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Animal feed worse than traffic for San Joaquin Valley smog

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A new study identifies cattle feed as a possible culprit in the long-standing mystery of why California's San Joaquin Valley — a moderately-populated agricultural region — has higher levels of ozone (one of the main ingredients in smog) than many densely-populated cities. The report, which explains how fermented cattle feed works with automotive exhausts in forming ozone, is in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology.

Tree-killing pathogen traced back to California

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Genetic detective work by an international group of researchers may have solved a decades-long mystery of the source of a devastating tree-killing fungus that has hit six of the world's seven continents.

NASA studies vegetation canopy water content, soil moisture

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(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists seeking insight into the role vegetation plays in water fluctuation between soil and the atmosphere recently conducted research using specialized sensors during a series of NASA Airborne Science flights over California's San Joaquin Valley.

New tool for cleaning up soils and waterways: Prickly pear

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A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist has discovered what may be an effective tool for cleaning up soils and waterways in parts of California's San Joaquin Valley: a drought-tolerant cactus.

Cactus may give farmers a cure for poisoned crop land

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The prickly pear cactus may not sound like a trendy cash crop, but it could become a phenomenon among farmers on the arid west side of California's San Joaquin Valley.

A new tool for studying insect-plant warfare

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(Phys.org) -- When an insect pierces the surface of a plant to feed, much of the action takes place in the plant's interior. A device called the Electrical Penetration Graph (EPG) is a critical tool for peering into the process.

New model could help fill data gap in predicting historical air pollution exposure

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In a study that analyzed relationships between air quality and unemployment levels, a Tufts University researcher has developed a new statistical model that retrospectively estimates air pollution exposure for previous time periods where such information is not available.

Air pollution study clears the air on diesel versus gas emissions

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(Phys.org)—Are gasoline-fueled cars or large diesel trucks the bigger source of secondary organic aerosol (SOA), a major component of smog? UC Berkeley researchers have stepped into this debate with a new study that says diesel exhaust contributes 15 times more than gas emissions per liter of fuel burned.

Saving water without hurting peach production

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U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists are helping peach growers make the most of dwindling water supplies in California's San Joaquin Valley.

Better tools for saving water and keeping peaches healthy

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Peach growers in California may soon have better tools for saving water because of work by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists in Parlier, Calif.

California voters, lawmakers have no say in OK of major river diversion plan

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It may be the most ambitious habitat restoration project ever conceived in the United States.

Irrigation wastewater can help salvage damaged soils

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Agricultural producers on the west side of California's San Joaquin Valley (WSJV) used to drain irrigation wastewater into Kesterson Reservoir, a series of holding ponds that were part of the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge. But selenium levels in the water became hazardous to waterfowl, so the storage facility was closed in 1987. Since then, farmers have been keeping the wastewater—which also contains salt and traces of arsenic, boron, and molybdenum—in evaporation ponds on their own land, which takes around 10 percent of the crop land out of production.

NASA image: Rim Fire update Sept. 02, 2013

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The Rim Fire in and around Yosemite National Park, which began on August 17, 2013 is now the fourth largest fire in California's history. According to Inciweb.org for Sept. 02, 2013: "The Rim Fire grew approximately 8,310 acres, to a total size of 231,088 acres. Burnout operations on the northern and southern portions of the fire continued with success through the night. Southwest transport winds returned smoke to the communities northeast of the fire, including Reno, Carson City, Markleeville, Minden, and the Lake Tahoe Basin, and returned clearer skies to the Yosemite Valley, El Portal, and the San Joaquin Valley.

Four new species of 'legless lizards' discovered living on the edge

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(Phys.org) —California biologists have discovered four new species of reclusive legless lizards living in some of the most marginal habitat in the state: a vacant lot in downtown Bakersfield, among oil derricks in the lower San Joaquin Valley, on the margins of the Mojave desert, and at the end of one of the runways at LAX.

Flavor secrets of Hass avocados probed

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What makes an avocado delicious? U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) plant physiologist David M. Obenland and a team led by University of California-Riverside colleague Mary Lu Arpaia are collaborating in a series of studies to answer that question.

Air quality in San Joaquin Valley improving according to study

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(Phys.org) —Air quality in California's San Joaquin Valley, which for years has been ranked as one of the worst in the United States has improved over the past decade and looks to improve even more in the future. Speaking at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in San Francisco, chemist Sally Pusede described how efforts to reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions have dramatically improved air quality in the valley over the past decade and should be even more effective over the next ten years. Pusede is an alumna of the research group of Ronald Cohen, a faculty scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley.

Scientists say ozone from Asia contributes to the West's pollution

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High above the Big Sur coast, Ian Faloona is finding pollution on the edge of the continent, a place that should have some of the country's cleanest air.

Scientists determine amount of ozone pollution drifting to California from overseas

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Approximately 10 percent of ozone pollution in California's San Joaquin Valley is estimated to be coming from outside of the state's borders, particularly from Asia, according to preliminary research presented today, March 31, by the University of California, Davis.

Image: Central California and the San Andreas Fault

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This image captured by Sentinel-1A's radar on 1 April 2015 shows a central region of California in the US.

Report: Groundwater pumping in California has land sinking

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Vast areas of California's Central Valley are sinking faster than in the past as massive amounts of groundwater are pumped during the historic drought, state officials said, citing new research by NASA scientists.

Damage from sinking land costing California billions

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A canal that delivers vital water supplies from Northern California to Southern California is sinking in places. So are stretches of a riverbed undergoing historic restoration. On farms, well casings pop up like mushrooms as the ground around them drops.

Major California river adding key ingredient: water

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A decade ago, environmentalists and the federal government agreed to revive a 150-mile stretch of California's second-longest river, an ambitious effort aimed at allowing salmon again to swim up to the Sierra Nevada foothills to spawn.

California snowpack surveyed as indicator of drought

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Surveyors will plunge poles into the Sierra Nevada snowpack near Lake Tahoe on Tuesday, taking the season's first measurement by hand of the snow's water content as California flirts with a sixth year of drought.

Scat sniffer dogs tell York U researchers a lot about endangered lizards

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Dogs can be trained to find almost anything (people, drugs, weapons, poached ivory) but one York University researcher had them detect something a little unusual - the scat of endangered blunt-nosed leopard lizards. The scat detection dogs helped biology PhD student Alex Filazzola discover not only scat, but the importance of shrubs in preserving lizard populations in the face of climate change.

Image: Heavy rains in Lake Success, California

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California has seen some heavy rains recently after years of drought, filling many of the state's reservoirs. The rising waters are evident in this radar image from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite mission over part of the San Joaquin Valley.

NASA data show California's San Joaquin Valley still sinking

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Since the 1920s, excessive pumping of groundwater at thousands of wells in California's San Joaquin Valley has caused land in sections of the valley to subside, or sink, by as much as 28 feet (8.5 meters). This subsidence is exacerbated during droughts, when farmers rely heavily on groundwater to sustain one of the most productive agricultural regions in the nation.

Highly contagious infection threatens endangered San Joaquin kit fox population

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Endangered San Joaquin kit foxes face many threats to their survival, including loss of habitat and competition with non-native species such as the red fox. Now, scientists are rushing to save remaining fragile populations from a new danger - sarcoptic mange, a skin disease caused by mites.

Groundwater overuse has permanently reduced San Joaquin Valley's water storage ability

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Decades of over-pumping groundwater have irreversibly altered clay layers in parts of California's Central Valley, causing the ground to sink and permanently reducing its capacity to store water, a new satellite remote sensing study shows.

California farm region plagued by dirty air looks to Trump

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California's vast San Joaquin Valley, the country's most productive farming region, is engulfed by some of the nation's dirtiest skies, forcing the state's largest air district to spend more than $40 billion in the past quarter-century to enforce hundreds of stringent pollution rules.





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