no pics today...pic up is from Tule Lake...towards the end of the rideabout thereabout, I sighted a speck of white, and took a pic...reviewing pics tonight, I find the speck is Hooded Merganser....very cool....light rain off and on, more on than off, all day into tonight, Falls actually looked smaller today than yesterday, so snow level must be fairly low, five, six thousand feet....report of Small Bobcat at Burnt Forest yesterday at Dusk....made a short walk to Rocky Slope this morning, thought to see Bobcat, but no luck...oh...sighted Merganser (Common, female) at Ozone Beach last Saturday...blurry flight pic...I have a backlog of miscellanea from the trip...for sometime!
A curio news story: Water has been being released down the San Joaquin River, and a farmer is complaining one of his fields near the River is flooding...govt. is compensating by, well, I'm not sure, draining the field somehow...maybe I can find story...brb...
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Federal officials say the renewed flow causes water to seep into the ground and spread to the surrounding underground water table. If the water table rises too high in nearby farm fields, it brings salts into root zones and stunts plant growth.
Read more: http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/10/22/2128603/farmer-alleges-river-damage-feds.html#ixzz18XPlWL1p
Read more: http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/10/22/2128603/farmer-alleges-river-damage-feds.html#ixzz18XPlWL1p
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That story from last October, so today's story indicates an ongoing thing. Well, the object is to restore a riparian environment, and to either side of the river would be marshes. The salts are a problem everywhere in the Central Valley...brb...
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The western San Joaquin Valley is one of the most productive farming areas in the United States, but salt-buildup in soils and shallow groundwater aquifers threatens this area’s productivity. Elevated selenium concentrations in soils and groundwater complicate drainage management and salt disposal.
Birds like the Cottonwood and Willow windbreaks at Merced Wildlife Refuge. Same can be said of some of the other Refuges I visited. For the most part, roadside views up and down 99 are empty of trees.
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There has been much experimentation with eucalyptus growing in alkali soils. Alkali deposits can stunt a tree's growth until the roots break through it.149 But there are species that can absorb alkali removing it from the soil so other crops can be planted successfully. In 1985, over 650,000 eucalyptus and casurina trees were planted in western San Joaquin Valley to determine the ability of these genera to remove alkali found in the soil of undrained land.150
http://library.csustan.edu/bsantos/section2.htm
http://library.csustan.edu/bsantos/section2.htm
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There was a Eucalyptus Grove at Elkhorn Slough. Not only didn't I see Birds thereabout, I didn't feel like I'd see Birds.
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Eucalypts draw a tremendous amount of water from the soil through the process of transpiration. They have been planted (or re-planted) in some places to lower the water table and reduce soil salination.
from wiki's Eucalyptus take
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and from wiki too...
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Due to similar favorable climatic conditions, Eucalyptus plantations have often replaced oak woodlands, for example in California and Portugal. The resulting monocultures have raised concerns about loss of biological diversity, through loss of acorns that mammals and birds feed on, absence of hollows that in oak trees provide shelter and nesting sites for birds and small mammals and for bee colonies, as well as lack of downed trees in managed plantations.
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hmmph
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