The End of the Tuolumne River! (It's not as bad as it sounds...)

The slough at the headquarters area of Dos Rios State Park

Back in the 1980s, Douglas Adams published his hilarious "trilogy" of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe. The second book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, was not about a restaurant at the edge of the Universe, but rather it was a place where you dined and watched the actual destruction of the Universe (you had to use a time machine to get there). 

Today's blog is about the end of the Tuolumne River. But it isn't as bad as it sounds: it's about the spot where the Tuolumne River ends by flowing into the San Joaquin River. The confluence was on privately-owned ranch lands for many years, but a profound change is coming that will touch lives across our county and Central California. It is becoming California's newest State Park!

The confluence of the Tuolumne and San Joaquin Rivers

Dos Rios State Park is the product of years of cooperation between the owners of the Dos Rios Ranch, River Partners, and the Tuolumne River Trust. In the last decade or so, the partners worked to return the former croplands to a landscape that functions like the original primeval environment that existed before the invasion of industrial agriculture. In other words, a riot of canopy trees like oak and cottonwood with a tangled undergrowth of willows, elderberries and numerous other native plants. This floodplain woodland acts as a giant sponge, absorbing and slowing down floodwaters and helping to recharge the groundwater underneath.

The lower Tuolumne River near the confluence. The state park is on the right-side shore

The riparian environment provides a marvelous habitat for the wildlife that once thrived throughout the Great Valley of California (only about 5% of that original habitat remains). Dos Rios State Park will be a fantastic place to search for hundreds of bird species (more than 200 are known from just across the river at the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge), and all manner of animal and plant species. The highly endangered Riparian Brush Rabbit is only found in an extremely small area within the San Joaquin Delta and the wildlife refuge across the river. I was told they intended to transplant a small group from the refuge to the park, but that the rabbits confounded the plan by crossing the river somehow and establishing a population all by themselves!

There are a number of ancient remnant environments tucked away in corners of the park. The most striking was a growth of valley oaks growing on a slightly elevated hill adjacent to the San Joaquin near the south end of the new park. There was a cacophony of bird songs in the canopy above, including Yellow-rumped Warblers, Oak Titmouse, White-crowned Sparrows, Tree Swallows, and Bush-tits.

The oak forest is a two mile walk from what will be the park headquarters area, and there are ideas of developing the site into an environmental walk-in campsite where local children can experience wilderness only a few miles outside their cities.

Much of the park will be a trailless, roadless morass of trees and brush on the floodplain. This is the area meant to serve for flooding relief, where it might remain underwater for weeks at a time. Volunteers have spent a decade planting native vegetation, and many of the trees are already tens of feet tall. They were irrigated for three years, but they will be able to survive on their own in the years to follow, watered by the higher groundwater table and occasional floods.

A "bunny hill" on the right side, a floodplain to the left.

Several elevated areas across the park provide refuge for mammals during flooding events. I believe they called them "bunny hills". I've seen these in action during floods across the river at the wildlife refuge, where everywhere I turned, rabbits were waiting for the floodwaters to subside.

The tangled thicket of native vegetation: the valley floodplain as it once was.

One of the most valuable aspects of the park is that it will allow visitors to experience the valley habitat as it once was, and how many parts can once again be. On our tour, we mentioned the wonderful resource of the Great Valley Museum at Modesto Junior College where I teach. Visiting the museum, children can view dioramas of the natural environments of the valley and even see a few live animals. But what if...they could learn about these environments, and then drive a short distance and actually experience them? That's the incredible value of the Dos Rios State Park.

Double-crested Cormorant in the slough

When our tour ended, I spent a few moments wandering the only developed part of the park. There is a picnic area that has been constructed adjacent to the farm buildings serving as the park headquarters for the moment. There is a slough below the picnic structures with a short walkway providing panoramic views. It didn't take long to find some interesting birds, like the Double-crested Cormorant drying its wings on a stump.

I only occasionally see Downy Woodpeckers along the Tuolumne upstream, but it was the first one I sighted today. I also saw Northern Flickers and Nuttall's Woodpeckers.

A Great Egret was watching for fish on the far side of the slough. 

Turtles were basking on logs down in the slough below.

Dos Rios State Park will open this coming summer with the picnic area and slough area open for visitation. A master plan will be developed over the next few years, with proposals for a campground, trails, and all manner of interpretive programs. Even better, the park will function as an environmental buffer, providing habitat and flood protection. The park is starting with about 2,100 acres, but other adjacent tracts are being "de-developed" to resemble their original habitat. 

It was a real privilege having the opportunity to see this park and renewed floodplain in the making. I'm looking forward to seeing what lies ahead for this beautiful new park in coming years. It is a marvelous resource for our community.

Source: River Partners and the Tuolumne River Trust

Our Dinosaur is Here (More or Less). Stanislaus County's Secret is Soon to be Out!

Parasaurolophus

We are anxiously awaiting one of the last fixtures in our Great Valley Museum's Outdoor Nature Lab...our dinosaur! I hear that it is sitting in Receiving awaiting its placement near the paleontology mock dig. It's a scaled down version of the original creature, but will still be 16 feet long and 8 feet high. The model is a Parasaurolophus, which is serving as a stand-in for California's actual state dinosaur, the Augustynolophus morrisi. It turns out that our state dinosaur is rare enough that suppliers don't seem to offer them yet.

The Augustynolophus was a plant-eating dinosaur of the Hadrosaur family, the duck-billed dinosaurs. It has been found in Central California in the Late Cretaceous Moreno Formation, which is extensively exposed along the eastern margin of the Diablo Range, including Del Puerto Canyon in our county. The type specimens were found south of Stanislaus County, but fragmentary remains found in Del Puerto in 1936 are considered likely to be the same species. The 1936 discovery by teenager Allan Bennison was the first time dinosaur remains had ever been found in California. The Moreno Formation where the dinosaur remains were found was a marine environment, so the find could be considered unusual (dinosaurs were terrestrial creatures). What likely happened is that the animal was overwhelmed by a river flood off to the east where the Sierra Nevada is today, and the carcass floated out to sea where it finally sank to the bottom and was buried. Bennison found the bones, recognized their significance and reported them to his teacher in Gustine. The teacher notified paleontologists at U.C. Berkeley, and they eventually excavated 500 bone fragments, including 29 tail vertebrae and parts of the hind feet. The remains apparently reside in the University of California Museum of Paleontology (and wouldn't I love to get pictures one day!).

Augustynolophus Morrisi

The discovery site is on private land that is not accessible, but it can be viewed from the road in Del Puerto Canyon. It is perhaps very relevant to mention that plans are afoot to inundate the lower part of Del Puerto Canyon with a largely useless and possible dangerous reservoir, and the presence of this dam will make it more or less impossible to even see the location. It's a shame that one of the most important paleontology sites in California doesn't even merit a mention in the draft environmental impact report for Del Puerto dam.

There is time to have some impact on whether this dam is ever built. If you would like to be involved, please check out this Facebook site: https://www.facebook.com/groups/463664377903706/?multi_permalinks=478825349720942&notif_id=1579883197857937&notif_t=group_activity. There are some important meetings of regulatory committees coming up, and the public comments period on the draft EIR ends on January 27.

The Sounds of Science (with apologies to Paul Simon): Kids are More Talented Than You Think

Strange things were afoot on Saturday at Modesto Junior College, where I've been teaching for the last thirty years. There was a Tyrannosaur flipping burgers, and a very cool Triceratops taking orders for Brontoburgers and Raptor dogs.

There was a constant barrage of earthquakes recorded on our seismometer upstairs on the third floor. There was some sort of harmonic tremor going on, visible on the bottom row of the monitor below. Was a volcano about to erupt under our campus? Were we in the grips of an earthquake swarm? Nah, nothing like that. It was instead that time of year for the sounds of science to take place at our institution: the Science Olympiad.

Forty-six junior- and senior-high schools from Stanislaus County, many hundreds of students, had gathered to compete in a series of science-related events. The winning schools from our competition would advance to state-level competition.

Our county is economically moribund. It takes a long time for economic recoveries to reach our region, which regularly has an unemployment rate that is twice the national average. Recessions hit us first (we reached close to 20% unemployment in 2011). The money for education is limited to say the least. And it often seems that science is not a very high priority when budgets are proposed. But the funny thing is, our residents have better priorities than our political leaders. When we had a chance to vote for a bond issue to upgrade our community college campus, including the construction of a Science Community Center, the county voted for it. Since the center opened in 2015, with the planetarium and the Great Valley Museum of Natural History, tens of thousands of kids (and their parents) have paid a visit. Our county knows that support of science is a key to a secure economic future.

And so we witnessed the genius of our best and brightest students competing for glory in laboratories instead of football fields. There were more than forty events. I was in charge of the competition in Rock and Mineral identification, and some of the student teams had scores that rivaled those of my first- and second-year geology students.

If you are wondering about why a T-rex and a Triceratops were involved, well, what can I say? 700 or 800 hungry students were on campus, and our Geology Club stood ready to provide them sustenance to help raise funds for our field studies program.

I've been participating in the Science Olympiad now for nearly three decades. It is a privilege and an inspiration to see these very talented students in action. It gives me hope for the future.

Oh, Nuts. What a Great Reason to Destroy the Remaining 5% of the Original California Prairie

Vernal swales on the summit area of Table Mountain. These have some similarity to vernal pools on the valley floor but are also different in some important respects. Click on this post for more info.

Word comes today in the Modesto Bee that a local "farmer" has been fined $160,000 and ordered to purchase conservation easements worth $1,000,000 after he oversaw the destruction of 33 acres of prime vernal pool habitat. He was in the process of converting 850 acres of leased grazing acreage to an almond orchard when his tractors "deep-ripped" 380 acres, including the vernal pools. He had been warned to get a ground-working permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but he didn't do so. He was confronted by officials on September 12 who stopped the tractors, but the damage had been done. The investor responsible said only that "I want to farm. That's all I want to do". No, he wanted to cash in, pure and simple. He knew he was flouting the law, and the penalty is appropriate.

Vernal swale on Table Mountain above Jamestown in the Sierra Nevada foothills

Vernal pools are one of the most unique aspects of the California prairie of the Great Valley and lower foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Many endemic species thrive in the pools, and they provide an incredible show of wildflowers in the spring (See this post for an example of the richness of the environment). They are a precious resource that deserve protection, and indeed many of the remaining pools are being preserved, at least on paper. They are defenseless against lawless land-developers, apparently.

There is very little of the original California prairie left, no more than five or ten percent. A lot of what is left has already been altered by grazing, but such lands are not getting particularly worse under that form of land use. It seems we hear that this new development or that one will only take only a few more acres, and a few more. Repeat over and over, and the last of the pools will be gone, especially if the politicians go through with their plans to restrict the power of the Environment Protection Agency and other government organizations to do their jobs and enforce the law.

Vernal pool east of Modesto

As the Bee article points out, People can comment on the proposed penalty by Dec. 18 by emailing r9hearingclerk@epa.gov or sending mail to Steven Armsey, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region IX, 75 Hawthorne St., San Francisco, CA 94105. I hope you will consider writing and supporting the penalty. The water pirates are trying to cash in on the almond craze, and this landscape can ill-afford to be abused in this way. The water isn't there for the long term, and the orchards will die. But not before they've pulled every little bit of short-term profit they can.

Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/news/local/oakdale/article4005292.html#storylink=cpy

So many trees, so little water to keep them alive. But profit is profit.

It's a crime that the last vernal pools are being destroyed this way, and it is ultimately for a money-making scheme that is futile anyway. I talked about the groundwater issue a few months ago, and I am cutting and pasting the information below. Water is the ultimate controlling factor that will leave this as a wasted, barren landscape.

From March 14, 2014: The Water Pirates: A Can a Day is All We Ask (plus 107 million gallons)

New orchard on the California prairie

It's a sad and familiar story for California: there is a valuable resource in the ground, free for the taking. There are those who come to exploit the resource, tearing up the land and leaving behind a wake of destruction. There are no laws to control the behavior of the miners, except for a few arcane rules from a previous century. In the end the resource is gone, and so is the chance for any sustainable use of the land for future generations. In the end, it was all about money, which landed in the hands of a few powerful people. It certainly didn't benefit the ones who did all the physical work.

This could describe the effects of the California Gold Rush of the 1850s, but unfortunately it is not. It is a story that is happening right now in my neck of the woods (prairie?), and the worst of the destruction still lies ahead. And right now, there isn't a whole lot anyone can do to stop it. It's not gold, it's water. And despite the fact that gold is worth somewhere around $1,000 an ounce, the water is far more valuable.

Our local paper, the Modesto Bee, has been running a series of reports recently including this one by reporter J.N. Sbranti that should receive much wider exposure. Almonds have become a valuable and profitable commodity these days, and there is a wild rush on to plant as many acres of almonds as possible. In many cases farmers are simply switching from corn or other yearly crops and putting in orchards. The most destructive aspect, however is the planting of some 30,000 acres of almonds and other nut trees on the former prairie and grazing lands east of Modesto adjacent to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

The problem with the trees on the valley floor is that one can't let the fields lie fallow in the driest of years like the one we are now suffering through. The trees must be watered or they die, and they require 4 acre-feet of water per acre each year. If the water gets prohibitively expensive, so what? They'll have to pay the price.

California's version of "snow". The almonds are beautiful when they are blooming.

What's worse are those almond orchards in the foothills. They can't be irrigated by normal means, as there is no infrastructure to deliver water there from the local irrigation district. The only source of water is from the ground, and there are few if any rules regarding the use of the groundwater. The large agribusinesses simply buy up the cheap grazing lands, put in the trees, and start pumping vast amounts of groundwater to water them. According to the Sbranti report in the Bee, the 30,000 acres of new orchards are consuming 39 billion gallons of groundwater each year, which is more than is currently pumped for domestic use across the entire county. The groundwater resource is limited, and will likely be depleted in the service of these orchards. When the water runs out, the orchards will die, but the owners will have gotten their cash. All legally of course, and damn the consequences.

It's all well and good to complain about government regulations, but theoretically government exists to watch over the well-being of the citizens. When there is no governance, the pirates take over, and we all lose. There oughta be a law, but I don't hear about anyone working on it. Much too arcane a political issue. At least until the wells run dry...

The Water Pirates: A Can a Day is All We Ask (plus 107 million gallons)

New orchard on the California prairie

It's a sad and familiar story for California: there is a valuable resource in the ground, free for the taking. There are those who come to exploit the resource, tearing up the land and leaving behind a wake of destruction. There are no laws to control the behavior of the miners, except for a few arcane rules from a previous century. In the end the resource is gone, and so is the chance for any sustainable use of the land for future generations. In the end, it was all about money, which landed in the hands of a few powerful people. It certainly didn't benefit the ones who did all the physical work.

This could describe the effects of the California Gold Rush of the 1850s, but unfortunately it is not. It is a story that is happening right now in my neck of the woods (prairie?), and the worst of the destruction still lies ahead. And right now, there isn't a whole lot anyone can do to stop it. It's not gold, it's water. And despite the fact that gold is worth somewhere around $1,000 an ounce, the water is far more valuable.

Our local paper, the Modesto Bee, has been running a series of reports recently including this one by reporter J.N. Sbranti that should receive much wider exposure. Almonds have become a valuable and profitable commodity these days, and there is a wild rush on to plant as many acres of almonds as possible. In many cases farmers are simply switching from corn or other yearly crops and putting in orchards. The most destructive aspect, however is the planting of some 30,000 acres of almonds and other nut trees on the former prairie and grazing lands east of Modesto adjacent to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

The problem with the trees on the valley floor is that one can't let the fields lie fallow in the driest of years like the one we are now suffering through. The trees must be watered or they die, and they require 4 acre-feet of water per acre each year. If the water gets prohibitively expensive, so what? They'll have to pay the price.

California's version of "snow". The almonds are beautiful when they are blooming.

What's worse are those almond orchards in the foothills. They can't be irrigated by normal means, as there is no infrastructure to deliver water there from the local irrigation district. The only source of water is from the ground, and there are few if any rules regarding the use of the groundwater. The large agribusinesses simply buy up the cheap grazing lands, put in the trees, and start pumping vast amounts of groundwater to water them. According to the Sbranti report in the Bee, the 30,000 acres of new orchards are consuming 39 billion gallons of groundwater each year, which is more than is currently pumped for domestic use across the entire county. The groundwater resource is limited, and will likely be depleted in the service of these orchards. When the water runs out, the orchards will die, but the owners will have gotten their cash. All legally of course, and damn the consequences.

It's all well and good to complain about government regulations, but theoretically government exists to watch over the well-being of the citizens. When there is no governance, the pirates take over, and we all lose. There oughta be a law, but I don't hear about anyone working on it. Much too arcane a political issue. At least until the wells run dry...

What Does An Urban Small Stream Flood Advisory Flood Look Like?

It looks kind of like this....

Dry Creek has its headwaters in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada north of Modesto Reservoir. It flows southwest through the farmlands into the town of Modesto, where it joins the Tuolumne River. Dry Creek, despite its name, is rarely dry. Prior to agricultural development in the last century it was indeed dry for much of the year, but since the irrigation began, seepage keeps water in the creek for most of the year. But rarely is there more than a few cubic feet per second.

Dry Creek is an unregulated drainage, meaning there are no dams or other measures to control floodwaters. It normally isn't a problem, but every couple of years events conspire to cause problems. This week was one of those weeks. The ground is saturated from weeks of above-normal precipitation, and we had a violent wet storm yesterday that dropped several inches of rain and hail in the foothills.

The creek won't stay high for long, but for a few hours today, the flow was over 3,000 cubic feet per second. By comparison, the usually much larger Tuolumne River (with the headwaters many miles away at the Sierra Nevada crest) is at flood stage at 9,000 cubic feet per second. With this discharge, some properties in downtown Modesto may be flooded. Pretty big numbers for a little podunk gully. I would have shown "before/after" pictures, but I never think of taking pictures of the creek when there is no flooding going on.

Stream data comes from NOAA, found here.