential opportunities for turning fuel load material into a variety of benefits including building topsoil, catching and storing storm water, growing fungi, yielding sustainably harvested wood products, feeding animals, and regenerating harvestable vegetation.

Once a forest gains more light to the forest floor due to ecological management, there is a resurgence of herbaceous vegetation. This creates an opportunity for harvesting medicinal and edible wild crafted plants that, if done in an appropriate and ecologically sensitive way, could provide another small-scale ecologically sound economic benefit.

The Political/Social/Economic/Cultural Challenge and Opportunity

As a permaculturist, I've been trained to design systems in nature’s image. One of our great goals is to design human settlements in such a way that they mimic all the patterns of a natural ecosystem. This can be a different way to look at caring for our environment, because we care for people and earth symbiotically as part of our ethical intent rather than separating human needs from natures. We see humans as an integral part of the ecosystem and therefore an integral part of its regeneration.

A permaculture design process looks at the beneficial role humans can play in their ecosystems and searches out innovative and creative relationships between people and their environment. In nearly 20 years of design and practicing this work, I can tell you humans have an innate and incredible ability to heal ecosystems and can at the same time have potential to create social and economic resiliency. Can we have our forest and eat it too? I believe we can, but it's going to take a multi-stakeholder and multigenerational effort.

These are tough questions to ask but are also among the most important and urgent in our time.

The greatest challenge is in ingrained mindsets that have grown up over the last couple of hundred years and all of the emotional and social battles that have taken place, either from the genocide of indigenous people, the battles between loggers and environmentalists or the mis-prioritization of public money in land management. How do we build bridges across these various mindsets? How do we put aside the differences of old-school environmentalism, forest management, indigenous wisdom, economic development, and political will? We need to focus on unifying the needs of humanity and the needs of ecology. This is the only way we will possibly be able to make it through the climate crisis and all that it brings: wildfires, drought, floods and economic destruction.

It's not enough to say that humans are the blight of this earth, and if we weren't here everything would be okay. We need to utilize the ingenuity and creativity of the human mind for the regeneration of this planet. It's also not enough to say we should just let the logging industry have their way and harvest our forests to oblivion.

So how do we translate these sentiments into action? There are many of you out there who have much better solutions than I can ever come up with. I hope you folks weigh in on the conversation, and do it with an open mind and heart.

We need to pressure the state and federal governments to be more innovative in how they utilize their funding in ecosystem management. Ecological land management is a great endeavor and it’s clear we can create thousands if not millions of jobs in this country managing our landscapes ecologically. The potential yield would be immense both for ecosystem processes, economic production, and disaster mitigation.

We desperately need to look to indigenous communities for guidance and action. If we want a way out of this mess then it's time to put the colonialist mindset aside and embrace the deep and generational wisdom of our indigenous communities. 50,000 + years of relationship to this land is more acute, more aware, and more able to assess solutions to these issues than the colonial mindset of the last few hundred years ever will be.

Maybe, if we have real intention in healing our landscapes we will also get an opportunity to heal cultural wounds at the same time. Maybe these "natural" disasters are our wake-up call, not only in ecological management needs but also in cultural healing; to develop an ecological based economic system and a more unified way forward. I'm ready to make it happen. Are you?

2028. A Wet Winter Won't Save California

By Noah S. Diffenbaugh and Christopher B. Field, The New York Times, September 18, 2015

STANFORD, Calif. — As wildfires rage, crops are abandoned, wells run dry and cities work to meet mandatory water cuts, drought-weary Californians are counting on a savior in the tropical ocean: El Niño.

This warming of the tropical Pacific occurs about every five years, affecting climate around the globe and bringing heavy winter precipitation to parts of California. The state experienced two of its wettest years during two of the strongest El Niños, in 1982-83 and 1997-98.

Now climatologists have confirmed that a powerful El Niño is building, and forecasts suggest a high likelihood that El Niño conditions will persist through the next several months. So we in California expect a rainy winter.

But before everyone gets too excited, it is important to understand this: Two physical realities virtually ensure that Californians will still face drought, regardless of how this El Niño unfolds.

The first is that California has missed at least a year’s worth of precipitation, meaning that it would take an extraordinarily wet rainy season to single-handedly break the drought. Even if that happened, we would most likely suffer from too much water too fast, as occurred in the early 1980s and late 1990s, when El Niño delivered more rainfall than aquifers could absorb and reservoirs could store.

The second is that California is facing a new climate reality, in which extreme drought is more likely. The state’s water rights, infrastructure and management were designed for an old climate, one that no longer exists.

Our research has shown that global warming has doubled the odds of the warm, dry conditions that are intensifying and prolonging this drought, which now holds records not only for lowest precipitation and highest temperature, but also for the lowest spring snowpack in the Sierra Nevada in at least 500 years. These changing odds make it much more likely that similar conditions will occur again, exacerbating other stresses on agriculture, ecosystems and people.

At the same time, extreme wet periods may also increase because a warming atmosphere can carry a larger load of water vapor. In a possible preview, persistent El Niño conditions this year could force Californians to face both flooding and drought simultaneously. The more rainfall there is, the more water will be lost as runoff or river flow, increasing the risk of flooding and landslides. Add in the fact that the drought and wildfires have hardened the ground, and a paradox arises wherein the closer El Niño comes to delivering enough precipitation to break the drought this year, the greater the potential for those hazards.

In the United States, we experienced more than 80 “billion-dollar” climate and weather disasters in the last decade, and several have cost much more. The regularity of these episodes and the resulting damage shows that we are not prepared for the current climate, let alone a changing one that portends more weather extremes.

From these disasters, we can take away two lessons: Increasing resilience now can build protection for the future, and stressed systems are more prone to disasters.

For instance, the risk from a period of extremely low water supply in California is far greater when high temperatures, like those we’ve seen here over the last two years, prolong drought. There are also risks when the combined demands of households, manufacturing, farming and ecosystems tax water supplies even in good years, or when forest management practices create conditions that fuel fires. Californians will benefit by reducing these interacting stresses.

We are not arguing that the drought has been caused by climate change alone, or that all weather disasters have a link to climate change. However, the evidence is clear that many areas of the globe are experiencing increasing risks from weather and climate hazards. As with the California drought, climate change is an important thumb on the scale, increasing the odds of particular extremes in specific places.

In California, we can expect warmer winters and hotter summers, drier dry years and wetter wet years, and less water storage from snowpack in the mountains, which also controls flooding. This means more years with extreme fire danger, critically overdrawn groundwater, legal water rights that exceed the amount of water available and challenges to balancing trade-offs among water storage, flood control and environmental protection.

We have opportunities to rethink the fundamental structure of water rights and markets, re-engineer water storage to compensate for decreasing snowpack, update regulations and infrastructure to embrace water reuse and recycling, and regulate end-user pricing to encourage conservation. In short, we benefit from incorporating climate-related risks in planning for California’s future.

Fortunately, California has many assets, including historical experience, robust institutions, sophisticated science and engineering expertise and financial flexibility. Capitalizing on these assets can reduce risks today and set a path for a vibrant future. Doing so will begin by acknowledging that we are already living in a rapidly changing climate.

Noah S. Diffenbaugh is an associate professor of earth system science at Stanford. Christopher B. Field is director of the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science.