El Dorado County Environment Digest

Part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, the projects include California’s Lava Cap Mine in Nevada City, Sulphur Bank Mercury Mine in Clearlake Oaks, and Southern Avenue Industrial Area in South Gate.

Ecologists estimate that up to 14,000 sequoias have been killed in recent wildfires. The National Park Service for the first time has begun replanting some severely burned areas.

A temporary lake in Death Valley National Park doubled after recent rains and is now deep enough to launch a kayak. Prior to August, ghostly Lake Manly hadn’t appeared in 19 years.

Gary Ellrod, retired NOAA Meteorologist and current senior meteorologist at Weather Extreme, explains the basics of frost, and how it forms.

A handful of super powerful tropical storms in the last decade and the prospect of more to come has a couple of experts proposing a new category of whopper hurricanes: Category 6.

The storm fed off of unusually warm waters as it grew. It also reached “bomb cyclone” status as it neared California.

Monarch butterflies have a long way to go before reaching stable population numbers.

As an underground fire burns deep within Chiquita Canyon Landfill, air regulators are raising alarms over the possible spread of toxic vapors.

What is an ARkStorm and why is everyone talking about it on social media right now?

Take a period of limited rainfall. Add heat. And you have what scientists call a “hot drought”—dry conditions made more intense by the evaporative power of hotter temperatures.

The Nevada County Board of Supervisors will meet Feb. 15 to hold a noticed public hearing and take final action on the proposed Idaho Maryland Mine – Rise Grass Valley Project.

The Bay Area’s fog is iconic. But the latest episode of KQED podcast “Bay Curious” looks at how climate change could reduce the number of foggy days in the area.

Munition boxes, depth charges and smoke floats have been found 3,000 feet underwater off the coast of Los Angeles. More than 100 square miles of ocean might be contaminated.

Heavy snow is projected in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Previously, warmer storms had been bringing precipitation mainly to higher elevations in the Sierras.

Tahoe National Forest has acquired 982 acres within Perazzo Meadows, donated by the Truckee Donner Land Trust. The acreage includes 16 adjoining parcels of an old subdivision previously planned for high-end residential development.

Research shows that a mountain chickadee facing deep snow is like a canary in a coal mine—its survivability tells us about the challenges ahead.

Bright blue waves have been spotted in Long Beach, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach and Seal Beach. The bioluminescence is caused by organisms known as dinoflagellates and can impact fish populations.

The California Department of Water Resources has found that the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains is at just 25% of normal levels for this time of year. This could potentially impact water supply and wildfire protection.

A dark-sky movement to save birds from window strikes is sweeping the San Francisco Bay Area. Several cities have passed or are drafting laws restricting light pollution while making windows easier for birds to see.

Sarah Grimes investigates reports of dead marine mammals up and down the coast. So when she began finding the decapitated bodies of harbor seal pups just a few miles north of Fort Bragg in 2016, she was on the case. Grimes wasn’t able to pin down the culprit until last year, with the help of a UCSC student.

Now that the leaves have dropped, it’s easier to see mistletoe in deciduous tree canopies. Exactly what is mistletoe? California has three genera of mistletoe.

The Hoopa Valley Tribe announced it is acquiring about 10,000 acres of land in Northern California for $14.1 million. As part of this, the tribe will remove dams along the Klamath River and restore salmon runs.

The California Department of Water Resources has approved building a tunnel between the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The approval could signal a new wave of legal challenges to the long-running and controversial project.

Farmland is being rezoned for industrial use, and massive warehouses are being built on spec near communities like Buttonwillow and Shafter, so goods coming through the Southern California ports can be shipped quickly throughout the western United States.

A team of astronomers from the University of Geneva has achieved a world’s first by simulating the entirety of the runaway greenhouse process.

Salmon populations in the Scott and Shasta rivers have crashed, so state officials are about to restrict irrigation again. And the controversial rules may even become permanent.

UC Davis researchers have sequenced the whitebark pine genome, presenting new opportunities to help the threatened, high-altitude tree, which is particularly imperiled in the Rocky Mountains, Pacific Northwest and northern Sierra Nevada.

Officials in Kern County are proposing to build a carbon management facility that would be twice the size of Manhattan. By doing this, they would leverage federal tax credits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Birds are affected by the mass use of fireworks on New Year’s Eve up to a distance of 10 km away, reports an international team of researchers.

Judson Jones, a meteorologist and reporter for The New York Times, gave a Q&A about California’s year of intense weather. This included the state’s largest snowpack in 40 years and a “pretty astonishing” amount of precipitation.

An estimated 100,000 pizza boxes have been removed from Yosemite’s waste stream. This is because the famed park now serves pizza on trays and puts to-go portions in compostable bags, part of a move to reduce food-related waste.

A Cal Poly Humboldt professor is partnering with USDA researchers to study biochar, which results from heating dry plant-based materials at high temperatures without oxygen. The CO2 in the charcoal then stays in the soil for hundreds of years, rather than in the atmosphere.