The California Storm of January 1862

Quaternary Research (Elsevier) | September 2nd, 1996

The greatest storm in the written history of California struck the region in the winter of 1861–1862. The unusual weather began on Christmas Eve, 1861, and persisted fo

The greatest storm in the written history of California struck the region in the winter of 1861–1862. The unusual weather began on Christmas Eve, 1861, and persisted for some 45 days as a series of middle-latitude cyclones made landfall along the California coast. Episodes of very cold and very warm temperatures occurred both during the storm and in the spring of 1862 as meridional flow prevailed. Heavy precipitation swelled the Santa Ana River to more than triple the highest estimated discharge in this century. High water levels in coastal streams between Los Angeles and San Diego persisted into the spring. Lakes were created in the Los Angeles Basin and the Mojave Desert. Arroyos were cut. Sediments from the flood may be preserved in offshore basins.

The Central Valley Project - Federal or State?

University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) | June 1st, 1955

The challenge of hot drought

Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) | November 21st, 2013

Drought is heating up around the warming world. Particularly hot drought has cost more than US$40 billion and claimed 218 human lives since 2010 in the United States alon

Drought is heating up around the warming world. Particularly hot drought has cost more than US$40 billion and claimed 218 human lives since 2010 in the United States alone. These hot and dry conditions have also contributed to unusually widespread and devastating wildfires, fuelled by wide expanses of weakened and dead trees that were unable to deal with heat stress and subsequent insect attack. Yet, to get a real sense of how this recent change in drought severity might shape the future, one has to look to the past. An analysis of regional and pan-continental North American drought over the past 1,000 years, reported by Cook et al in the Journal of Climate, makes it clear that recent droughts, as costly as they have been, are only a taste of what might lie ahead, independently of any big climate change.

The Disposition of Mining Debris in California

Scientific American | July 18th, 1891

Among the reports submitted to the last Congress was one from the Secretary of War on the treatment of mining debris in California. The report contained the conclusion

Among the reports submitted to the last Congress was one from the Secretary of War on the treatment of mining debris in California. The report contained the conclusions of the Board of Engineer officers which was prepared in compliance with an act of Congress, approved October 1st, 1888, which directed that three officers from the Engineer Corps of the United States army be constituted a commission for the purpose of making a thorough examination of the mining debris question in California, and determining whether some plan cannot be devised whereby the present conflict between the mining and farming sections may be adjusted, and the mining industry rehabilitated.

The doctrine of reserved water rights. What are federal and tribal reserved water rights?

California Department of Water Resources (DWR) | January 1st, 2009

The doctrine of reserved water rights evolved to ensure that Indian reservations and public lands set aside by the federal government would have sufficient water to fulfi

The doctrine of reserved water rights evolved to ensure that Indian reservations and public lands set aside by the federal government would have sufficient water to fulfill the purposes for which they were established. Whereas most western water rights (state-based appropriative rights) have a priority date based on when water was first put to beneficial use, federal reserved water rights have a priority date that goes back at least as far as the date on which the lands were set aside. The reserved water rights doctrine is rooted in a number of judicial decisions, beginning with a U.S. Supreme Court decision that has come to be called the Winters Doctrine. The case of Winters vs United States involved a dispute between Native Americans of the Ft. Belknap Reservation and nonnative settlers over the use of the Milk River in Montana. When the water use of the settlers upstream from the reservation interfered with the Indians' water need for large Irrigation diversions, the U.S. government filed a lawsuit on the reservation's behalf. The Winters decision held that when Congress created the Ft. Belknap Reservation, sufficient water to make the Indians a "pastoral and civilized People" was implicitly set aside. Therefore, although the normative settlers had perfected their water rights under Montana state law, the water right of the Indians of Ft. Belknap was prior, or senior in use.

The evolution of human population distance to water in the USA from 1790 to 2010

Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) | January 25th, 2019

Human societies evolved alongside rivers, but how has the relationship between human settlement locations and water resources evolved over time? We conducted a dynamic 

Human societies evolved alongside rivers, but how has the relationship between human settlement locations and water resources evolved over time? We conducted a dynamic analysis in the conterminous US to assess the coevolution of humans and water resources from 1790 to 2010. Here we show that humans moved closer to major rivers in pre-industrial periods but have moved farther from major rivers after 1870, demonstrating the dynamics of human reliance on rivers for trade and transport. We show that humans were preferentially attracted to areas overlying major aquifers since industrialization due to the emergent accessibility of groundwater in the 20th century. Regional heterogeneity resulted in diverse trajectories of settlement proximity to major rivers, with the attractiveness of rivers increasing in arid regions and decreasing in humid areas. Our results reveal a historical coevolution of human-water systems, which could inform water management and contribute to societal adaptation to future climate change.

The Evolution of the Urban Infrastructure in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

National Academy of Sciences (NAS) | December 3rd, 1984

This chapter* discusses the origins and development of the urban capital infrastructure in the United States since 1790. Urban infrastructure is defined as the "sinews"

This chapter* discusses the origins and development of the urban capital infrastructure in the United States since 1790. Urban infrastructure is defined as the "sinews" of the city: its road, bridge, and transit networks; its water and sewer lines and waste disposal facilities; its power systems; its public buildings; and its parks and recreation areas.1 In developing an analysis, the chapter draws on history in three ways: to furnish perspectives on the evolution of the urban infrastructure over time; to point to critical stages, paradigm shifts, and key turning points in history; and to provide analogies between the contemporary so-called crisis of the infrastructure and similar events in the past (see Stearns and Tarr, 1982). The chapter is structured around questions concerning the demand for public works; the factors affecting their supply; the character of the provider (public, public-private, or private); and the relationship of urban infrastructure to financial, political, technological, spatial, public health, social, and demographic considerations. *Chapter 1, Perspectives on Urban Infrastructure, edited by Royce Hanson, National Academy Press, 1984

The Great Thirst: Californians and Water, 1770s to 1990s

University of California Press | July 15th, 2001

The obsession with water has shaped California to a remarkable extent, literally as well as politically and culturally. Hundley tells how aboriginal Americans and then ea

The obsession with water has shaped California to a remarkable extent, literally as well as politically and culturally. Hundley tells how aboriginal Americans and then early Spanish and Mexican immigrants contrived to use and share the available water and how American settlers, arriving in ever-increasing numbers after the Gold Rush, transformed California into the home of the nation's preeminent water seekers. The desire to use, profit from, manipulate, and control water drives the people and events in this fascinating narrative until, by the end of the twentieth century, a large, colorful cast of characters and communities has wheeled and dealed, built, diverted, and connived its way to an entirely different statewide waterscape.

The Historical Ecology of the Tijuana Estuary & River Valley (Restore America's Estuaries 2018 Conference Presentation)

San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) | December 12th, 2018

This talk was given at the 2018 Restore America's Estuary Conference in Long Beach, CA as part of a special session titled "Restoration Perspectives from the Tijuana Rive

This talk was given at the 2018 Restore America's Estuary Conference in Long Beach, CA as part of a special session titled "Restoration Perspectives from the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve." It is based on information from the Tijuana River Valley Historical Ecology Investigation, a report published in 2017. Though many areas of the binational Tijuana River watershed remain relatively undeveloped, land and water use changes over the past 200 years have resulted in significant ecological impacts, particularly in the more urbanized areas of the lower watershed. Drawing upon a diverse set of historical data, we reconstructed the ecological and hydrogeomorphic conditions of the lower Tijuana River valley prior to major Euro-American modification (ca. 1850) and documented major changes in habitat distribution and physical processes over this time. The river corridor, which was historically dominated by riparian scrub, today instead supports dense stands of riparian forest. The valley bottom surrounding the river corridor, which historically supported extensive seasonal wetlands, has largely been converted to drier habitat types and agricultural uses. The estuary, which historically supported large expanses of salt marsh and mudflat as well as seasonally dry salt flats, has retained much of its former extent and character, but has been altered by increased sediment input and other factors. The new information about the historical landscape presented here is relevant to a number of issues scientists and managers are dealing with today, including the conservation of endangered species, the fate of the valley’s riparian habitats after the recent invasion of invasive shot-hole borer beetles, and the effects on groundwater levels on native plant communities. We will also draw from other historical ecology studies conducted in Southern California to illustrate how the information about the past has been utilized to improve the functioning and resilience of nearby coastal ecosystems.

The Ives Expedition of 1858

Imperial Irrigation District (IID) | October 1st, 1956