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"content": "\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]With spring in full bloom, \u003ca href=\"http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/browse_tax/62/\">hummingbirds\u003c/a> can be spotted across the Bay Area flitting from flower to flower and lapping up the sugary nectar inside. These tiniest of birds have the highest metabolism of any warm-blooded animal, requiring them to consume their own body weight in nectar each day to survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By comparison, if a 150-pound human had the metabolism of a hummingbird, he or she would need to consume the caloric equivalent of more than 300 hamburgers a day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s not just an extreme appetite that sets hummingbirds apart from other birds. These avian acrobats are the only birds that can fly sideways, backwards and hover for long stretches of time. In fact, hovering is essential to hummingbirds’ survival since they have to keep their long, thin beaks as steady as a surgeon’s scalpel while probing flowers for nectar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hummingbirds don’t just hover to feed when the weather is nice. They have to keep hovering and feeding even if it’s windy or raining, a remarkable feat considering most of these birds weigh less than a nickel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28764\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/DeepLook_hummingbird_perch2_P1070210_SCALED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28764\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/DeepLook_hummingbird_perch2_P1070210_SCALED.jpg\" alt=\"An Anna's hummingbird rests after feeding in a wind tunnel at the Animal Flight Laboratory at UC Berkeley. Image by Sheraz Sadiq / KQED Science\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An Anna’s hummingbird rests after feeding in a wind tunnel at the Animal Flight Laboratory at UC Berkeley. Photo by Sheraz Sadiq / KQED Science\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>To find out how the birds do this, in 2010, biology professor Robert Dudley and post-doctoral researcher Victor M. Ortega brought hummingbirds into the \u003ca href=\"http://berkeleyflightlab.org/\">Animal Flight Laboratory\u003c/a> at the University of California-Berkeley for a closer view. The researchers worked with Anna’s hummingbirds, a species that can be found year-round in the Bay Area, which they caught on the Berkeley campus and later released.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, the birds had to be trained to feed from an artificial flower – a syringe with plastic petals around it – filled with sugar water, a substitute for flower nectar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then the birds were moved into a wind tunnel inside the Animal Flight Laboratory. The researchers could control the wind speed, subjecting the birds to speeds of three, six and nine meters per second –roughly 7 to 20 miles per hour. As the birds flew into the direction of the wind to feed from an artificial flower, a high-speed camera filmed their flight from top and side views at up to 1000 frames per second.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hummingbirds’ wings can beat up to 80 times a second – too fast for the naked eye to see. So by filming them with the high-speed camera, the scientists could capture in super-slow motion how the birds used their wings, tails and bodies to hover in windy conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The videos showed that the birds were still able to fly steadily, even in windy turbulence. To adapt, they twisted and turned their tiny bodies in the direction of the air flow, and used their wings for control and their tails like rudders to stay steady.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hummingbird’s gyrations in the wind tunnel resembled a kind of aerobatic dance that also burned up more calories when the bird had to fly into turbulent winds to get to the nectar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ortega and Dudley performed another experiment with Anna’s hummingbirds, but this time they wanted to see how they responded to rain. They placed each bird in a Plexiglas cube and, using a water spray nozzle, simulated a light rainfall that they turned on when the bird either hovered to feed or rested on its perch. Again, a high-speed camera recorded the bird’s movements, but this time, to the element of rain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the 500 frames-per-second video was played back, the scientists observed that rain didn’t keep the bird from feeding. When it finished, the wet bird flew backwards and vigorously shook its body while rotating its wings in the opposite direction – in mid-air, no less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28817\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/DL-hummingbirds-hi-speed-solo.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28817\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/DL-hummingbirds-hi-speed-solo.jpg\" alt=\"A framegrab from high-speed video of a hummingbird feeding in a wind tunnel at UC Berkeley. Image courtesy of Victor M. Ortega, UC Berkeley.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A framegrab from high-speed video of a hummingbird feeding in a wind tunnel at UC Berkeley. Image courtesy of Victor M. Ortega, UC Berkeley\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They shake their bodies like dogs while still flying, but they don’t lose control,” said Ortega.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And for birds that weigh only weigh a few grams, even a few drops of rain clinging to feathers add extra weight that can make it tough to hover in pursuit of food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But how would hummingbirds perform when they had to fly sideways during turbulence generated in the wind tunnel? Ortega hopes to find out when he runs the experiment later this year or next.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, the birds had to be trained to feed from an artificial flower – a syringe with plastic petals around it – filled with sugar water, a substitute for flower nectar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then the birds were moved into a wind tunnel inside the Animal Flight Laboratory. The researchers could control the wind speed, subjecting the birds to speeds of three, six and nine meters per second –roughly 7 to 20 miles per hour. As the birds flew into the direction of the wind to feed from an artificial flower, a high-speed camera filmed their flight from top and side views at up to 1000 frames per second.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hummingbirds’ wings can beat up to 80 times a second – too fast for the naked eye to see. So by filming them with the high-speed camera, the scientists could capture in super-slow motion how the birds used their wings, tails and bodies to hover in windy conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The videos showed that the birds were still able to fly steadily, even in windy turbulence. To adapt, they twisted and turned their tiny bodies in the direction of the air flow, and used their wings for control and their tails like rudders to stay steady.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hummingbird’s gyrations in the wind tunnel resembled a kind of aerobatic dance that also burned up more calories when the bird had to fly into turbulent winds to get to the nectar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ortega and Dudley performed another experiment with Anna’s hummingbirds, but this time they wanted to see how they responded to rain. They placed each bird in a Plexiglas cube and, using a water spray nozzle, simulated a light rainfall that they turned on when the bird either hovered to feed or rested on its perch. Again, a high-speed camera recorded the bird’s movements, but this time, to the element of rain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the 500 frames-per-second video was played back, the scientists observed that rain didn’t keep the bird from feeding. When it finished, the wet bird flew backwards and vigorously shook its body while rotating its wings in the opposite direction – in mid-air, no less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28817\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/DL-hummingbirds-hi-speed-solo.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28817\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/DL-hummingbirds-hi-speed-solo.jpg\" alt=\"A framegrab from high-speed video of a hummingbird feeding in a wind tunnel at UC Berkeley. Image courtesy of Victor M. Ortega, UC Berkeley.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A framegrab from high-speed video of a hummingbird feeding in a wind tunnel at UC Berkeley. Image courtesy of Victor M. Ortega, UC Berkeley\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“They shake their bodies like dogs while still flying, but they don’t lose control,” said Ortega.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And for birds that weigh only weigh a few grams, even a few drops of rain clinging to feathers add extra weight that can make it tough to hover in pursuit of food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But how would hummingbirds perform when they had to fly sideways during turbulence generated in the wind tunnel? Ortega hopes to find out when he runs the experiment later this year or next.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28497\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Jupiter2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28497 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Jupiter2.jpg\" alt='With its leather jacket and earring, Jupiter may have been a very, very bad influence on \"super-Earths\" during freshman year of the solar system. (Image courtesy NASA)' width=\"1280\" height=\"721\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the early days of the solar system, Jupiter may have compressed the orbits of any nascent “super-Earths,” triggering collisions and debris spiraling toward the sun. (NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I’ve always loathed Jupiter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For one thing, I am not stoked on toxic gases or crushing gravity. And the weather on Jupiter is abysmal, with wind speeds roughly twice those of hurricanes on Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Were I in charge, I once told a theoretical physicist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, I would set about destroying Jupiter for the good of humanity. He reminded me that in 1994, a like-minded comet smashed into the gas giant, which is some 89,000 miles across. The result was like a bullet fired into a mountain of shaving cream, accomplishing nothing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes when I am feeling crabby aboard an overly humid BART car with no vacant seats I think, “Well, of all the places in the universe that I could be right now, at least I’m not on Jupiter.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I mention this to explain the vindication I feel upon learning that Jupiter may be the reason our solar system is, it’s turning out, something of a weirdo among its galactic peers. Scientists \u003ca href=\"http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/\">perusing\u003c/a> thousands of exoplanets (some potentially habitable) in other systems around the Milky Way are discovering that rocky “super-Earths” are commonplace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These are planets bigger than our own, albeit perhaps not better for our brand of life: they may have crushingly thick atmospheres, and their orbits are typically tighter than Mercury’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=”PibCaA7lQnX51E91sjrQVszLByTzfGg6″]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The standard-issue planetary system in our galaxy seems to be a set of super-Earths with alarmingly short orbital periods. Our solar system is looking increasingly like an oddball,” says \u003ca href=\"http://www.astro.ucsc.edu/faculty/profiles/singleton.php?&singleton=true&cruz_id=glaughli\">Gregory Laughlin\u003c/a>, professor and chair of astronomy and astrophysics at University of California, Santa Cruz, and co-author of a \u003ca href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/03/18/1423252112.abstract?sid=95e1eea2-a537-4d0d-b947-4a058672f40c\">new paper\u003c/a> in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reason our humble solar system suffers this peculiar dearth of “super-Earths” and must instead make do with our vanilla “\u003cem>Earth\u003c/em>-Earth” can be summarized thusly: Jupiter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like Miley Cyrus, Jupiter came in like a wrecking ball.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2011, astronomers proposed the “Grand Tack” hypothesis, suggesting that during the early days of the solar system — the first few million years — Jupiter migrated inward toward the sun, stopping only when the formation of Saturn tugged it back out to its current orbit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Laughlin and co-author \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/pictures/ggik45ekh/konstantin-batygin-28/\">Konstantin Batygin\u003c/a> think rocky planets could’ve been forming near our sun, until an encroaching Jupiter’s gravitational perturbations rudely started compressing their orbits, slinging them into each other in a chain reaction that took out any nascent super-Earths and sent a lot of debris spiraling into the sun to be vaporized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the same thing we worry about if satellites were to be destroyed in low-Earth orbit. Their fragments would start smashing into other satellites and you’d risk a chain reaction of collisions,” Laughlin says. “Our work indicates that Jupiter would have created just such a collisional cascade in the inner solar system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A second generation of inner planets including familiar old Earth, as well as Mercury, Venus and Mars, would’ve emerged from the aftermath only tens of millions of years later. This explains why the planets close to our sun are younger than the planets farther away. And again, this was possible only thanks to Saturn tugging Jupiter away, thereby allowing our humble planet some breathing room to, you know, exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thank you, Saturn.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "It turns out our solar system is weird: it doesn't have any rocky \"super-Earths\" orbiting closer to the sun than Mercury. Here's one theory as to why: like Miley Cyrus, Jupiter came in like a wrecking ball and smashed any nascent terrestrial planets just as the solar system was forming.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28497\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Jupiter2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28497 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Jupiter2.jpg\" alt='With its leather jacket and earring, Jupiter may have been a very, very bad influence on \"super-Earths\" during freshman year of the solar system. (Image courtesy NASA)' width=\"1280\" height=\"721\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the early days of the solar system, Jupiter may have compressed the orbits of any nascent “super-Earths,” triggering collisions and debris spiraling toward the sun. (NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I’ve always loathed Jupiter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For one thing, I am not stoked on toxic gases or crushing gravity. And the weather on Jupiter is abysmal, with wind speeds roughly twice those of hurricanes on Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Were I in charge, I once told a theoretical physicist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, I would set about destroying Jupiter for the good of humanity. He reminded me that in 1994, a like-minded comet smashed into the gas giant, which is some 89,000 miles across. The result was like a bullet fired into a mountain of shaving cream, accomplishing nothing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes when I am feeling crabby aboard an overly humid BART car with no vacant seats I think, “Well, of all the places in the universe that I could be right now, at least I’m not on Jupiter.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I mention this to explain the vindication I feel upon learning that Jupiter may be the reason our solar system is, it’s turning out, something of a weirdo among its galactic peers. Scientists \u003ca href=\"http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/\">perusing\u003c/a> thousands of exoplanets (some potentially habitable) in other systems around the Milky Way are discovering that rocky “super-Earths” are commonplace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These are planets bigger than our own, albeit perhaps not better for our brand of life: they may have crushingly thick atmospheres, and their orbits are typically tighter than Mercury’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The standard-issue planetary system in our galaxy seems to be a set of super-Earths with alarmingly short orbital periods. Our solar system is looking increasingly like an oddball,” says \u003ca href=\"http://www.astro.ucsc.edu/faculty/profiles/singleton.php?&singleton=true&cruz_id=glaughli\">Gregory Laughlin\u003c/a>, professor and chair of astronomy and astrophysics at University of California, Santa Cruz, and co-author of a \u003ca href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/03/18/1423252112.abstract?sid=95e1eea2-a537-4d0d-b947-4a058672f40c\">new paper\u003c/a> in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reason our humble solar system suffers this peculiar dearth of “super-Earths” and must instead make do with our vanilla “\u003cem>Earth\u003c/em>-Earth” can be summarized thusly: Jupiter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like Miley Cyrus, Jupiter came in like a wrecking ball.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2011, astronomers proposed the “Grand Tack” hypothesis, suggesting that during the early days of the solar system — the first few million years — Jupiter migrated inward toward the sun, stopping only when the formation of Saturn tugged it back out to its current orbit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Laughlin and co-author \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/pictures/ggik45ekh/konstantin-batygin-28/\">Konstantin Batygin\u003c/a> think rocky planets could’ve been forming near our sun, until an encroaching Jupiter’s gravitational perturbations rudely started compressing their orbits, slinging them into each other in a chain reaction that took out any nascent super-Earths and sent a lot of debris spiraling into the sun to be vaporized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the same thing we worry about if satellites were to be destroyed in low-Earth orbit. Their fragments would start smashing into other satellites and you’d risk a chain reaction of collisions,” Laughlin says. “Our work indicates that Jupiter would have created just such a collisional cascade in the inner solar system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A second generation of inner planets including familiar old Earth, as well as Mercury, Venus and Mars, would’ve emerged from the aftermath only tens of millions of years later. This explains why the planets close to our sun are younger than the planets farther away. And again, this was possible only thanks to Saturn tugging Jupiter away, thereby allowing our humble planet some breathing room to, you know, exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thank you, Saturn.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "A Candid Conversation With California's 'Water Czar'",
"headTitle": "A Candid Conversation With California’s ‘Water Czar’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2015/03/20150320ScienceFeliciaMarcus.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>There will be no “March miracle” this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a record-dry January, California is on track for a March that is also in record-dry territory.\u003cbr>\nAnd the state Department of Water Resources says we may be looking at the \u003ca title=\"CDEC - snowpack\" href=\"http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/snowapp/sweq.action\">skimpiest Sierra snowpack\u003c/a> on record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28502\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 274px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Marcus-11-e1426897208682.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28502 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Marcus-11-e1426897208682.jpg\" alt=\"Marcus-1\" width=\"274\" height=\"357\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Felicia Marcus chairs the powerful State Water Resources Control Board. (Families Protecting the Valley)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>None of this has been lost on Felicia Marcus, who chairs the \u003ca title=\"SWRCB - members\" href=\"http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/about_us/board_members/\">State Water Resources Control Board\u003c/a>. When water supplies are tight, as they are now, her board is where the buck stops in arguments over who gets what.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I sat down with her to find out where we go from here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Craig Miller:\u003c/strong> Your senior scientist at the Water Board has said that it’s “hard to overstate the severity of this drought.” How would you characterize it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Felicia Marcus:\u003c/strong> It’s the worst thing that any of us have dealt with — probably worse than anything our grandparents ever dealt with, for a number of reasons. The precipitation levels have, of course, been terrible. Our \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/03/03/march-drought-update-a-north-south-divide-and-wheres-the-snow/\">reservoirs are low\u003c/a> and you can see that graphically. Our \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/01/29/shrinking-sierra-snowpack-heightens-drought-worries/\">snowpack is even worse\u003c/a>. And so the dislocation caused by multiple years of low precipitation — particularly the fact that it’s been so warm and we don’t have snowpack — is like a double whammy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People will quibble about precipitation levels and look at 1924 and 1977 as technically having less precipitation than now. That is nothing to have a party about because there are millions more people than there were relying on that water. So we have \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/drought-stressed-town-tries-controversial-new-water-plan/\">communities running out of water\u003c/a>, we have hundreds of thousands of acres of fields that have been fallowed, we’ve got thousands of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2014/07/15/californias-drought-is-hurting-farmers-more-than-food-consumers/\">people out of work\u003c/a> and we’ve got \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/parched-california-wildlife-suffers-in-drought/\">fish and wildlife suffering\u003c/a> as never before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CM:\u003c/strong> We started to see \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2014/07/15/california-regulators-approve-fines-for-wasting-water/\">water restrictions last year\u003c/a>. How will this year be different?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>FM:\u003c/strong> Let me start with my most fervent hope, which is that local water agencies will begin to act as if we might have \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/drought-lessons-from-down-under/\">a “millennial drought,” like Australia\u003c/a>. I think people were hoping for rain, which is not a strategy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/WaterRules2014.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-28433\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/WaterRules2014-575x1024.jpeg\" alt=\"Print\" width=\"265\" height=\"472\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/WaterRules2015.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-28434\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/WaterRules2015-676x1024.jpeg\" alt=\"Print\" width=\"315\" height=\"476\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr clear=\"all\">Marcus says local water agencies were “dithering” over what to do, so last summer, her board stepped in with a first-ever set of \u003ca title=\"SWRCB - resolution\" href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/board_info/agendas/2015/mar/031715_7_with_draft_resolution.pdf\">statewide minimum rules\u003c/a> for water use. Beginning in May, they’ll \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/03/17/calif-water-regulators-tighten-the-screws-just-a-little/\">tighten the screws\u003c/a> a little bit more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That will mean, among other things, people will have to ask for water at restaurants, and local water agencies will have to limit days in which lawn and landscape watering are allowed — in some cases to two days a week. It’ll be up to local water officials to adapt and enforce the rules.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CM:\u003c/strong> It’s the first time that the state has set a sort of minimum bar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>FM:\u003c/strong> First time any state has actually stepped in and set minimum conservation levels, but we felt we had to — not to control and tell everybody what to do, in fact they were quite modest — but to ring the bell and give some permission to the local agencies. And what I said was, “If you’re worried that your customers are gonna be mad at you, blame me. You know, I don’t mind if they’re mad at me.” It’s better if we act now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[contextly_sidebar id=”ohFYS8FlqbMmI8VKdSuW9ftUMb6KCMHa”]\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: There also seems to be a gap between the rules and enforcement part of that. Much was made a year ago about $500 fines. To your knowledge, has anybody been fined $500?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>FM:\u003c/strong> You know, I’ve heard anecdotally that there have been $500 fines. We weren’t intending to say, “Thou shalt fine.” We were actually enabling locals who maybe didn’t have the authority — we were giving them the authority to go up to $500. Some go to a thousand, some shut off your water. Again, this is something that localities do in different ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CM:\u003c/strong> Here we are in Year 4 and we’re just talking about saying to restaurants, “No, you can’t automatically bring a glass of water to every table.” Honestly, isn’t that something we should’ve done in Year 1?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>FM:\u003c/strong> Well, absolutely, I mean there are communities all over the state that have been doing it for years and they’ve never undone it — and that is the right thing to do. Again — what’s appropriate for the state to do and what’s appropriate for the locals — and we’re trying to tread somewhat lightly. Our goal isn’t a statewide takeover of every urban water agency. But in a time of crisis, we need something that’s more visible. It sends a recurrent message that we’re in a drought because part of our challenge is, it rained a lot in December, so people may have thought the drought was over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>You can hear a longer version of our interview with Felicia Marcus by clicking on the audio player at the top of this post.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The State Water Resources Control Board is California's top arbiter of water supply conflicts. Lately it's been caught in a tug of war between those who would have it tread lightly with local water agencies and those calling for aggressive statewide rationing.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>There will be no “March miracle” this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a record-dry January, California is on track for a March that is also in record-dry territory.\u003cbr>\nAnd the state Department of Water Resources says we may be looking at the \u003ca title=\"CDEC - snowpack\" href=\"http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/snowapp/sweq.action\">skimpiest Sierra snowpack\u003c/a> on record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28502\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 274px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Marcus-11-e1426897208682.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28502 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Marcus-11-e1426897208682.jpg\" alt=\"Marcus-1\" width=\"274\" height=\"357\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Felicia Marcus chairs the powerful State Water Resources Control Board. (Families Protecting the Valley)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>None of this has been lost on Felicia Marcus, who chairs the \u003ca title=\"SWRCB - members\" href=\"http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/about_us/board_members/\">State Water Resources Control Board\u003c/a>. When water supplies are tight, as they are now, her board is where the buck stops in arguments over who gets what.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I sat down with her to find out where we go from here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Craig Miller:\u003c/strong> Your senior scientist at the Water Board has said that it’s “hard to overstate the severity of this drought.” How would you characterize it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Felicia Marcus:\u003c/strong> It’s the worst thing that any of us have dealt with — probably worse than anything our grandparents ever dealt with, for a number of reasons. The precipitation levels have, of course, been terrible. Our \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/03/03/march-drought-update-a-north-south-divide-and-wheres-the-snow/\">reservoirs are low\u003c/a> and you can see that graphically. Our \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/01/29/shrinking-sierra-snowpack-heightens-drought-worries/\">snowpack is even worse\u003c/a>. And so the dislocation caused by multiple years of low precipitation — particularly the fact that it’s been so warm and we don’t have snowpack — is like a double whammy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>People will quibble about precipitation levels and look at 1924 and 1977 as technically having less precipitation than now. That is nothing to have a party about because there are millions more people than there were relying on that water. So we have \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/drought-stressed-town-tries-controversial-new-water-plan/\">communities running out of water\u003c/a>, we have hundreds of thousands of acres of fields that have been fallowed, we’ve got thousands of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2014/07/15/californias-drought-is-hurting-farmers-more-than-food-consumers/\">people out of work\u003c/a> and we’ve got \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/parched-california-wildlife-suffers-in-drought/\">fish and wildlife suffering\u003c/a> as never before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CM:\u003c/strong> We started to see \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2014/07/15/california-regulators-approve-fines-for-wasting-water/\">water restrictions last year\u003c/a>. How will this year be different?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>FM:\u003c/strong> Let me start with my most fervent hope, which is that local water agencies will begin to act as if we might have \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/audio/drought-lessons-from-down-under/\">a “millennial drought,” like Australia\u003c/a>. I think people were hoping for rain, which is not a strategy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/WaterRules2014.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-28433\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/WaterRules2014-575x1024.jpeg\" alt=\"Print\" width=\"265\" height=\"472\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/WaterRules2015.jpeg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-28434\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/WaterRules2015-676x1024.jpeg\" alt=\"Print\" width=\"315\" height=\"476\">\u003c/a>\u003cbr clear=\"all\">Marcus says local water agencies were “dithering” over what to do, so last summer, her board stepped in with a first-ever set of \u003ca title=\"SWRCB - resolution\" href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/board_info/agendas/2015/mar/031715_7_with_draft_resolution.pdf\">statewide minimum rules\u003c/a> for water use. Beginning in May, they’ll \u003ca title=\"Q-Sci - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2015/03/17/calif-water-regulators-tighten-the-screws-just-a-little/\">tighten the screws\u003c/a> a little bit more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That will mean, among other things, people will have to ask for water at restaurants, and local water agencies will have to limit days in which lawn and landscape watering are allowed — in some cases to two days a week. It’ll be up to local water officials to adapt and enforce the rules.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CM:\u003c/strong> It’s the first time that the state has set a sort of minimum bar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>FM:\u003c/strong> First time any state has actually stepped in and set minimum conservation levels, but we felt we had to — not to control and tell everybody what to do, in fact they were quite modest — but to ring the bell and give some permission to the local agencies. And what I said was, “If you’re worried that your customers are gonna be mad at you, blame me. You know, I don’t mind if they’re mad at me.” It’s better if we act now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>CM: There also seems to be a gap between the rules and enforcement part of that. Much was made a year ago about $500 fines. To your knowledge, has anybody been fined $500?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>FM:\u003c/strong> You know, I’ve heard anecdotally that there have been $500 fines. We weren’t intending to say, “Thou shalt fine.” We were actually enabling locals who maybe didn’t have the authority — we were giving them the authority to go up to $500. Some go to a thousand, some shut off your water. Again, this is something that localities do in different ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CM:\u003c/strong> Here we are in Year 4 and we’re just talking about saying to restaurants, “No, you can’t automatically bring a glass of water to every table.” Honestly, isn’t that something we should’ve done in Year 1?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>FM:\u003c/strong> Well, absolutely, I mean there are communities all over the state that have been doing it for years and they’ve never undone it — and that is the right thing to do. Again — what’s appropriate for the state to do and what’s appropriate for the locals — and we’re trying to tread somewhat lightly. Our goal isn’t a statewide takeover of every urban water agency. But in a time of crisis, we need something that’s more visible. It sends a recurrent message that we’re in a drought because part of our challenge is, it rained a lot in December, so people may have thought the drought was over.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>You can hear a longer version of our interview with Felicia Marcus by clicking on the audio player at the top of this post.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Calif. Water Regulators Tighten the Screws -- But Just a Little",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28302\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/IMG_2869.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28302\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/IMG_2869.jpg\" alt='Some eateries had already implemented a \"water-only-on-demand\" policy before it was made mandatory --but many had not. (Craig Miller/KQED)' width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Some eateries had already implemented an “only-on-demand” water policy before it was made mandatory –but many had not. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The nozzle just got tightened a bit on water use in California — but only a bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regulators today added new restrictions to those put in place last summer. Urban water customers will have a few more “don’ts” added to \u003ca href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/publications_forms/publications/factsheets/docs/fs072914manwaterreg.pdf\">the list that came out last July\u003c/a>, which includes prohibitions on things like washing your car without a shutoff nozzle and hosing down “hardscapes” like sidewalks and driveways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca title=\"SWRCB - resolution\" href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/board_info/agendas/2015/mar/031715_7_with_draft_resolution.pdf\">new measures\u003c/a>, approved by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/\">State Water Resources Control Board\u003c/a>, are a set of minimum standards for local water agencies, which have broad latitude to set and enforce conservation measures. Under the new rules:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Restaurants may only serve water if customers ask for it\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>No outdoor watering within 48 hours after any rain\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>2 day-per-week cap on watering lawns and landscaping\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Local agencies will have 45 days to comply. Outside watering is a prime target as it makes up 44 percent of total urban water use. Local agencies have some flexibility with the two-day rule if they already have similar restrictions in place to achieve the same ends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are also new reporting standards for local water agencies on restrictions they’ve put in place and agencies are required to notify customers with known water leaks on their properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘In this fourth year of drought, we’re going to have to move to a little more aggressive — or maybe a lot more aggressive responses.’\u003ccite> Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute scientist\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>All of the measures seem tame compared to recent \u003ca title=\"LAT - op-ed\" href=\"http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti-drought-california-20150313-story.html\">calls for statewide rationing\u003c/a>, such as the one by NASA earth scientist Jay Famiglietti recently in the Los Angeles Times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those things, frankly, are going to have very minor impacts on total water demand but they raise awareness,” added Peter Gleick, who heads the Oakland-based \u003ca href=\"http://pacinst.org/\">Pacific Institute\u003c/a>, a water policy think tank.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In this fourth year of drought, we’re going to have to move to a little more aggressive — or maybe a lot more aggressive responses,” \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201503170900\">Gleick told KQED’s Forum\u003c/a> program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve been trying to take modest measures to sort of light a fire under local agencies,” says Felicia Marcus, who chairs the Board, essentially the state’s final arbiter of most water matters. “My hope is that in this fourth year they will act.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much was made last summer of new fines of up to $500 that could be slapped on egregious water wasters, but it’s unclear from talking to regulators if even one such fine has been assessed — hence the new requirement that local agencies report such actions to the state. Marcus says her board was never beating the drum for big fines, but she adds, “I think local communities should be taking much more dramatic action.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The staff report prepared for the board members said that “additional benefits will be realized” from the latest round of measures, but staffers conceded that it’s not possible to “finely calculate” the savings, partly because of the lack of data available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new actions come as the state’s primary trade group for local water agencies \u003ca title=\"ACWA - poll\" href=\"http://www.acwa.com/sites/default/files/post/2015/03/summary-key-findings-ca-water-conservation-survey.pdf\">released a poll\u003c/a> on Californians’ attitudes toward water conservation. According to the survey commissioned by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.acwa.com/\">Association of California Water Agencies\u003c/a>, 80 percent of those surveyed say the drought has already caused them to reduce water use, and two thirds say there is more they could do.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "As California plods into its fourth year of drought, critics say the latest round of statewide water restrictions are too little -- and possibly too late.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28302\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/IMG_2869.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28302\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/IMG_2869.jpg\" alt='Some eateries had already implemented a \"water-only-on-demand\" policy before it was made mandatory --but many had not. (Craig Miller/KQED)' width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Some eateries had already implemented an “only-on-demand” water policy before it was made mandatory –but many had not. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The nozzle just got tightened a bit on water use in California — but only a bit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regulators today added new restrictions to those put in place last summer. Urban water customers will have a few more “don’ts” added to \u003ca href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/publications_forms/publications/factsheets/docs/fs072914manwaterreg.pdf\">the list that came out last July\u003c/a>, which includes prohibitions on things like washing your car without a shutoff nozzle and hosing down “hardscapes” like sidewalks and driveways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca title=\"SWRCB - resolution\" href=\"http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/board_info/agendas/2015/mar/031715_7_with_draft_resolution.pdf\">new measures\u003c/a>, approved by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/\">State Water Resources Control Board\u003c/a>, are a set of minimum standards for local water agencies, which have broad latitude to set and enforce conservation measures. Under the new rules:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Restaurants may only serve water if customers ask for it\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>No outdoor watering within 48 hours after any rain\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>2 day-per-week cap on watering lawns and landscaping\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Local agencies will have 45 days to comply. Outside watering is a prime target as it makes up 44 percent of total urban water use. Local agencies have some flexibility with the two-day rule if they already have similar restrictions in place to achieve the same ends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are also new reporting standards for local water agencies on restrictions they’ve put in place and agencies are required to notify customers with known water leaks on their properties.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘In this fourth year of drought, we’re going to have to move to a little more aggressive — or maybe a lot more aggressive responses.’\u003ccite> Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute scientist\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>All of the measures seem tame compared to recent \u003ca title=\"LAT - op-ed\" href=\"http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti-drought-california-20150313-story.html\">calls for statewide rationing\u003c/a>, such as the one by NASA earth scientist Jay Famiglietti recently in the Los Angeles Times.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those things, frankly, are going to have very minor impacts on total water demand but they raise awareness,” added Peter Gleick, who heads the Oakland-based \u003ca href=\"http://pacinst.org/\">Pacific Institute\u003c/a>, a water policy think tank.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In this fourth year of drought, we’re going to have to move to a little more aggressive — or maybe a lot more aggressive responses,” \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201503170900\">Gleick told KQED’s Forum\u003c/a> program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve been trying to take modest measures to sort of light a fire under local agencies,” says Felicia Marcus, who chairs the Board, essentially the state’s final arbiter of most water matters. “My hope is that in this fourth year they will act.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much was made last summer of new fines of up to $500 that could be slapped on egregious water wasters, but it’s unclear from talking to regulators if even one such fine has been assessed — hence the new requirement that local agencies report such actions to the state. Marcus says her board was never beating the drum for big fines, but she adds, “I think local communities should be taking much more dramatic action.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The staff report prepared for the board members said that “additional benefits will be realized” from the latest round of measures, but staffers conceded that it’s not possible to “finely calculate” the savings, partly because of the lack of data available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new actions come as the state’s primary trade group for local water agencies \u003ca title=\"ACWA - poll\" href=\"http://www.acwa.com/sites/default/files/post/2015/03/summary-key-findings-ca-water-conservation-survey.pdf\">released a poll\u003c/a> on Californians’ attitudes toward water conservation. According to the survey commissioned by the \u003ca href=\"http://www.acwa.com/\">Association of California Water Agencies\u003c/a>, 80 percent of those surveyed say the drought has already caused them to reduce water use, and two thirds say there is more they could do.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Video Produced by Gabriela Quirós\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]The Japanese Pool at the University of California Botanical Garden in Berkeley was built in 1941. Stones from Japan line its edges, and a small Japanese-style bridge offers visitors a place to sit and contemplate the water’s surface. It looks peaceful, but beneath the surface is a riot of writhing activity: the newts have come to town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California newts (\u003cem>Taricha torosa)\u003c/em> have marched in from the surrounding forests by the dozens (some years there are hundreds), to mate and lay eggs in the pond. Most of the time, California newts live quiet, hidden lives in the forests of California. But every winter – and newts can live for 20 years – they return to mate in the same ponds in which they were born.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28291\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/DSC_0594-e1426542791975.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28291 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/DSC_0594-e1426542791975.jpg\" alt=\"Cameraman Josh Cassidy gets a peek below the pond's peaceful surface\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cameraman Josh Cassidy gets a peek below the pond’s peaceful surface (Gabriela Quiros/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These amphibious creatures are about five to eight inches long, with rust-colored skin, except for their bright yellow eyes and belly. They began to arrive at the UC Botanical Garden around November, and will stay here for the duration of the rainy season, usually through the end of March.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paul Licht, director of the garden, has been observing the newts in the Japanese Pool for 12 years, since he became director in 2003. But his fascination began long before that, as he studied newts and newt hormones for more than 40 years as a zoologist at the University of California, Berkeley. In those days, he says, he never just sat and watched them like he does now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was usually out collecting them in the field,” he says, “or doing experiments with them in the lab.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, Licht enjoys simply observing them, year after year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re a very special kind of animal,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While California newts are only about six inches long, they might travel as far as three miles to return to their birthplace. That’s the equivalent for a human of walking about a marathon and a half, without any signs or road maps. Scientists aren’t sure exactly how they find their way, but they think it might be based on smell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Victor Twitty, a biologist at Stanford University in the 1960s, tampered with the olfactory organs of a related species, the red-bellied newt (\u003cem>Taricha rivularis\u003c/em>) and observed that they had a hard time getting home, while undamaged newts were able to get back to their ponds with astounding accuracy, even when he moved them miles away to places they had never been before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their migration takes them out of the burrows where they spend the rest of the year, eating bugs and living a terrestrial life in the forests along the California coast. It starts with the release of a hormone called prolactin, the same chemical that helps women breastfeed. In newts, it triggers an urge to head towards the water they were born in, and in males it combines with testosterone to induce a physical transformation that prepares them for the months they will spend in the water, fighting over females and engaging in an elaborate mating ritual.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As they get closer to the pond, the males’ skin transforms from pimply and rough to slimy and smooth. They bulk up, and grow pads on their feet for clamping onto females. Their tails flatten, grow wider and turn into fins that will power them through the water. When the breeding season ends, they emerge from the water, slim down, dry out, and re-adapt to a land-based lifestyle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28278\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt_floats-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28278\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt_floats-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Release of the hormone prolactin triggers male newts' transformation into aquatic creatures (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Release of the hormone prolactin triggers male newts’ transformation into aquatic creatures (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s a rapid change in phenotype, year in and year out,” says Sean Reilly, a graduate student who studies newts in the integrative biology department at UC Berkeley.” These newts are pretty amazing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newts generally enjoy a relatively safe existence, protected by a poison in their skin called tetrodotoxin, one of the world’s most potent neurotoxins. It’s the same poison found in Japanese puffer fish that occasionally kills adventurous sushi eaters –23 people were fatally poisoned in Japan between 2000 and 2009. The bright coloring of the California newt, and their even more toxic cousin, the rough-skinned newt (\u003cem>Taricha granulosa\u003c/em>), warns most predators that they’re a bad choice for a meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28287\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt_yellow_eyes_CU-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28287\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt_yellow_eyes_CU-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Newts' bright yellow belly and eyes warn predators to stay away from their toxic skin (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Newts’ bright yellow belly and eyes warn predators to stay away from their toxic skin (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But there’s one exception, a predator that doesn’t need to heed this warning: the garter snake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newts and garter snakes are locked in an epic struggle that Jim McGuire, a herpetologist at UC Berkeley, calls a “co-evolutionary arms race.” Some of the snakes in the newt’s habitat have evolved immunity to tetrodotoxin, and in response, some newts have become even more toxic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s essentially a geographic mosaic across the West,” McGuire says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In some places, newts are very toxic and can keep the snakes at bay. But in other places, “it seems like the garter snake has essentially won,” and the newts are less toxic, he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28281\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt_in_headlight_WWS-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28281\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt_in_headlight_WWS-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Road crossings can be some of the most dangerous parts of a newt's journey (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Road crossings can be some of the most dangerous parts of a newt’s journey (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When newts begin their annual odyssey from the forest to the water, they often encounter dangers that even the strongest poison can’t protect them from. Cars driving through their territory aren’t deterred by the newts’ bright colors, and road crossings can be the most dangerous part of a newt’s journey. Excluding the dangers of cars and roads, McGuire says, “It’s hard for me to imagine that many of them would be prevented from making it to their breeding site.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neighbors of Tilden Park, just a few miles from the Japanese Pool, became concerned a few years ago by the newts they were finding flattened on the road. They persuaded the park to close a road in the newt’s migration path from November to March to protect them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28297\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/DSC_0573-1024x681.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-28297\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/DSC_0573-1024x681.jpg\" alt=\"South Park Drive in Berkeley's Tilden Park is closed for the newts' breeding season every year (Gabriela Quiros/KQED)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"681\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">South Park Drive in Berkeley’s Tilden Park is closed for the newts’ breeding season every year (Gabriela Quiros/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But closing roads may not be the only protection they need. Licht said that during the past two years he’s seen the lowest numbers of newts and newt eggs since he started working at the garden. California newts aren’t currently endangered, but Licht is concerned by the decline that he’s seen in the Japanese Pool population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Last year, the whole season we only saw one egg cluster,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Normally, he sees hundreds, dotting the pond’s muddy bottom and hidden in the vegetation. The male newts are even known to snack on a few of them for extra protein, adding cannibalism to the newts’ yearly ritual.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28275\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt-eat-eggs-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28275\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt-eat-eggs-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Newt eggs can be energy-rich snacks for cannibalistic male newts (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Newt eggs can be energy-rich snacks for cannibalistic male newts (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There were more egg clusters this year, but still many fewer than usual. Licht doesn’t know what caused the downturn. He says it might be due to California’s severe drought, now in its fourth year, but naturalist James Wilson with the East Bay Regional Park District, reports he’s seen normal numbers this year at breeding sites only a few miles away from the Japanese Pool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We may never know why they almost disappeared from the Japanese Pool, Licht says, but he’s glad to see a few more this season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We mostly study them when they come to breed, we don’t know what they do the rest of the year,” he says. “There’s still a lot of mystery.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Every winter, California newts leave the safety of their forest burrows and travel as far as three miles to mate in the pond where they were born. Their mating ritual is a raucous affair that involves bulked-up males, writhing females and a little cannibalism. ",
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"title": "Newt Sex: Buff Males! Writhing Females! Cannibalism! | KQED",
"description": "Every winter, California newts leave the safety of their forest burrows and travel as far as three miles to mate in the pond where they were born. Their mating ritual is a raucous affair that involves bulked-up males, writhing females and a little cannibalism. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Video Produced by Gabriela Quirós\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The Japanese Pool at the University of California Botanical Garden in Berkeley was built in 1941. Stones from Japan line its edges, and a small Japanese-style bridge offers visitors a place to sit and contemplate the water’s surface. It looks peaceful, but beneath the surface is a riot of writhing activity: the newts have come to town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California newts (\u003cem>Taricha torosa)\u003c/em> have marched in from the surrounding forests by the dozens (some years there are hundreds), to mate and lay eggs in the pond. Most of the time, California newts live quiet, hidden lives in the forests of California. But every winter – and newts can live for 20 years – they return to mate in the same ponds in which they were born.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28291\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/DSC_0594-e1426542791975.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28291 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/DSC_0594-e1426542791975.jpg\" alt=\"Cameraman Josh Cassidy gets a peek below the pond's peaceful surface\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cameraman Josh Cassidy gets a peek below the pond’s peaceful surface (Gabriela Quiros/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These amphibious creatures are about five to eight inches long, with rust-colored skin, except for their bright yellow eyes and belly. They began to arrive at the UC Botanical Garden around November, and will stay here for the duration of the rainy season, usually through the end of March.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paul Licht, director of the garden, has been observing the newts in the Japanese Pool for 12 years, since he became director in 2003. But his fascination began long before that, as he studied newts and newt hormones for more than 40 years as a zoologist at the University of California, Berkeley. In those days, he says, he never just sat and watched them like he does now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was usually out collecting them in the field,” he says, “or doing experiments with them in the lab.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, Licht enjoys simply observing them, year after year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re a very special kind of animal,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While California newts are only about six inches long, they might travel as far as three miles to return to their birthplace. That’s the equivalent for a human of walking about a marathon and a half, without any signs or road maps. Scientists aren’t sure exactly how they find their way, but they think it might be based on smell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Victor Twitty, a biologist at Stanford University in the 1960s, tampered with the olfactory organs of a related species, the red-bellied newt (\u003cem>Taricha rivularis\u003c/em>) and observed that they had a hard time getting home, while undamaged newts were able to get back to their ponds with astounding accuracy, even when he moved them miles away to places they had never been before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Their migration takes them out of the burrows where they spend the rest of the year, eating bugs and living a terrestrial life in the forests along the California coast. It starts with the release of a hormone called prolactin, the same chemical that helps women breastfeed. In newts, it triggers an urge to head towards the water they were born in, and in males it combines with testosterone to induce a physical transformation that prepares them for the months they will spend in the water, fighting over females and engaging in an elaborate mating ritual.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As they get closer to the pond, the males’ skin transforms from pimply and rough to slimy and smooth. They bulk up, and grow pads on their feet for clamping onto females. Their tails flatten, grow wider and turn into fins that will power them through the water. When the breeding season ends, they emerge from the water, slim down, dry out, and re-adapt to a land-based lifestyle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28278\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt_floats-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28278\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt_floats-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Release of the hormone prolactin triggers male newts' transformation into aquatic creatures (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Release of the hormone prolactin triggers male newts’ transformation into aquatic creatures (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s a rapid change in phenotype, year in and year out,” says Sean Reilly, a graduate student who studies newts in the integrative biology department at UC Berkeley.” These newts are pretty amazing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newts generally enjoy a relatively safe existence, protected by a poison in their skin called tetrodotoxin, one of the world’s most potent neurotoxins. It’s the same poison found in Japanese puffer fish that occasionally kills adventurous sushi eaters –23 people were fatally poisoned in Japan between 2000 and 2009. The bright coloring of the California newt, and their even more toxic cousin, the rough-skinned newt (\u003cem>Taricha granulosa\u003c/em>), warns most predators that they’re a bad choice for a meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28287\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt_yellow_eyes_CU-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28287\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt_yellow_eyes_CU-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Newts' bright yellow belly and eyes warn predators to stay away from their toxic skin (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Newts’ bright yellow belly and eyes warn predators to stay away from their toxic skin (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But there’s one exception, a predator that doesn’t need to heed this warning: the garter snake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Newts and garter snakes are locked in an epic struggle that Jim McGuire, a herpetologist at UC Berkeley, calls a “co-evolutionary arms race.” Some of the snakes in the newt’s habitat have evolved immunity to tetrodotoxin, and in response, some newts have become even more toxic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s essentially a geographic mosaic across the West,” McGuire says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In some places, newts are very toxic and can keep the snakes at bay. But in other places, “it seems like the garter snake has essentially won,” and the newts are less toxic, he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28281\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt_in_headlight_WWS-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28281\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt_in_headlight_WWS-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Road crossings can be some of the most dangerous parts of a newt's journey (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Road crossings can be some of the most dangerous parts of a newt’s journey (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When newts begin their annual odyssey from the forest to the water, they often encounter dangers that even the strongest poison can’t protect them from. Cars driving through their territory aren’t deterred by the newts’ bright colors, and road crossings can be the most dangerous part of a newt’s journey. Excluding the dangers of cars and roads, McGuire says, “It’s hard for me to imagine that many of them would be prevented from making it to their breeding site.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neighbors of Tilden Park, just a few miles from the Japanese Pool, became concerned a few years ago by the newts they were finding flattened on the road. They persuaded the park to close a road in the newt’s migration path from November to March to protect them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28297\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/DSC_0573-1024x681.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-28297\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/DSC_0573-1024x681.jpg\" alt=\"South Park Drive in Berkeley's Tilden Park is closed for the newts' breeding season every year (Gabriela Quiros/KQED)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"681\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">South Park Drive in Berkeley’s Tilden Park is closed for the newts’ breeding season every year (Gabriela Quiros/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But closing roads may not be the only protection they need. Licht said that during the past two years he’s seen the lowest numbers of newts and newt eggs since he started working at the garden. California newts aren’t currently endangered, but Licht is concerned by the decline that he’s seen in the Japanese Pool population.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Last year, the whole season we only saw one egg cluster,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Normally, he sees hundreds, dotting the pond’s muddy bottom and hidden in the vegetation. The male newts are even known to snack on a few of them for extra protein, adding cannibalism to the newts’ yearly ritual.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28275\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt-eat-eggs-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-28275\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Newt-eat-eggs-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Newt eggs can be energy-rich snacks for cannibalistic male newts (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Newt eggs can be energy-rich snacks for cannibalistic male newts (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There were more egg clusters this year, but still many fewer than usual. Licht doesn’t know what caused the downturn. He says it might be due to California’s severe drought, now in its fourth year, but naturalist James Wilson with the East Bay Regional Park District, reports he’s seen normal numbers this year at breeding sites only a few miles away from the Japanese Pool.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We may never know why they almost disappeared from the Japanese Pool, Licht says, but he’s glad to see a few more this season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We mostly study them when they come to breed, we don’t know what they do the rest of the year,” he says. “There’s still a lot of mystery.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Los Angeles Willing to Pay Its Highest Price Ever for Water",
"headTitle": "Los Angeles Willing to Pay Its Highest Price Ever for Water | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28293\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Crowley.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28293\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Crowley.jpg\" alt=\"Flooded rice fields at the Cosumnes River Preserve near Elk Grove. Growing an acre of rice requires three acre feet of water or more; an acre foot is about 326,000 gallons. (Photo: Nancy Crowley/The Nature Conservancy)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Flooded rice fields at the Cosumnes River Preserve near Elk Grove. Growing an acre of rice requires three acre-feet of water or more. An acre-foot is roughly enough water for two Los Angeles-area households for a year. (Photo: Nancy Crowley/The Nature Conservancy)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Los Angeles is offering rice farmers in the Sacramento Valley more money than the city has ever paid for water — $700 per acre-foot. At this price, rice farmers could make more money selling water than they can make on their crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That makes it easy to say “yes,” says Lance Tennis, whose family has about 900 acres near Chico, an hour north of Sacramento. He says rice farmers in the Sacramento Valley feel compelled to help their parched neighbors to the south, but they wouldn’t want to make a habit of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re rice growers, not water marketers,” Tennis says. “It’s something you would never want to commit to on an ongoing permanent basis because these water rights are very precious, very valuable to us — they’re the only thing that makes this land up here worth what it is — the ability to grow rice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assuming the drought doesn’t curtail his local water district’s own supply, farmers like Tennis could get about $2,100 this year for every acre they agree to fallow. That’s because it takes more than three acre-feet of water to grow one acre of rice. By contrast, selling the rice nets a profit of between $1,000 to $1,500.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following a brief “wet” season marked by California’s \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/lowdown/2015/02/05/after-driest-january-on-record-how-low-are-californias-reservoirs-visualization/\">driest January\u003c/a> on record, Metropolitan Water District in \u003ca href=\"http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article13908632.html\">L.A. is offering\u003c/a> to buy more than $70 million worth of water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One upside to giving some land the year off, Tennis says, is that it’s easier with rice than certain other crops, like citrus, and doing so helps with weed control and affords a chance to level the land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tennis is among the rice farmers who depend on the Western Canal Water District, which is coordinating sales to Metropolitan. General manager Ted Trimble says he wouldn’t allow farmers to fallow more than 20 percent of the land district-wide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But depending on the weather in the next couple weeks, all bets could be off, Trimble says — the deals are “contingent on the district getting its full supply of water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The water district depends on the Feather River, which flows into Lake Oroville, and Trimble says the likelihood of getting the full allotment of water has been growing slimmer by the day.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"description": "Los Angeles is offering rice farmers in the Sacramento Valley more money than the city has ever paid for water -- $700 per acre-foot. At this price, rice farmers could make more money selling water than they can make on their crops. That makes it easy to say "yes," says Lance Tennis, whose family has",
"title": "Los Angeles Willing to Pay Its Highest Price Ever for Water | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_28293\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Crowley.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28293\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Crowley.jpg\" alt=\"Flooded rice fields at the Cosumnes River Preserve near Elk Grove. Growing an acre of rice requires three acre feet of water or more; an acre foot is about 326,000 gallons. (Photo: Nancy Crowley/The Nature Conservancy)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Flooded rice fields at the Cosumnes River Preserve near Elk Grove. Growing an acre of rice requires three acre-feet of water or more. An acre-foot is roughly enough water for two Los Angeles-area households for a year. (Photo: Nancy Crowley/The Nature Conservancy)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Los Angeles is offering rice farmers in the Sacramento Valley more money than the city has ever paid for water — $700 per acre-foot. At this price, rice farmers could make more money selling water than they can make on their crops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That makes it easy to say “yes,” says Lance Tennis, whose family has about 900 acres near Chico, an hour north of Sacramento. He says rice farmers in the Sacramento Valley feel compelled to help their parched neighbors to the south, but they wouldn’t want to make a habit of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re rice growers, not water marketers,” Tennis says. “It’s something you would never want to commit to on an ongoing permanent basis because these water rights are very precious, very valuable to us — they’re the only thing that makes this land up here worth what it is — the ability to grow rice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Assuming the drought doesn’t curtail his local water district’s own supply, farmers like Tennis could get about $2,100 this year for every acre they agree to fallow. That’s because it takes more than three acre-feet of water to grow one acre of rice. By contrast, selling the rice nets a profit of between $1,000 to $1,500.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following a brief “wet” season marked by California’s \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/lowdown/2015/02/05/after-driest-january-on-record-how-low-are-californias-reservoirs-visualization/\">driest January\u003c/a> on record, Metropolitan Water District in \u003ca href=\"http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/water-and-drought/article13908632.html\">L.A. is offering\u003c/a> to buy more than $70 million worth of water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One upside to giving some land the year off, Tennis says, is that it’s easier with rice than certain other crops, like citrus, and doing so helps with weed control and affords a chance to level the land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tennis is among the rice farmers who depend on the Western Canal Water District, which is coordinating sales to Metropolitan. General manager Ted Trimble says he wouldn’t allow farmers to fallow more than 20 percent of the land district-wide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But depending on the weather in the next couple weeks, all bets could be off, Trimble says — the deals are “contingent on the district getting its full supply of water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The water district depends on the Feather River, which flows into Lake Oroville, and Trimble says the likelihood of getting the full allotment of water has been growing slimmer by the day.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Ancient Sinkhole Could Presage Mega-Tsunami for Hawaii",
"headTitle": "Ancient Sinkhole Could Presage Mega-Tsunami for Hawaii | KQED",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2015/03/20150309TsunamiCave.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27931\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Makauwahi_2344-e1425689804216-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-27931\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Makauwahi_2344-e1425689804216-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Makauwahi sinkhole, seen from the caves on the south side. (Craig Miller/KQED)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Makauwahi sinkhole on Kauai, as seen from the caves on the south side of this hidden bowl. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Four years ago this week, an earthquake off the Japan coast unleashed a wall of water that devastated coastal cities there — and caused more than $50 million in damages along the California coast from Santa Cruz \u003ca title=\"Q - CW - post\" href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/03/13/crescent-city-its-a-mess-all-right/\">to Crescent City\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca title=\"LiveSci - Tohoku\" href=\"http://www.livescience.com/39110-japan-2011-earthquake-tsunami-facts.html\">Tohoku Earthquake and its aftermath\u003c/a> are a reminder that the threat of tsunamis is always with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Especially vulnerable is the \u003ca title=\"NOAA - PTWC\" href=\"http://ptwc.weather.gov/ptwc/?region=2\">state of Hawaii\u003c/a>, where scientists have been calculating just how big that threat might be, using evidence that could’ve gone completely unnoticed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Tsunimi-Map.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-27965\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Tsunimi-Map-593x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Print\" width=\"204\" height=\"352\">\u003c/a>Hidden away on the south shore of Kauai, Hawaii’s geologically oldest island, is \u003ca title=\"Makauwahi - main\" href=\"http://cavereserve.org/\">Makauwahi sinkhole\u003c/a>, a small wonder amid the dense coastal vegetation. It also contains buried treasure for scientists who study \u003ca title=\"Ready.gov - tsunamis\" href=\"http://www.ready.gov/tsunamis\">Pacific tsunamis\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just a massive old sand dune that has — scientists will say ‘lithified’ — it’s become rock,” explains Chris Landreau, an archaeologist who’s worked on digs at the sinkhole. Emerging through a small cave on the north side of the bowl, it presents as its own tiny world, open to the sky, surrounded by sheer walls. Palm trees sprout from the floor of the crater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When biologists entered this world in the 1990s, they soon realized that it was \u003ca title=\"Honolulu Ad - post\" href=\"http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2005/Sep/28/ln/FP509280357.html\">an open time capsule\u003c/a> for unmasking the island’s biologic and geologic history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paleoecologists starting digging down, sifting from the layers of sediments the comings and goings of plants and animals through time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Seismic Paydirt\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The idea is to identify those things that are extinct,” Landreau says, “and to identify those things that we can still find somewhere locally, and try to revive them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was the idea. But as they were digging, they struck seismic paydirt: a layer about a yard thick that clearly didn’t belong there. What was there — basalt cobbles, corals, shells and other ocean debris — eventually caught the eye of a geophysicist at the University of Hawaii named, yes, \u003ca title=\"U of HI - Butler\" href=\"http://www.higp.hawaii.edu/cgi-bin/higp/directory.cgi?func=disp&searchname=RhettButler\">Rhett Butler\u003c/a> (not to be confused with \u003ca title=\"Wiki - post\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhett_Butler\">this Rhett Butler\u003c/a>). He noticed that this was obviously stuff that came from the ocean, not the residue of plants and animals that would’ve lived on the island. And there was a lot of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Tsunami-cave-layers.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-27969\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Tsunami-cave-layers-1024x547.png\" alt=\"Tsunami cave layers\" width=\"1024\" height=\"547\">\u003c/a>“It’s a huge volume,” Butler says. He calculates about 600 cubic yards, or enough debris to fill nine ocean containers, the kind you see stacked up on cargo ships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It takes a heck of a lot to move that much material, move it from the beach, move it up the hill,” reasons Butler. “So the most likely scenario, quite frankly, is that it’s a tsunami.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would have to have been huge — big enough to hurl 200-pound boulders into a hole that’s two to three stories above sea level and set back from the shoreline about the length of a football field. Butler reckons that it hit Kauai sometime between 350 and 575 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘We only have, literally, 4 ½ hours. Imagine you snap your fingers and 4 ½ hours later, there’s a wave coming on shore that’s massive.’\u003ccite>— Rhett Butler,\u003cbr>\nUniversity of Hawaii Geophysicist\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Butler \u003ca title=\"GRL - Butler\" href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL061232/epdf\">began using computer models\u003c/a> to trace such a tsunami back to its probable origins. That led him to a seismically active zone nearly 2,000 miles north, in the eastern Aleutian Islands, off Alaska.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And the shape of the subduction zone,” he notes, “in other words where the Pacific and North America converge together — if you look at that geometry, it basically focuses energy directly toward Hawaii.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His modeling work points to a quake bigger than magnitude-9 — that’s 100 times more powerful than San Francisco’s Big One in 1906, or at least as powerful as the 2011 Tohoku event that savaged coastal Japan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a similar sized event to Tohoku, maybe slightly bigger,” Butler estimates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, he thinks it might’ve been the Pacific’s biggest quake in the past 7,000 years. At the rate that tectonic plates near the Aleutians have been moving since the Kauai tsunami, he calculates that the region is capable of producing a similar quake, at any time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27932\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 334px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Makauwahi_2355-1024x768.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-27932\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Makauwahi_2355-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"Makauwahi_2355\" width=\"334\" height=\"251\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Archaeologist Chris Landreau points out some of the tsunami deposits at the edge of caves on the south side of the sinkhole. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Once you start modeling it and looking at the possibilities,” Butler says, “you realize it’s not unreasonable that we could get a magnitude-9 in the worst possible spot that would make all the other events look rather small in comparison.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While a tsunami of that size 500 years ago would have been devastating to Hawaii’s primitive coastal culture, today civil defense authorities estimate that 370,000 people and $40 billion worth of infrastructure stand in harm’s way in the islands’ existing tsunami zones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For California, a tsunami is a nasty event but it happens within a mile of the coast,” Butler says. “The rest of the state is not affected. One of these things in Hawaii devastates the whole state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Partly as a result of Butler’s work, Hawaii officials are in the process of \u003ca title=\"HI tsunami maps\" href=\"http://tsunami.csc.noaa.gov/map.html?mapname=KAUA_I-POIPU&submit1=Search+Island+Area\">redrawing tsunami maps\u003c/a> to take into account the possibility of something much bigger than is in the historical record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Basically letting the people know where the safe zone is, which is the essence of the whole thing,” he says. “It’s to save people’s lives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27977\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 390px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Tsunami-Cave-Simulation-ft-1024x889.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-27977\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Tsunami-Cave-Simulation-ft-1024x889.jpg\" alt=\"Computer modeling shows how an earthquake in the eastern Aleutians would focus tsunami energy toward Hawaii. The green band above Kauai, in particular, shows how the contours of the ocean floor focus even more of the energy directly on the state¹s northernmost island. Actual wave heights at landfall could be greater than colors indicate.\" width=\"390\" height=\"340\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Computer modeling shows how an earthquake in the eastern Aleutian Islands would focus tsunami energy toward Hawaii. The green band above Kauai, in particular, shows how the contours of the ocean floor focus even more of the energy directly on the state’s northernmost island. Actual wave heights at landfall could be greater than colors indicate.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Technology to the Rescue?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of progress has been made toward that end in the last 10 years or so. \u003ca title=\"NOAA - DART\" href=\"http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/dart.shtml\">A network of ocean buoys\u003c/a> and other sensors keep watch for tsunamis. The U.S. maintains 39 buoys and other nations have added about 20 more to the network, known as \u003ca href=\"http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/dart/dart.shtml\">DART\u003c/a>. But keeping them working in harsh ocean environments is a challenge. And currently about a quarter of the U.S. network is out of service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Butler has suggested adding two more buoys to the Aleutian chain. \u003ca href=\"http://nctr.pmel.noaa.gov/tsu400/faculty/whitmore.html\">Paul Whitmore\u003c/a>, who directs the \u003ca title=\"NOAA - NTWC AK\" href=\"http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/\">National Tsunami Warning Center\u003c/a> in Palmer, Alaska, says there are no plans to do so, citing the costs involved. Butler has also suggested adding sensors to transoceanic cables that traverse the north Pacific. Whitmore says while officials have talked about that “for years,” deployment costs have been a barrier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Butler says were a similar event to happen today, “We only have, literally, 4 ½ hours. Imagine you snap your fingers and 4 ½ hours later, there’s a wave coming on shore that’s massive. So we’re very concerned about improving tsunami warning capabilities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Butler is seeking funding from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.fema.gov/\">Federal Emergency Management Agency\u003c/a> to search for other sites in the islands that would tell us more about this and other tsunamis in the distant past that might portend future events. Right now, Makauwahi sinkhole is the only evidence found of the mega-tsunami of 500 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By comparison, Butler muses that one small town in Oregon — Seaside — has “over 300 paleotsunami measurements of a former Cascadia event, whereas in all of the Hawaiian islands, we have precisely one.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27931\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Makauwahi_2344-e1425689804216-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-27931\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Makauwahi_2344-e1425689804216-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Makauwahi sinkhole, seen from the caves on the south side. (Craig Miller/KQED)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Makauwahi sinkhole on Kauai, as seen from the caves on the south side of this hidden bowl. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Four years ago this week, an earthquake off the Japan coast unleashed a wall of water that devastated coastal cities there — and caused more than $50 million in damages along the California coast from Santa Cruz \u003ca title=\"Q - CW - post\" href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/03/13/crescent-city-its-a-mess-all-right/\">to Crescent City\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca title=\"LiveSci - Tohoku\" href=\"http://www.livescience.com/39110-japan-2011-earthquake-tsunami-facts.html\">Tohoku Earthquake and its aftermath\u003c/a> are a reminder that the threat of tsunamis is always with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Especially vulnerable is the \u003ca title=\"NOAA - PTWC\" href=\"http://ptwc.weather.gov/ptwc/?region=2\">state of Hawaii\u003c/a>, where scientists have been calculating just how big that threat might be, using evidence that could’ve gone completely unnoticed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Tsunimi-Map.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-27965\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Tsunimi-Map-593x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Print\" width=\"204\" height=\"352\">\u003c/a>Hidden away on the south shore of Kauai, Hawaii’s geologically oldest island, is \u003ca title=\"Makauwahi - main\" href=\"http://cavereserve.org/\">Makauwahi sinkhole\u003c/a>, a small wonder amid the dense coastal vegetation. It also contains buried treasure for scientists who study \u003ca title=\"Ready.gov - tsunamis\" href=\"http://www.ready.gov/tsunamis\">Pacific tsunamis\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just a massive old sand dune that has — scientists will say ‘lithified’ — it’s become rock,” explains Chris Landreau, an archaeologist who’s worked on digs at the sinkhole. Emerging through a small cave on the north side of the bowl, it presents as its own tiny world, open to the sky, surrounded by sheer walls. Palm trees sprout from the floor of the crater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When biologists entered this world in the 1990s, they soon realized that it was \u003ca title=\"Honolulu Ad - post\" href=\"http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2005/Sep/28/ln/FP509280357.html\">an open time capsule\u003c/a> for unmasking the island’s biologic and geologic history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paleoecologists starting digging down, sifting from the layers of sediments the comings and goings of plants and animals through time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Seismic Paydirt\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The idea is to identify those things that are extinct,” Landreau says, “and to identify those things that we can still find somewhere locally, and try to revive them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was the idea. But as they were digging, they struck seismic paydirt: a layer about a yard thick that clearly didn’t belong there. What was there — basalt cobbles, corals, shells and other ocean debris — eventually caught the eye of a geophysicist at the University of Hawaii named, yes, \u003ca title=\"U of HI - Butler\" href=\"http://www.higp.hawaii.edu/cgi-bin/higp/directory.cgi?func=disp&searchname=RhettButler\">Rhett Butler\u003c/a> (not to be confused with \u003ca title=\"Wiki - post\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhett_Butler\">this Rhett Butler\u003c/a>). He noticed that this was obviously stuff that came from the ocean, not the residue of plants and animals that would’ve lived on the island. And there was a lot of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Tsunami-cave-layers.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-27969\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Tsunami-cave-layers-1024x547.png\" alt=\"Tsunami cave layers\" width=\"1024\" height=\"547\">\u003c/a>“It’s a huge volume,” Butler says. He calculates about 600 cubic yards, or enough debris to fill nine ocean containers, the kind you see stacked up on cargo ships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It takes a heck of a lot to move that much material, move it from the beach, move it up the hill,” reasons Butler. “So the most likely scenario, quite frankly, is that it’s a tsunami.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would have to have been huge — big enough to hurl 200-pound boulders into a hole that’s two to three stories above sea level and set back from the shoreline about the length of a football field. Butler reckons that it hit Kauai sometime between 350 and 575 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘We only have, literally, 4 ½ hours. Imagine you snap your fingers and 4 ½ hours later, there’s a wave coming on shore that’s massive.’\u003ccite>— Rhett Butler,\u003cbr>\nUniversity of Hawaii Geophysicist\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Butler \u003ca title=\"GRL - Butler\" href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL061232/epdf\">began using computer models\u003c/a> to trace such a tsunami back to its probable origins. That led him to a seismically active zone nearly 2,000 miles north, in the eastern Aleutian Islands, off Alaska.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And the shape of the subduction zone,” he notes, “in other words where the Pacific and North America converge together — if you look at that geometry, it basically focuses energy directly toward Hawaii.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His modeling work points to a quake bigger than magnitude-9 — that’s 100 times more powerful than San Francisco’s Big One in 1906, or at least as powerful as the 2011 Tohoku event that savaged coastal Japan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a similar sized event to Tohoku, maybe slightly bigger,” Butler estimates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, he thinks it might’ve been the Pacific’s biggest quake in the past 7,000 years. At the rate that tectonic plates near the Aleutians have been moving since the Kauai tsunami, he calculates that the region is capable of producing a similar quake, at any time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27932\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 334px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Makauwahi_2355-1024x768.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-27932\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Makauwahi_2355-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"Makauwahi_2355\" width=\"334\" height=\"251\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Archaeologist Chris Landreau points out some of the tsunami deposits at the edge of caves on the south side of the sinkhole. (Craig Miller/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Once you start modeling it and looking at the possibilities,” Butler says, “you realize it’s not unreasonable that we could get a magnitude-9 in the worst possible spot that would make all the other events look rather small in comparison.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While a tsunami of that size 500 years ago would have been devastating to Hawaii’s primitive coastal culture, today civil defense authorities estimate that 370,000 people and $40 billion worth of infrastructure stand in harm’s way in the islands’ existing tsunami zones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For California, a tsunami is a nasty event but it happens within a mile of the coast,” Butler says. “The rest of the state is not affected. One of these things in Hawaii devastates the whole state.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Partly as a result of Butler’s work, Hawaii officials are in the process of \u003ca title=\"HI tsunami maps\" href=\"http://tsunami.csc.noaa.gov/map.html?mapname=KAUA_I-POIPU&submit1=Search+Island+Area\">redrawing tsunami maps\u003c/a> to take into account the possibility of something much bigger than is in the historical record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Basically letting the people know where the safe zone is, which is the essence of the whole thing,” he says. “It’s to save people’s lives.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27977\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 390px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Tsunami-Cave-Simulation-ft-1024x889.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-27977\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Tsunami-Cave-Simulation-ft-1024x889.jpg\" alt=\"Computer modeling shows how an earthquake in the eastern Aleutians would focus tsunami energy toward Hawaii. The green band above Kauai, in particular, shows how the contours of the ocean floor focus even more of the energy directly on the state¹s northernmost island. Actual wave heights at landfall could be greater than colors indicate.\" width=\"390\" height=\"340\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Computer modeling shows how an earthquake in the eastern Aleutian Islands would focus tsunami energy toward Hawaii. The green band above Kauai, in particular, shows how the contours of the ocean floor focus even more of the energy directly on the state’s northernmost island. Actual wave heights at landfall could be greater than colors indicate.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Technology to the Rescue?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of progress has been made toward that end in the last 10 years or so. \u003ca title=\"NOAA - DART\" href=\"http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/dart.shtml\">A network of ocean buoys\u003c/a> and other sensors keep watch for tsunamis. The U.S. maintains 39 buoys and other nations have added about 20 more to the network, known as \u003ca href=\"http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/dart/dart.shtml\">DART\u003c/a>. But keeping them working in harsh ocean environments is a challenge. And currently about a quarter of the U.S. network is out of service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Butler has suggested adding two more buoys to the Aleutian chain. \u003ca href=\"http://nctr.pmel.noaa.gov/tsu400/faculty/whitmore.html\">Paul Whitmore\u003c/a>, who directs the \u003ca title=\"NOAA - NTWC AK\" href=\"http://wcatwc.arh.noaa.gov/\">National Tsunami Warning Center\u003c/a> in Palmer, Alaska, says there are no plans to do so, citing the costs involved. Butler has also suggested adding sensors to transoceanic cables that traverse the north Pacific. Whitmore says while officials have talked about that “for years,” deployment costs have been a barrier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Butler says were a similar event to happen today, “We only have, literally, 4 ½ hours. Imagine you snap your fingers and 4 ½ hours later, there’s a wave coming on shore that’s massive. So we’re very concerned about improving tsunami warning capabilities.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Butler is seeking funding from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.fema.gov/\">Federal Emergency Management Agency\u003c/a> to search for other sites in the islands that would tell us more about this and other tsunamis in the distant past that might portend future events. Right now, Makauwahi sinkhole is the only evidence found of the mega-tsunami of 500 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By comparison, Butler muses that one small town in Oregon — Seaside — has “over 300 paleotsunami measurements of a former Cascadia event, whereas in all of the Hawaiian islands, we have precisely one.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Dawn Arrives at Ceres, Makes History",
"headTitle": "Dawn Arrives at Ceres, Makes History | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27827\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/dawn_arrives_at_ceres.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27827\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/dawn_arrives_at_ceres.jpg\" alt=\"Artist's concept of NASA's Dawn spacecraft arriving at Ceres. (Dawn/NASA)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist’s concept of NASA’s Dawn spacecraft arriving at Ceres. (Dawn/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Early this morning, at about 4:39 AM Pacific Time, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft \u003ca title=\"Dawn Arrives at Ceres\" href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4503&utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NASAJPL&utm_content=dawn150306\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">arrived at Ceres\u003c/a>, making history as it swung into orbit around the dwarf planet. Dawn left Earth eight years ago, headed for the Asteroid Belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft spent a year photographing the asteroid Vesta, and then two-and-a-half years on the journey to its final port-of-call.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the last several months, scientists and the public have been \u003ca title=\"At last, Ceres is a geological world\" href=\"http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/02251857-ceres-geology.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">growing steadily more excited\u003c/a> as Dawn sent back photos of an ever-closer Ceres. For the average space enthusiast, Dawn’s arrival feels like the discovery of a new world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ve known Ceres existed since 1801, when it was discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi. But for scientists, this encounter means far more than seeing a mysterious object up close for the first time.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘Ceres has the potential to turn some of our old ideas about how planets formed completely upside down.’\u003ccite>— Dr. Britney Schmidt, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Indeed, \u003ca title=\"NASA's Dawn Mission\" href=\"http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the Dawn mission\u003c/a> is not merely a geology field trip. It is the closest thing we have to a time machine. Dawn’s exploration of Vesta and Ceres is like an archaeological dig or forensic investigation: the unearthing and reading of extant physical evidence to reconstruct what happened in our solar system’s infancy, when the planets were being formed in an environment radically different from what we know today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ceres has the potential to turn some of our old ideas about how planets formed completely upside down,” says Dr. Britney Schmidt, Assistant Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “If Ceres turns out to be icy in its interior, this would not only tell us that there were potentially lots of icy asteroids, but also that some of the ‘classical’ assumptions about the timing of planetary formation could be wrong.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ceres is an example of a “protoplanet,” an object that formed early in the solar system’s history by accumulating smaller chunks of rock and ice and snowballing toward a planet-stature object—or at least a major building-block of another planet. But Ceres’ development was arrested, and it has remained more or less unchanged from three or four billion years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Even though [Ceres] is likely refrozen now,” Schmidt says, “with the gravity data from Dawn, we may be able to show that Ceres at one time had a subsurface ocean.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dawn’s leisurely approach over the past months has supplied us with a constant feed of images that have grown ever sharper and more detailed, peeling away layers of fuzzy mystery like the skin of an onion, and revealing new mysteries in the process. That’s something astronomers are happy about, like getting an unexpected dividend on your investment. Mystery, after all, inspires science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27829\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 290px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/pia18920-rotating_lg.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-27829\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/pia18920-rotating_lg.gif\" alt=\"Image sequence of Ceres taken by the Dawn spacecraft. (Dawn/Nasa)\" width=\"290\" height=\"290\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image sequence of Ceres taken by the Dawn spacecraft. (Dawn/Nasa)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A week before Dawn’s arrival, NASA whetted our appetites for the adventure by publishing a picture that revealed \u003ca title=\"NASA/JPL\" href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4496&utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NASAJPL&utm_content=daily20150302-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">two small white spots\u003c/a> nestled close together in a crater—and told us that the nature of the roughly Lake Tahoe-sized feature was as yet unknown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What are these spots? Kids visiting Chabot Space & Science Center had some truly bright ideas, including giant pieces of reflective metal, huge chunks of ice, volcanoes, and, yes, aliens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dawn’s previous subject of interest, Vesta, can also be classed as a protoplanet like Ceres, though Vesta was found to be composed mostly of rock. Ceres, on the other hand, may be as much as 25% water ice. In terms of the protoplanet accretion processes that formed the Earth, it is thought that dry Vesta-type objects may have built up Earth’s rocky core and mantle, while icy “wet” protoplanets like Ceres may have contributed to the formation of our oceans. Certainly, Dawn’s investigations in the Asteroid Belt have shown that the kitchen in which Earth was cooked up was stocked with both ingredients.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "March 6, eight years after launch and two and a half years since leaving its last port of call, the asteroid Vesta, NASA's Dawn spacecraft has arrived at the dwarf planet Ceres, making history!",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27827\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/dawn_arrives_at_ceres.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27827\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/dawn_arrives_at_ceres.jpg\" alt=\"Artist's concept of NASA's Dawn spacecraft arriving at Ceres. (Dawn/NASA)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist’s concept of NASA’s Dawn spacecraft arriving at Ceres. (Dawn/NASA)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Early this morning, at about 4:39 AM Pacific Time, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft \u003ca title=\"Dawn Arrives at Ceres\" href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4503&utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NASAJPL&utm_content=dawn150306\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">arrived at Ceres\u003c/a>, making history as it swung into orbit around the dwarf planet. Dawn left Earth eight years ago, headed for the Asteroid Belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft spent a year photographing the asteroid Vesta, and then two-and-a-half years on the journey to its final port-of-call.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the last several months, scientists and the public have been \u003ca title=\"At last, Ceres is a geological world\" href=\"http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/02251857-ceres-geology.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">growing steadily more excited\u003c/a> as Dawn sent back photos of an ever-closer Ceres. For the average space enthusiast, Dawn’s arrival feels like the discovery of a new world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ve known Ceres existed since 1801, when it was discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi. But for scientists, this encounter means far more than seeing a mysterious object up close for the first time.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">‘Ceres has the potential to turn some of our old ideas about how planets formed completely upside down.’\u003ccite>— Dr. Britney Schmidt, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Indeed, \u003ca title=\"NASA's Dawn Mission\" href=\"http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the Dawn mission\u003c/a> is not merely a geology field trip. It is the closest thing we have to a time machine. Dawn’s exploration of Vesta and Ceres is like an archaeological dig or forensic investigation: the unearthing and reading of extant physical evidence to reconstruct what happened in our solar system’s infancy, when the planets were being formed in an environment radically different from what we know today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Ceres has the potential to turn some of our old ideas about how planets formed completely upside down,” says Dr. Britney Schmidt, Assistant Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “If Ceres turns out to be icy in its interior, this would not only tell us that there were potentially lots of icy asteroids, but also that some of the ‘classical’ assumptions about the timing of planetary formation could be wrong.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ceres is an example of a “protoplanet,” an object that formed early in the solar system’s history by accumulating smaller chunks of rock and ice and snowballing toward a planet-stature object—or at least a major building-block of another planet. But Ceres’ development was arrested, and it has remained more or less unchanged from three or four billion years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Even though [Ceres] is likely refrozen now,” Schmidt says, “with the gravity data from Dawn, we may be able to show that Ceres at one time had a subsurface ocean.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dawn’s leisurely approach over the past months has supplied us with a constant feed of images that have grown ever sharper and more detailed, peeling away layers of fuzzy mystery like the skin of an onion, and revealing new mysteries in the process. That’s something astronomers are happy about, like getting an unexpected dividend on your investment. Mystery, after all, inspires science.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27829\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 290px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/pia18920-rotating_lg.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-27829\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/pia18920-rotating_lg.gif\" alt=\"Image sequence of Ceres taken by the Dawn spacecraft. (Dawn/Nasa)\" width=\"290\" height=\"290\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image sequence of Ceres taken by the Dawn spacecraft. (Dawn/Nasa)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A week before Dawn’s arrival, NASA whetted our appetites for the adventure by publishing a picture that revealed \u003ca title=\"NASA/JPL\" href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4496&utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NASAJPL&utm_content=daily20150302-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">two small white spots\u003c/a> nestled close together in a crater—and told us that the nature of the roughly Lake Tahoe-sized feature was as yet unknown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What are these spots? Kids visiting Chabot Space & Science Center had some truly bright ideas, including giant pieces of reflective metal, huge chunks of ice, volcanoes, and, yes, aliens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Dawn’s previous subject of interest, Vesta, can also be classed as a protoplanet like Ceres, though Vesta was found to be composed mostly of rock. Ceres, on the other hand, may be as much as 25% water ice. In terms of the protoplanet accretion processes that formed the Earth, it is thought that dry Vesta-type objects may have built up Earth’s rocky core and mantle, while icy “wet” protoplanets like Ceres may have contributed to the formation of our oceans. Certainly, Dawn’s investigations in the Asteroid Belt have shown that the kitchen in which Earth was cooked up was stocked with both ingredients.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Study: Napa Quake Should Spur Retrofits to Older Buildings",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27859\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Erol-Kalkan-2A1-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-27859\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Erol-Kalkan-2A1-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"After the Napa quake, structural engineers more than 1,800 thousand damaged buildings for prohibited or restricted access. (Photo: Erol Kalkan/USGS)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">After the Napa quake, structural engineers tagged more than 1,800 damaged buildings for prohibited or restricted access. (Photo: Erol Kalkan/USGS)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A review of damage from last August’s South Napa Earthquake confirms at least one piece of conventional wisdom: seismic retrofitting older buildings is a good idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The message is driven home in a new report from the U.S. Geological Survey, which shows many of the structures damaged by last summer’s quake were built before 1950.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca title=\"Wiki - post\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_South_Napa_earthquake\">magnitude-6 quake\u003c/a> was the Bay Area’s worst since 1989, injuring about 200 people. Afterward engineers barred access to 165 buildings with red tags and placed limited-access yellow-tag restrictions on 1,707 others, many of older construction. Geophysicist Jack Boatwright says it should serve as a warning to reinforce such buildings, but he worries that not enough people are listening: “I guess we’ve got to put on the witch-doctor mask and do the boogaloo,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Retrofitting the foundation on an older house might cost a few thousand dollars, and save 100 times that amount whenever the next earthquake hits, Boatwright says. He also found that much of the damage in Napa centered over a sedimentary basin – a kind of geologic jelly bowl that can amplify movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It actually traps the energy,” he said. “Somebody in downtown Napa’s experience of how long the shaking went on would’ve been 10, 15, maybe 20 seconds more than somebody who was up on the hill outside of Napa,” on hard rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boatwright’s findings come among six reports on last year’s quake published in the March/April issue of Seismological Research Letters, edited by Erol Kalkan, a USGS research structural engineer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kalkan explained that older structures made of unreinforced brick or stone are built to handle the vertical force of gravity pushing down on them, but the Napa quake subjected them to side-to-side jostling with nearly two-thirds that same force. It’s these sideways forces that collapse walls, he said, emphasizing that beams and columns should be fitted with earthquake-resistant connections to a home’s foundation. Older chimneys also proved vulnerable, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kalkan says that before last year, the West Napa Fault was recognized but not well understood compared to the larger Hayward and San Andreas faults. Notably, the earthquake last August produced an unusually large \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2014/09/02/napa-quake-forces-redrawing-of-fault-maps/\">surface rupture\u003c/a>, which researchers traced for nearly eight miles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As to the matter of when \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2014/12/19/next-napa-quake-could-be-bigger-stronger/\">another earthquake\u003c/a> might strike, such questions are “really hard to address scientifically,” Boatwright says, but he notes that in California, moderate to larger earthquakes “tend to cluster.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27859\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Erol-Kalkan-2A1-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-27859\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Erol-Kalkan-2A1-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"After the Napa quake, structural engineers more than 1,800 thousand damaged buildings for prohibited or restricted access. (Photo: Erol Kalkan/USGS)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">After the Napa quake, structural engineers tagged more than 1,800 damaged buildings for prohibited or restricted access. (Photo: Erol Kalkan/USGS)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A review of damage from last August’s South Napa Earthquake confirms at least one piece of conventional wisdom: seismic retrofitting older buildings is a good idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The message is driven home in a new report from the U.S. Geological Survey, which shows many of the structures damaged by last summer’s quake were built before 1950.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca title=\"Wiki - post\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_South_Napa_earthquake\">magnitude-6 quake\u003c/a> was the Bay Area’s worst since 1989, injuring about 200 people. Afterward engineers barred access to 165 buildings with red tags and placed limited-access yellow-tag restrictions on 1,707 others, many of older construction. Geophysicist Jack Boatwright says it should serve as a warning to reinforce such buildings, but he worries that not enough people are listening: “I guess we’ve got to put on the witch-doctor mask and do the boogaloo,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Retrofitting the foundation on an older house might cost a few thousand dollars, and save 100 times that amount whenever the next earthquake hits, Boatwright says. He also found that much of the damage in Napa centered over a sedimentary basin – a kind of geologic jelly bowl that can amplify movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It actually traps the energy,” he said. “Somebody in downtown Napa’s experience of how long the shaking went on would’ve been 10, 15, maybe 20 seconds more than somebody who was up on the hill outside of Napa,” on hard rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boatwright’s findings come among six reports on last year’s quake published in the March/April issue of Seismological Research Letters, edited by Erol Kalkan, a USGS research structural engineer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kalkan explained that older structures made of unreinforced brick or stone are built to handle the vertical force of gravity pushing down on them, but the Napa quake subjected them to side-to-side jostling with nearly two-thirds that same force. It’s these sideways forces that collapse walls, he said, emphasizing that beams and columns should be fitted with earthquake-resistant connections to a home’s foundation. Older chimneys also proved vulnerable, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kalkan says that before last year, the West Napa Fault was recognized but not well understood compared to the larger Hayward and San Andreas faults. Notably, the earthquake last August produced an unusually large \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2014/09/02/napa-quake-forces-redrawing-of-fault-maps/\">surface rupture\u003c/a>, which researchers traced for nearly eight miles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As to the matter of when \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2014/12/19/next-napa-quake-could-be-bigger-stronger/\">another earthquake\u003c/a> might strike, such questions are “really hard to address scientifically,” Boatwright says, but he notes that in California, moderate to larger earthquakes “tend to cluster.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]Melissa DuBose casts a net out into the sea on a crisp winter morning, from a wooden pier near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I come out here every week,” she says. She reels in her net to collect her catch, which appears to be only water, captured in a small bottle dangling from the bottom of the net. DuBose collects sea creatures so small most people never notice them, yet they are critical to all life in the oceans and on land: plankton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27815\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Dubose-throws-net-with-Josh1280.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27815\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Dubose-throws-net-with-Josh1280.png\" alt=\"Melissa Dubose of the Romberg Tiburon Center casts her plankton net, with producer Josh Cassidy looking on (Mallory Pickett/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Melissa DuBose of the Romberg Tiburon Center casts her plankton net, with producer Josh Cassidy looking on (Mallory Pickett/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The word plankton comes from the Greek word \u003cem>planktos\u003c/em>, which means drifter, or wanderer.\u003cbr>\nWhich is precisely what plankton are. Tiny wandering plants and animals, drifting at the mercy of ocean waves, tides and winds. The technical definition of plankton is anything that lives in water and isn’t strong enough to swim against the current.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DuBose immediately brings the plankton she collects to a microscope in William Cochlan’s laboratory at the Romberg Tiburon Center, San Francisco State University’s marine lab in Marin County. Cochlan and his lab members study phytoplankton, tiny marine organisms that collect energy from the sun through photosynthesis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because we can’t see them without microscopes they’re kind of invisible to us,” Cochlan says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But magnified, their beautiful shapes and colors are revealed. Diatoms are one of the most common types of phytoplankton, and they are known for making silica (glass) cell walls, in an amazing variety of shapes and sizes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27817\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Diatom2half-800.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27817\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Diatom2half-800.png\" alt=\"Mixed diatoms arranged on a microscope slide (Wipeter/Wikimedia commons)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mixed diatoms arranged on a microscope slide (Wipeter/Wikimedia commons)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Diatoms aren’t just beautiful, they’re essential to life on earth. Phytoplankton produce 40 to 60 percent of the oxygen we breathe, and in the ocean they are the base of the food web.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cochlan wants to know how these microscopic plants will be affected by changing ocean conditions, brought about by the billions of tons of carbon dioxide we emit into the atmosphere every year. The gas traps heat, slowly warming the sea surface. But it also changes the ocean’s chemistry. About a third of the carbon dioxide we emit is absorbed by the oceans, where it reacts with seawater to make it more acidic. As the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has gone up over the past century, the ocean’s acidity has increased by about 30 percent, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We really have to find out if ocean acidification is going to negatively impact the phytoplankton,” Cochlan says. In his lab, researchers are growing phytoplankton in water treated with high levels of carbon dioxide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re specifically trying to see if ocean acidification increases their growth rate or slows it down,” he says. So far, the scientists have seen that in some cases phytoplankton grows faster in water with high amounts of carbon dioxide. But Cochlan cautions that growth rate isn’t the only indicator of health, and there could be negative impacts that they haven’t detected yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The jury’s still out,” on how increasing carbon dioxide will affect phytoplankton, he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not all plankton depend on carbon dioxide to grow. There is another class of drifters, that act more like animals than plants, called zooplankton. Zooplankton mostly eat phytoplankton, though they sometimes each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27820\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/plankton-copepod-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-27820\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/plankton-copepod-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Acartia hudsonica, a species of marine copepod (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Acartia hudsonica, a species of marine copepod (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Zooplankton include all drifting sea animals, from jellyfish to crab larvae. One of the biggest and most plentiful type of zooplankton is krill. They are only about the size of a paper clip, but abundant enough that enormous animals, like blue whales, can survive on a krill-only diet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the reasons there are so many whales in the waters off the Golden Gate, Cochlan says, is that this area is home to a high density of zooplankton. The high density of zooplankton is supported by an ocean process called upwelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Upwelling is caused by winds stirring up the ocean’s surface, forcing warm surface waters away from shore and bringing cold water up from the deep. Deep water is full of nutrients, because the bottom of the ocean is where everything marine goes to die and decompose, breaking down into material for new life, like a compost bin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27822\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Upwelling2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27822\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Upwelling2.jpg\" alt=\"(Via wikimedia-modified by D. Reed from image by J. Wallace and S. Vogel, El Niño and Climate Prediction. Image courtesy of Sanctuary Quest 2002, NOAA/OER) Upwelling happens when offshore winds push water away from the coast, and water from the deep comes up to replace the displaced surface water.\" width=\"640\" height=\"385\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Via wikimedia-modified by D. Reed from image by J. Wallace and S. Vogel, El Niño and Climate Prediction. Image courtesy of Sanctuary Quest 2002, NOAA/OER). Upwelling happens when offshore winds push water away from the coast, and water from the deep comes up to replace the displaced surface water.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The infusion of nutrients sparks an explosion of life at the surface, starting with the phytoplankton. Most phytoplankton are single-celled organisms, and they reproduce by dividing into two new cells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Typical phytoplankton divide once, doubling per day,” Cochlan says. But after an upwelling, they rapidly accelerate their growth rate. More phytoplankton means more food for zooplankton, which are prey for small fish and big whales.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We usually only witness this feeding frenzy from the ocean’s surface — flocks of birds congregating, whales and dolphins diving. But the fuel driving all this energy is below the waves, and too small to be seen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The future of these episodic bursts of productivity is unclear. A paper published last week in the journal Nature predicted that warmer waters and stronger winds will increase upwelling. But the paper’s authors say the separation between warm surface waters and cold deep water could also increase, so the upwelling might not bring up as many nutrients. It is still unknown, they say, how future changes in upwelling will affect marine life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humans need plankton, but most people go through life without seeing one up close. Plankton are the unsung heroes of the ocean — the tiny, beautiful, lungs of the planet and food for the sea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Humans cannot survive without healthy oceans that support phytoplankton growth,” Cochlan says. “They’re really quite something.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Melissa DuBose casts a net out into the sea on a crisp winter morning, from a wooden pier near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I come out here every week,” she says. She reels in her net to collect her catch, which appears to be only water, captured in a small bottle dangling from the bottom of the net. DuBose collects sea creatures so small most people never notice them, yet they are critical to all life in the oceans and on land: plankton.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27815\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Dubose-throws-net-with-Josh1280.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27815\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Dubose-throws-net-with-Josh1280.png\" alt=\"Melissa Dubose of the Romberg Tiburon Center casts her plankton net, with producer Josh Cassidy looking on (Mallory Pickett/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Melissa DuBose of the Romberg Tiburon Center casts her plankton net, with producer Josh Cassidy looking on (Mallory Pickett/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The word plankton comes from the Greek word \u003cem>planktos\u003c/em>, which means drifter, or wanderer.\u003cbr>\nWhich is precisely what plankton are. Tiny wandering plants and animals, drifting at the mercy of ocean waves, tides and winds. The technical definition of plankton is anything that lives in water and isn’t strong enough to swim against the current.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>DuBose immediately brings the plankton she collects to a microscope in William Cochlan’s laboratory at the Romberg Tiburon Center, San Francisco State University’s marine lab in Marin County. Cochlan and his lab members study phytoplankton, tiny marine organisms that collect energy from the sun through photosynthesis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because we can’t see them without microscopes they’re kind of invisible to us,” Cochlan says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But magnified, their beautiful shapes and colors are revealed. Diatoms are one of the most common types of phytoplankton, and they are known for making silica (glass) cell walls, in an amazing variety of shapes and sizes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27817\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Diatom2half-800.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27817\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Diatom2half-800.png\" alt=\"Mixed diatoms arranged on a microscope slide (Wipeter/Wikimedia commons)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mixed diatoms arranged on a microscope slide (Wipeter/Wikimedia commons)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Diatoms aren’t just beautiful, they’re essential to life on earth. Phytoplankton produce 40 to 60 percent of the oxygen we breathe, and in the ocean they are the base of the food web.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cochlan wants to know how these microscopic plants will be affected by changing ocean conditions, brought about by the billions of tons of carbon dioxide we emit into the atmosphere every year. The gas traps heat, slowly warming the sea surface. But it also changes the ocean’s chemistry. About a third of the carbon dioxide we emit is absorbed by the oceans, where it reacts with seawater to make it more acidic. As the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has gone up over the past century, the ocean’s acidity has increased by about 30 percent, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We really have to find out if ocean acidification is going to negatively impact the phytoplankton,” Cochlan says. In his lab, researchers are growing phytoplankton in water treated with high levels of carbon dioxide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re specifically trying to see if ocean acidification increases their growth rate or slows it down,” he says. So far, the scientists have seen that in some cases phytoplankton grows faster in water with high amounts of carbon dioxide. But Cochlan cautions that growth rate isn’t the only indicator of health, and there could be negative impacts that they haven’t detected yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The jury’s still out,” on how increasing carbon dioxide will affect phytoplankton, he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not all plankton depend on carbon dioxide to grow. There is another class of drifters, that act more like animals than plants, called zooplankton. Zooplankton mostly eat phytoplankton, though they sometimes each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27820\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/plankton-copepod-1024x576.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-27820\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/plankton-copepod-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"Acartia hudsonica, a species of marine copepod (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Acartia hudsonica, a species of marine copepod (Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Zooplankton include all drifting sea animals, from jellyfish to crab larvae. One of the biggest and most plentiful type of zooplankton is krill. They are only about the size of a paper clip, but abundant enough that enormous animals, like blue whales, can survive on a krill-only diet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the reasons there are so many whales in the waters off the Golden Gate, Cochlan says, is that this area is home to a high density of zooplankton. The high density of zooplankton is supported by an ocean process called upwelling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Upwelling is caused by winds stirring up the ocean’s surface, forcing warm surface waters away from shore and bringing cold water up from the deep. Deep water is full of nutrients, because the bottom of the ocean is where everything marine goes to die and decompose, breaking down into material for new life, like a compost bin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27822\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Upwelling2.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27822\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/03/Upwelling2.jpg\" alt=\"(Via wikimedia-modified by D. Reed from image by J. Wallace and S. Vogel, El Niño and Climate Prediction. Image courtesy of Sanctuary Quest 2002, NOAA/OER) Upwelling happens when offshore winds push water away from the coast, and water from the deep comes up to replace the displaced surface water.\" width=\"640\" height=\"385\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Via wikimedia-modified by D. Reed from image by J. Wallace and S. Vogel, El Niño and Climate Prediction. Image courtesy of Sanctuary Quest 2002, NOAA/OER). Upwelling happens when offshore winds push water away from the coast, and water from the deep comes up to replace the displaced surface water.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The infusion of nutrients sparks an explosion of life at the surface, starting with the phytoplankton. Most phytoplankton are single-celled organisms, and they reproduce by dividing into two new cells.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Typical phytoplankton divide once, doubling per day,” Cochlan says. But after an upwelling, they rapidly accelerate their growth rate. More phytoplankton means more food for zooplankton, which are prey for small fish and big whales.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We usually only witness this feeding frenzy from the ocean’s surface — flocks of birds congregating, whales and dolphins diving. But the fuel driving all this energy is below the waves, and too small to be seen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The future of these episodic bursts of productivity is unclear. A paper published last week in the journal Nature predicted that warmer waters and stronger winds will increase upwelling. But the paper’s authors say the separation between warm surface waters and cold deep water could also increase, so the upwelling might not bring up as many nutrients. It is still unknown, they say, how future changes in upwelling will affect marine life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humans need plankton, but most people go through life without seeing one up close. Plankton are the unsung heroes of the ocean — the tiny, beautiful, lungs of the planet and food for the sea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Humans cannot survive without healthy oceans that support phytoplankton growth,” Cochlan says. “They’re really quite something.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "A New, Stronger Tunnel to Bring Hetch Hetchy Water to the Bay Area",
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"headTitle": "A New, Stronger Tunnel to Bring Hetch Hetchy Water to the Bay Area | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27536\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/tunnel_opening1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27536\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/tunnel_opening1.jpg\" alt=\"Workers with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission inspect the New Irvington Tunnel, which will carry an average of 265 million gallons of water a day. (Owen Bissell/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Workers with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission inspect the New Irvington Tunnel, which will carry an average of 265 million gallons of water a day. (Owen Bissell/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has opened a new 3.5 mile-long tunnel in Sunol Valley, a few miles east of Fremont, that will transport 265 million gallons of water a day, on average, to customers of the Hetch Hetchy water system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Construction crews have been hard at work on the nine-foot diameter New Irvington Tunnel since July 2010, and its opening on Friday marks another milestone in the $4.8 billion \u003ca href=\"http://sfwater.org/index.aspx?page=114\">Hetch Hetchy Water System Improvement Program \u003c/a>to upgrade and replace aging infrastructure that brings water from \u003ca href=\"http://www.nps.gov/featurecontent/yose/anniversary/yosemite125th.com/index.html\">Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite National Park\u003c/a>, 167 miles away, to the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A key goal of the voter-approved program, which is scheduled to run through 2018, is to make sure that taps in the homes of the 2.6 million Bay Area residents who receive Hetch Hetchy water keep flowing with water 24 hours after a major earthquake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have the Calaveras fault, the Hayward fault in the East Bay, and then of course the San Andreas fault on the Peninsula,” said Dan Wade, director of the Hetch Hetchy Water System Improvement Program. “And our water system crosses all three of those major faults.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the \u003ca href=\"http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/ucerf/\">U.S. Geological Survey\u003c/a>, there is a greater than 60 percent chance of a major earthquake taking place in the Bay Area in the next 30 years. The Hetch Hetchy water system has been operating for more than 80 years, and much of its infrastructure – including pipes, local reservoirs and a 90 year-old rock and earth-filled dam – is in need of a makeover to shield it from earthquakes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the construction projects are also intended to provide redundancy and a back-up to structures that are critical to bringing water from the Sierra Nevada watershed to the system’s customers, who live in San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, the New Irvington Tunnel operates alongside the existing Irvington Tunnel in Sunol Valley, which brings water from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir into the Bay Area. The existing Irvington Tunnel, which has not been taken out of service since 1966, when it was last inspected, is vulnerable to earthquakes, experts say, and lies between the Calaveras and San Andreas faults. The new tunnel, which is steel-lined and encased in concrete, has been engineered to withstand a magnitude 7.1 earthquake on the Hayward fault.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re actually constructing the New Irvington Tunnel parallel to the existing tunnel,” said Wade. “We’ll be able to take the existing tunnel out of service, make any repairs, and then both tunnels will be in service,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both tunnels will carry water not only from Hetch Hetchy but also from the nearby San Antonio and Calaveras reservoirs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27534\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/CalaverasReservoir1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-27534 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/CalaverasReservoir1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Calaveras Reservoir is located just 1500 feet from the Calaveras fault, one of three active faults the Hetch Hetchy water system crosses in the Bay Area. (Owen Bissell/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Calaveras Reservoir, which is the largest of the system’s five local reservoirs, is also in need of a seismic makeover. Its 90 year-old earth- and rock-filled dam, which forms the reservoir, is located on the Santa Clara – Alameda county line, and is located only 1,500 feet from the Calaveras fault. Since 2001, state dam regulators have only allowed the reservoir to be filled to 40 percent of its capacity because the dam is prone to liquefaction, which happens when waterlogged, loose soil behaves like a liquid during the violent shaking generated by a big earthquake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a result, construction crews are building a new, 220 foot-tall seismically safe dam a few hundred yards downstream from the original dam in the hills southeast of Fremont. At a cost of $720 million, replacing the Calaveras Dam is the biggest, most expensive and last remaining major project under the Hetch Hetchy Water System Improvement Program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27535\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/Calaveras_Dam_site1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-27535 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/Calaveras_Dam_site1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ten million cubic yards of earth and rock will need to be excavated for the construction of the new Calaveras Dam, located at the Alameda-Santa Clara county line. (Owen Bissell/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Although it will also be made of earth and rock – roughly 10 million cubic yards’ worth – cement grouting is being sprayed between spaces within the rock to create a more water-tight foundation. The reservoir will then be able to fill to capacity – 100,000 acre-feet or 31 billion gallons – when construction on the new dam finishes in 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Wade, filling Calaveras, the largest of the system’s five local reservoirs, to full capacity will not only boost water storage but help the regional water system cope with multi-year droughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re in the third year of a major drought,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The program has a goal of meeting a drought period of seven-and-a-half years. We need this reservoir for drought carryover storage.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To find out more about the New Irvington Tunnel and Calaveras Dam replacement projects, watch this \u003ca href=\"http://youtu.be/wNlX_IcRgos?list=PLCxtKFQXBuRhyJ2TALXYrNBWDZMO7jPOr#t=8m10s\">video\u003c/a> produced for KQED Newsroom. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The San Francisco Public Utilities opened on Friday a new cement-encased, steel-lined tunnel that runs from Sunol Valley to Fremont. It will carry an average of 265 million gallons of water a day for customers of the Hetch Hetchy Water System Improvement Program, which consists of more than 80 projects to seismically retrofit and upgrade an 80-year-old water system serving 2.6 million people in the Bay Area.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27536\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/tunnel_opening1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27536\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/tunnel_opening1.jpg\" alt=\"Workers with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission inspect the New Irvington Tunnel, which will carry an average of 265 million gallons of water a day. (Owen Bissell/KQED)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Workers with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission inspect the New Irvington Tunnel, which will carry an average of 265 million gallons of water a day. (Owen Bissell/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has opened a new 3.5 mile-long tunnel in Sunol Valley, a few miles east of Fremont, that will transport 265 million gallons of water a day, on average, to customers of the Hetch Hetchy water system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Construction crews have been hard at work on the nine-foot diameter New Irvington Tunnel since July 2010, and its opening on Friday marks another milestone in the $4.8 billion \u003ca href=\"http://sfwater.org/index.aspx?page=114\">Hetch Hetchy Water System Improvement Program \u003c/a>to upgrade and replace aging infrastructure that brings water from \u003ca href=\"http://www.nps.gov/featurecontent/yose/anniversary/yosemite125th.com/index.html\">Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite National Park\u003c/a>, 167 miles away, to the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A key goal of the voter-approved program, which is scheduled to run through 2018, is to make sure that taps in the homes of the 2.6 million Bay Area residents who receive Hetch Hetchy water keep flowing with water 24 hours after a major earthquake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have the Calaveras fault, the Hayward fault in the East Bay, and then of course the San Andreas fault on the Peninsula,” said Dan Wade, director of the Hetch Hetchy Water System Improvement Program. “And our water system crosses all three of those major faults.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to the \u003ca href=\"http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/ucerf/\">U.S. Geological Survey\u003c/a>, there is a greater than 60 percent chance of a major earthquake taking place in the Bay Area in the next 30 years. The Hetch Hetchy water system has been operating for more than 80 years, and much of its infrastructure – including pipes, local reservoirs and a 90 year-old rock and earth-filled dam – is in need of a makeover to shield it from earthquakes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of the construction projects are also intended to provide redundancy and a back-up to structures that are critical to bringing water from the Sierra Nevada watershed to the system’s customers, who live in San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, the New Irvington Tunnel operates alongside the existing Irvington Tunnel in Sunol Valley, which brings water from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir into the Bay Area. The existing Irvington Tunnel, which has not been taken out of service since 1966, when it was last inspected, is vulnerable to earthquakes, experts say, and lies between the Calaveras and San Andreas faults. The new tunnel, which is steel-lined and encased in concrete, has been engineered to withstand a magnitude 7.1 earthquake on the Hayward fault.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re actually constructing the New Irvington Tunnel parallel to the existing tunnel,” said Wade. “We’ll be able to take the existing tunnel out of service, make any repairs, and then both tunnels will be in service,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Both tunnels will carry water not only from Hetch Hetchy but also from the nearby San Antonio and Calaveras reservoirs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27534\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/CalaverasReservoir1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-27534 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/CalaverasReservoir1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Calaveras Reservoir is located just 1500 feet from the Calaveras fault, one of three active faults the Hetch Hetchy water system crosses in the Bay Area. (Owen Bissell/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Calaveras Reservoir, which is the largest of the system’s five local reservoirs, is also in need of a seismic makeover. Its 90 year-old earth- and rock-filled dam, which forms the reservoir, is located on the Santa Clara – Alameda county line, and is located only 1,500 feet from the Calaveras fault. Since 2001, state dam regulators have only allowed the reservoir to be filled to 40 percent of its capacity because the dam is prone to liquefaction, which happens when waterlogged, loose soil behaves like a liquid during the violent shaking generated by a big earthquake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a result, construction crews are building a new, 220 foot-tall seismically safe dam a few hundred yards downstream from the original dam in the hills southeast of Fremont. At a cost of $720 million, replacing the Calaveras Dam is the biggest, most expensive and last remaining major project under the Hetch Hetchy Water System Improvement Program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27535\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/Calaveras_Dam_site1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-27535 size-full\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/Calaveras_Dam_site1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ten million cubic yards of earth and rock will need to be excavated for the construction of the new Calaveras Dam, located at the Alameda-Santa Clara county line. (Owen Bissell/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Although it will also be made of earth and rock – roughly 10 million cubic yards’ worth – cement grouting is being sprayed between spaces within the rock to create a more water-tight foundation. The reservoir will then be able to fill to capacity – 100,000 acre-feet or 31 billion gallons – when construction on the new dam finishes in 2018.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Wade, filling Calaveras, the largest of the system’s five local reservoirs, to full capacity will not only boost water storage but help the regional water system cope with multi-year droughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re in the third year of a major drought,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The program has a goal of meeting a drought period of seven-and-a-half years. We need this reservoir for drought carryover storage.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To find out more about the New Irvington Tunnel and Calaveras Dam replacement projects, watch this \u003ca href=\"http://youtu.be/wNlX_IcRgos?list=PLCxtKFQXBuRhyJ2TALXYrNBWDZMO7jPOr#t=8m10s\">video\u003c/a> produced for KQED Newsroom. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Can Technology Make a Dent in East Bay Traffic?",
"headTitle": "Can Technology Make a Dent in East Bay Traffic? | KQED",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2015/02/20150227I80corridor.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27741\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 819px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/Featured-img-e1425087617527-1024x571.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-27741\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/Featured-img-e1425087617527-1024x571.jpg\" alt='The new signs along I-80 will feature \"advisory\" speed limits and warn drivers to merge when lanes are blocked ahead. (David Pierce/KQED and Tyler Dunham/Caltrans)' width=\"819\" height=\"456\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The new signs along I-80 will feature “advisory” speed limits and warn drivers to merge when lanes ahead are blocked. (David Pierce/KQED and Tyler Dunham/Caltrans)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Here’s one \u003cem>unwelcome\u003c/em> sign of the Bay Area’s resurgent economy: slower commutes. A \u003ca href=\"http://www.inrix.com/scorecard/key-findings-us/\">study out last year\u003c/a> found that in 2013, the amount of time wasted sitting in traffic rose 10 percent in San Francisco and San Jose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tech boom may be partly to blame, but technology could also help ease some of the congestion. \u003ca href=\"http://80smartcorridor.org/\">A project\u003c/a> called the “I-80 SMART Corridor” is set to test the idea this summer in the East Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s on a notorious stretch of freeway — ranked the area’s worst for commuters nine of the last ten years — running from the Carquinez Bridge down through Richmond and Berkeley to the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the interest of thoroughness, I had to sample the stew for myself. So, on a recent morning, I rode along with my colleague Kristin Farr, KQED’s arts education manager, who lives in Richmond. In theory, driving to our office in San Francisco without traffic would take 24 minutes, but in our case, it was roughly double that. And things could’ve been a lot worse: Farr told me of times she’s sat in traffic, watching the minutes tick by while growing increasingly frustrated and late to an early meeting:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s kind’ve embarrassing,” Farr said, “but I’ve certainly been in my car and been like ‘Nooo!’ Just cursing – just yelling like, ‘Crap! I’m in trouble!’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27739\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 340px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/MapFinal-497x1024.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-27739\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/MapFinal-497x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Map of the I-80 SMART Corridor (David Pierce/KQED)\" width=\"340\" height=\"699\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Map of the I-80 SMART Corridor (David Pierce/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This is the kind of commute that wears on people. After a typical workday and another long drive back, Farr would arrive home stressed – “tightly wound,” she says – and eventually her family nudged her to start catching the train to work instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riding in with her that morning, Farr and I free-associated about amphibious vs. flying cars as means of cutting directly across the Bay. It might sound nutty, but so too does the prohibitive cost of adding another lane to this stretch of freeway — roughly a billion dollars — were that even possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This highway is fairly built out,” says Sean Nozzari, deputy district director at Caltrans. “On one side you have the beautiful San Francisco Bay. On the other side we have communities that are very well developed, so there is really no physical space to widen the highway.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Enter the I-80 SMART Corridor\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of more lanes, the idea starting this summer is to give drivers more information. The I-80 SMART Corridor is essentially made up of 20 miles of road sensors and a couple of hundred signs being installed throughout the corridor and on arterial roads. (SMART, I’m told, is an acronym for “Safety, Mobility, Automated Real-Time Traffic Management System.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a paltry $80 million it’s a relative steal, funded through a mixture of federal dollars and various agencies, including Caltrans and local transportation agencies in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s the scenario: As you’re driving to work, let’s say a wreck happens miles ahead in the left lane and traffic there is nearly stopped. Signs will warn you to merge right and slow down. (These “variable speed limits” will be advisory – not the kind enforced by police.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you then exit to go around the congestion – as drivers often do via San Pablo Avenue, which roughly parallels I-80 – signs will let you know when you’ve made it past the freeway congestion and should get back on. To keep your merge from disrupting the freeway’s flow, “ramp metering” lights will cue you to get back on at just the right moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Orchestrating all of this will be moment-by-moment data, gathered from thousands of sensors — metal loops embedded in the road that detect how many cars are traveling in a given lane, and how fast — which is then processed by a computer algorithm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The ‘Nerve Center’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27689\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 376px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/CanTrans-Control-room-1024x768.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-27689\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/CanTrans-Control-room-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"Nerve center\" width=\"376\" height=\"282\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Bay Area Traffic Management Center in Oakland monitors traffic on freeways, and uses closed-circuit cameras to see which lanes are blocked and where emergency equipment is needed. (Photo: Daniel Potter/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In a dimly lit room in downtown Oakland, the many thousands of drivers traversing the Bay Area’s freeways are monitored not just by computers but also humans; it’s CalTrans’ version of Mission Control. Every workstation features several monitors and faces a large array of screens mapping the conditions of various highways, as well as closed-circuit TV monitors: car fire on one screen, impossible view from high atop the Bay Bridge on another, etc.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nozzari is careful to say that nothing from these cameras is recorded. They’re not for police or resolving liability disputes (though people ask) but rather to give workers here at the Bay Area Traffic Management Center more detail about specific situations: in dealing with a crash,for instance, they need to see exactly which lanes are blocked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nozzari is also careful to say that when the SMART Corridor comes online in a few months, computers won’t be running the show. The algorithm will quickly distill a huge amount of data, but human operators will make the final call about what information goes out to electronic signs on the freeway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We always need a reality check with what maybe an artificial intelligence system tells us,” Nozzari says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>But How Much Will it Help?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If it proves itself, the SMART Corridor could become a model for widespread use around the Bay Area. Many of its technologies have been used elsewhere, but combining them all into one system on this scale is a first-of-its-kind endeavor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The benefits from all this remain “undemonstrated,” according to Alexander Skabardonis, an engineering professor at UC Berkeley and expert on all things traffic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It has not been demonstrated as one system,” he says. “Pieces have been demonstrated. We hope that the sum will be better than the added individual parts, but still, it has to be proven.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Click on the interactive graphic below to see the I-80 SMART Corridor in action]\u003c/strong> [edge_animation id=”18″ left=”auto”]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Freeways in the Seattle area have been experimenting with some of the same technologies. Engineers say their system has \u003ca href=\"http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Traffic/Congestion/rampmeters/\">made a dent\u003c/a> in travel times, saving commuters three to 16 minutes on I-405 in Renton, for example. But the major payoff has more likely been in safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m sure that we are saving lives out there,” says Washington state traffic engineer Morgan Balogh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our other freeways, we’ve seen collisions go up,” Balogh says, “and then this corridor, we’ve seen collisions go down, so we’re very happy about that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As to how much difference the SMART Corridor can make on I-80, one East Bay engineer put it to me this way: “We’ll take anything we can get.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Engineers are betting they can ease a notoriously congested stretch of freeway in the East Bay. But only time will tell how \"smart\" the I-80 SMART Corridor can be.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27741\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 819px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/Featured-img-e1425087617527-1024x571.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-27741\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/Featured-img-e1425087617527-1024x571.jpg\" alt='The new signs along I-80 will feature \"advisory\" speed limits and warn drivers to merge when lanes are blocked ahead. (David Pierce/KQED and Tyler Dunham/Caltrans)' width=\"819\" height=\"456\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The new signs along I-80 will feature “advisory” speed limits and warn drivers to merge when lanes ahead are blocked. (David Pierce/KQED and Tyler Dunham/Caltrans)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Here’s one \u003cem>unwelcome\u003c/em> sign of the Bay Area’s resurgent economy: slower commutes. A \u003ca href=\"http://www.inrix.com/scorecard/key-findings-us/\">study out last year\u003c/a> found that in 2013, the amount of time wasted sitting in traffic rose 10 percent in San Francisco and San Jose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The tech boom may be partly to blame, but technology could also help ease some of the congestion. \u003ca href=\"http://80smartcorridor.org/\">A project\u003c/a> called the “I-80 SMART Corridor” is set to test the idea this summer in the East Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s on a notorious stretch of freeway — ranked the area’s worst for commuters nine of the last ten years — running from the Carquinez Bridge down through Richmond and Berkeley to the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the interest of thoroughness, I had to sample the stew for myself. So, on a recent morning, I rode along with my colleague Kristin Farr, KQED’s arts education manager, who lives in Richmond. In theory, driving to our office in San Francisco without traffic would take 24 minutes, but in our case, it was roughly double that. And things could’ve been a lot worse: Farr told me of times she’s sat in traffic, watching the minutes tick by while growing increasingly frustrated and late to an early meeting:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s kind’ve embarrassing,” Farr said, “but I’ve certainly been in my car and been like ‘Nooo!’ Just cursing – just yelling like, ‘Crap! I’m in trouble!’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27739\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 340px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/MapFinal-497x1024.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-27739\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/MapFinal-497x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Map of the I-80 SMART Corridor (David Pierce/KQED)\" width=\"340\" height=\"699\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Map of the I-80 SMART Corridor (David Pierce/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This is the kind of commute that wears on people. After a typical workday and another long drive back, Farr would arrive home stressed – “tightly wound,” she says – and eventually her family nudged her to start catching the train to work instead.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riding in with her that morning, Farr and I free-associated about amphibious vs. flying cars as means of cutting directly across the Bay. It might sound nutty, but so too does the prohibitive cost of adding another lane to this stretch of freeway — roughly a billion dollars — were that even possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This highway is fairly built out,” says Sean Nozzari, deputy district director at Caltrans. “On one side you have the beautiful San Francisco Bay. On the other side we have communities that are very well developed, so there is really no physical space to widen the highway.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Enter the I-80 SMART Corridor\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of more lanes, the idea starting this summer is to give drivers more information. The I-80 SMART Corridor is essentially made up of 20 miles of road sensors and a couple of hundred signs being installed throughout the corridor and on arterial roads. (SMART, I’m told, is an acronym for “Safety, Mobility, Automated Real-Time Traffic Management System.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a paltry $80 million it’s a relative steal, funded through a mixture of federal dollars and various agencies, including Caltrans and local transportation agencies in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s the scenario: As you’re driving to work, let’s say a wreck happens miles ahead in the left lane and traffic there is nearly stopped. Signs will warn you to merge right and slow down. (These “variable speed limits” will be advisory – not the kind enforced by police.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you then exit to go around the congestion – as drivers often do via San Pablo Avenue, which roughly parallels I-80 – signs will let you know when you’ve made it past the freeway congestion and should get back on. To keep your merge from disrupting the freeway’s flow, “ramp metering” lights will cue you to get back on at just the right moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Orchestrating all of this will be moment-by-moment data, gathered from thousands of sensors — metal loops embedded in the road that detect how many cars are traveling in a given lane, and how fast — which is then processed by a computer algorithm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The ‘Nerve Center’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_27689\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 376px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/CanTrans-Control-room-1024x768.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-27689\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2015/02/CanTrans-Control-room-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"Nerve center\" width=\"376\" height=\"282\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Bay Area Traffic Management Center in Oakland monitors traffic on freeways, and uses closed-circuit cameras to see which lanes are blocked and where emergency equipment is needed. (Photo: Daniel Potter/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In a dimly lit room in downtown Oakland, the many thousands of drivers traversing the Bay Area’s freeways are monitored not just by computers but also humans; it’s CalTrans’ version of Mission Control. Every workstation features several monitors and faces a large array of screens mapping the conditions of various highways, as well as closed-circuit TV monitors: car fire on one screen, impossible view from high atop the Bay Bridge on another, etc.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nozzari is careful to say that nothing from these cameras is recorded. They’re not for police or resolving liability disputes (though people ask) but rather to give workers here at the Bay Area Traffic Management Center more detail about specific situations: in dealing with a crash,for instance, they need to see exactly which lanes are blocked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nozzari is also careful to say that when the SMART Corridor comes online in a few months, computers won’t be running the show. The algorithm will quickly distill a huge amount of data, but human operators will make the final call about what information goes out to electronic signs on the freeway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We always need a reality check with what maybe an artificial intelligence system tells us,” Nozzari says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>But How Much Will it Help?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If it proves itself, the SMART Corridor could become a model for widespread use around the Bay Area. Many of its technologies have been used elsewhere, but combining them all into one system on this scale is a first-of-its-kind endeavor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The benefits from all this remain “undemonstrated,” according to Alexander Skabardonis, an engineering professor at UC Berkeley and expert on all things traffic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It has not been demonstrated as one system,” he says. “Pieces have been demonstrated. We hope that the sum will be better than the added individual parts, but still, it has to be proven.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>[Click on the interactive graphic below to see the I-80 SMART Corridor in action]\u003c/strong> [edge_animation id=”18″ left=”auto”]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Freeways in the Seattle area have been experimenting with some of the same technologies. Engineers say their system has \u003ca href=\"http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Traffic/Congestion/rampmeters/\">made a dent\u003c/a> in travel times, saving commuters three to 16 minutes on I-405 in Renton, for example. But the major payoff has more likely been in safety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m sure that we are saving lives out there,” says Washington state traffic engineer Morgan Balogh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our other freeways, we’ve seen collisions go up,” Balogh says, “and then this corridor, we’ve seen collisions go down, so we’re very happy about that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/bbc-world-service",
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},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
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"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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}
},
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"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
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"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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}
},
"closealltabs": {
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"order": 1
},
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"freakonomics-radio": {
"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"order": 15
},
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 18
},
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
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},
"on-the-media": {
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"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"info": "One of public radio's most dynamic voices, Sam Sanders helped launch The NPR Politics Podcast and hosted NPR's hit show It's Been A Minute. Now, the award-winning host returns with something brand new, The Sam Sanders Show. Every week, Sam Sanders and friends dig into the culture that shapes our lives: what's driving the biggest trends, how artists really think, and even the memes you can't stop scrolling past. Sam is beloved for his way of unpacking the world and bringing you up close to fresh currents and engaging conversations. The Sam Sanders Show is smart, funny and always a good time.",
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"checkPleaseReducer": {
"filterData": {
"region": {
"key": "Restaurant Region",
"filters": [
"Any Region"
]
},
"cuisine": {
"key": "Restaurant Cuisine",
"filters": [
"Any Cuisine"
]
}
},
"restaurantDataById": {},
"restaurantIdsSorted": [],
"error": null
},
"userAgentReducer": {
"userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)",
"isBot": true
}
}
