Monterey County Environment Digest

Hundreds of wells in Tulare Lake aquifer are at risk of going dry. Today's recommendation is the first time that state officials have moved to crack down on local plans that fail to stop excessive groundwater pumping.

The facts of climate change can lead to feelings of hopelessness and despair. Some California activists are creating communities for people to talk about those feelings.

The CPUC is considering a rule that would gut the payments that solar panels on apartment buildings receive, and many housing groups are blazing mad about it.

A sticky and fluffy substance has been seen falling in Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties—a natural phenomenon called ballooning, when spiders use their webs to fly through the air.

A long-awaited, controversial report weighs updates to standards that state officials say have failed to protect fish and wildlife. But environmentalists, Native tribes and others already are furious about how long this has taken—and the state is years away from taking action.

Outbreaks have wreaked havoc on the state’s river ecosystems for years. But this year was different. Faster, colder river waters led to fewer outbreaks of the harmful algae.

An international team found that the amount of near-surface permafrost could drop by 93% compared to the preindustrial period of 1850 to 1900. Permafrost may exist only in the eastern Siberian uplands, Canadian High Arctic Archipelago and northernmost Greenland—as it did in the mid-Pliocene Warm Period.

The irrigation bill, which aims to force businesses and institutions to remove their lawns, now goes to the governor.

Hydrogen fueling stations will get 15 percent of funds in a state program — even though Californians own only about 12,000 hydrogen cars. The funds come from fees paid by drivers.

There’s an official state bird, mineral, tree, fish, insect, lichen, fabric, sport, dance, soil and even dinosaur.

About 5,300 companies would file annual emissions reports. The aim is to hold corporations accountable for the role they play in climate change.

As players classify animals, they’re actually training machine-learning algorithms that eventually will help scientists sort through the massive backlogs of aquatic visual data.

California wildfires every year emit as much carbon as almost 2 million cars, posing a threat to efforts to battle climate change.

In some areas, kelp has declined over the past 10 years to historically low levels. Yet kelp forests in other areas of the sanctuary appear to be holding their own against the voracious urchin hordes.

The stakeholder meeting for Marina’s Fort Ord Resource Management Plan will be held Sept. 12 at the Marina Branch of the Monterey County Library Community Room.

Satellite data from across California’s landscapes reveal an increase in nitrogen dioxide levels in remote forest areas, and wildfire and soil emissions are likely the reasons why, according to a paper from UC Davis published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

The Biden administration is one step away from designating the first national marine sanctuary nominated by a tribe. Tribal members of the Chumash, who have lobbied for the creation of this Central Coast preserve for more than a decade, would be involved in managing it.

In a new study published Aug. 17 in the journal Science, fossil records at La Brea Tar Pits indicate that the disappearance of California’s sabertooth cats, dire wolves and other large mammals nearly 13,000 years ago was linked to rising temperatures and fire activity spurred by people.

With only 12,000 hydrogen cars on the road, and just two models for sale, California lawmakers are debating how much state money should support them.

While the toxic algae bloom that sickened California marine mammals has dissipated, rescue centers prepare for more events as oceanographic conditions continue to present challenges.

A corridor was created to help prevent the advancement of a blaze in the event of a wildfire into the neighboring property or across the trail.

Frustration runs deep among medical cannabis patients and advocates who say the commercial market created by Proposition 64 in 2016 isn’t meeting their needs.

Huge winter rains and snow are continuing to reduce fire risk, experts say.

The total number of climate change court cases has more than doubled since 2017 and is growing worldwide. These findings, published by the UN Environment Programme and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, show that climate litigation is becoming an integral part of securing climate action and justice.

Jeff Smallwood, a second grade English teacher at Los Padres Elementary School in East Salinas, was aware that relatively few of his students had ever seen the ocean.

Raising Shasta Dam to increase its capacity would provide 634,000 more acre-feet of water per year, legislators say. But that assumes there will always be enough precipitation, and the move risks flooding sacred Native American lands and harming local habitats.

The environmental costs of ending water diversions from Mono Lake to Los Angeles would be mixed: It might help a shore bird habitat but would require changes that increase carbon emissions.

As nights warm and droughts intensify, past models predicting fire behavior have become unreliable. So California is working with analysts and tapping into new technology to figure out how to attack wildfires. Gleaned from military satellites, drones and infrared mapping, the information is spat out in real time and triaged by a fire behavior analyst.

Access to the coast for underserved communities has become a greater focus for the state’s Coastal Commission, which has used its regulatory and funding options to help support efforts.

Research by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s snake fungal disease project indicates that the pathogen is occurring in more locations and impacting more snakes in California than previously known.

Truck manufacturers won’t file legal challenges over California's controversial mandate, and in return, the state air board will relax some smog-fighting requirements.

Climate activists and some lawmakers want two of California’s pension funds to shed about $15 billion of fossil fuel holdings. They say the move would reduce oil and gas companies’ political power, but opponents say it would be a bad move financially.