Placer County Environment Digest

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.

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

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.

Placer County will contribute $910,000 toward the preservation of 1,169 acres in rural Lincoln, helping the county meet goals and objectives outlined in the Placer Legacy Open Space and Agricultural Conservation Program and Placer County Conservation Program.

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.

The USDA Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit is scheduled to begin mechanical forest thinning and fuel reduction operations next week on approximately 208 acres along a powerline corridor.

To Keep Tahoe Blue, the League to Save Lake Tahoe teamed up with ECO-CLEAN Solutions and the Tahoe Keys Marina to introduce an aquatic robot that glides across the surface, removing water-borne debris and aquatic weeds.

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.

Clean Up the Lake, known for its 72-mile cleanup project around the shores of Lake Tahoe, has opened its Environmental Dive Center at Lake Tahoe.

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.

With a record number of participants this year, the 18th annual Tahoe Bike Challenge got more people than ever out of their cars to help improve Lake Tahoe's environment and communities.

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 California Tahoe Conservancy has awarded two grants totaling $4,627,000 to build partner capacity for forest and wildfire resilience projects across the California side of the Lake Tahoe Basin.

A rodent posing a serious threat to levees and native marshlands has found its way to Sacramento County. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife first sounded the alarm on nutria in 2017, when the large South American rodents were detected in the San Joaquin Valley.

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.

Small fragments of fibers from clothing, packaging and other plastic residue have invaded freshwater lakes and watersheds globally and in alarming quantities, according to new research.

Beginning the week of July 10, NV Energy and partnering agencies will continue to implement measures to reduce wildfire and natural disaster risk throughout the Lake Tahoe Basin and Southern Nevada as part of the Natural Disaster Protection Plan.

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.

The USDA Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit is scheduled to begin thinning trees by hand on July 10 on the south end of Prey Meadows north of Glenbrook on the East Shore of Lake Tahoe.

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.

A lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service over damage caused by the Tamarack Fire has been filed in the Eastern District of U.S. District Court of California.

California lawmakers passed the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act, permanently protecting the iconic and imperiled species.

U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) announced $3.1 million in funding she secured for Lake Tahoe in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to prevent and combat the spread of aquatic invasive species in the lake through the Lake Tahoe Aquatic Invasive Species Program.

An unprecedented group of Lake Tahoe destination management, land management and nonprofits launched the Lake Tahoe Destination Stewardship Plan with the signing of an agreement to create the first stewardship council for the region.

The State of California will provide new protections for prescribed fire and cultural burning practitioners. The $20 million allocated for the Prescribed Fire Liability Claims Fund Pilot will cover losses in the rare instance that a prescribed or cultural burn escapes control.