Our Impact

By Kathleen Wong, UC Natural Reserve System The thick fog that cloaks California shorelines over summer has an atmospheric counterpart south of the equator. Marine fog not only drenches coastal sections of the South American nation of Chile, but is so reliable that some communities there use fog for drinking water. And in both areas, […]

California is gaining in the world’s economy.Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesByMatthew A. Winkler Gavin Newsom is as familiar as anyone with the media narrative of earthquakes, persistent wildfires, droughts, homelessness and companies fleeing California to Texas for a tax- and regulation-free lifestyle. This is nothing new. California’s governor recalls a 1994 Time Magazine cover story citing […]

DANA POINT, Calif. (AP) — With California struggling through historic drought, the state’s Coastal Commission on Thursday approved a desalination plant that could turn up to 5 million gallons of seawater a day into drinkable water. The commission voted 11-0 to approve the proposed Doheny Ocean Desalination Project in Dana Point, southeast of Los Angeles […]

Miguel Ángel Altieri In order to safeguard and support world’s agricultural heritage systems in 2002 FAO launched a UN Partnership initiative for the conservation and adaptive management of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage systems (GIAHS). The initiative aims to establish the basis for international recognition, dynamic conservation and adaptive management of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems […]

Some scientists are concerned that San Francisco’s most iconic meteorological phenomenon is on its way out. It’s Thursday. Why fog is so vital to life in California. Plus, new research shows that worsening smoke from wildfires may have reversed decades of improvements in Western air quality. Nina Riggio for The New York Times||Coastal fog isn’t […]

Claire Arre, a marine biologist in Orange County, Calif., aims to combat climate change using nature instead of human-engineered construction.Credit…Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times NEWPORT BAY, Calif. — Claire Arre, a marine biologist, waded through the sand in search of an Olympia oyster on a recent sunny afternoon, monitoring the bed her organization […]

Mark Ghilarducci, the state’s emergency services director, right, with Gov. Gavin Newsom as he signed wildfire legislation in 2019. Ghilarducci has worked in emergency services for four decades. John G Mabanglo/EPA, via Shutterstock Three times in the last four years, Mark Ghilarducci has tried to retire from his decade-long job as the head of emergency services […]

 A historically severe September heat wave is baking the West, breaking hundreds of records, posing a danger to public health and pushing California’s power grid to the limit. Some records have been shattered by wide margins as the scorching air mass exacerbates the fire danger in the drought-stricken region. After San Jose and Sacramento soared […]

California took some of its most aggressive steps yet to fight global warming as lawmakers passed a flurry of new climate bills late Wednesday, including a record $54 billion in climate spending, a measure to prevent the state’s last nuclear power plant from closing, sharp new restrictions on oil and gas drilling and a mandate […]