Parsing an RSS Feed in PHP

UC Davis News: Environmental Sciences

News from the University of California, Davis.

Fox spit helped Forest Service confirm rare find
Three weeks ago, when U.S. Forest Service biologists thought they had found a supposedly extinct fox in the mountains of central California, they turned to UC Davis for confirmation. Photographs taken by a Forest Service trail camera near Sonora Pass seemed to show a Sierra Nevada red fox (Vulpes vulpes necator) biting a bait bag of chicken scraps. That would be an amazing discovery, since no sighting of that species has been verified south of Mount Lassen, 200 miles away, since the mid-1990s. The biologists shipped the bait bag to wildlife genetics researchers Ben Sacks and Mark Statham at the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory. Since 2006, they have radically altered our understanding of red foxes in California, supplying information crucial to conservation efforts. Sacks and Statham scraped saliva from the tooth punctures on the bag and analyzed the DNA within. Before you could say spit, they had the answer: definitely a Sierra Nevada red fox. “This is the most exciting animal discovery we have had in California since the wolverine in the Sierra two years ago -- only this time, the unexpected critter turned out to be home-grown, which is truly big news,” Sacks said. (The wolverine was an immigrant from Wyoming.) Four years ago, Sacks began analyzing California red fox DNA collected from scat, hair and saliva from live animals, and skin and bones from museum specimens. Until then, the expert consensus was that any red fox in the Central Valley and coastal regions of the state was a descendant of Eastern red foxes (V.v. fulva) brought here in the 1860s for hunting and fur farms. Sacks and his colleagues have confirmed that red fox populations in coastal lowlands, the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California were indeed introduced from the eastern United States (and Alaska). But they have also shown that: <ul> <li>There are native California red foxes still living in the Sierra Nevada.</li> <li>The native red foxes in the Sacramento Valley (V.v. patwin) are a subspecies genetically distinct from those in the Sierra.</li> <li>The two native California subspecies, along with Rocky Mountain and Cascade red foxes (V.v. macroura and V. v. cascadensis), formed a single large western population until the end of the last ice age, when the three mountain subspecies followed receding glaciers up to mountaintops, leaving the Sacramento Valley red fox isolated at low elevation.</li> </ul> Sacks' extensive research program focuses on canids, especially red foxes (evolution, ecology and conservation) and dogs (genetics, geographic origins and spread). He and his students also are working on other carnivores, including disease ecology and interactions among fishers, bobcats, coyotes and gray foxes, and population genetics of ringtails and coyotes. Major funding for Sacks' fox research came from the California Department of Fish and Game and the UC Davis Center for Population Biology.

Good news in annual Lake Tahoe health report
UC Davis researchers noted several bright spots in their annual Lake Tahoe health report, issued today: The 2007 Angora Fire had no significant impact on lake clarity; a small test of a method to kill invasive clams worked; the pollutant phosphorus was at its lowest level in 29 years; and free-floating algae in the lake have generally remained constant since 1996. Earlier this month, the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center announced that lake clarity held relatively steady in 2009. It was noted that the rate of decline in Lake Tahoe’s clarity since 2000 was less that that seen in past decades. "Overall, we remain cautiously optimistic," said John Reuter, associate director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center. The "Tahoe: State of the Lake Report" is intended to give the public a better understanding of the changes occurring in Lake Tahoe on a year-to-year basis and to place current conditions within a historical perspective. It summarizes tens of thousands of scientific observations of lake weather, water conditions and aquatic life made since 1900. “This report is an impartial, annual accounting of many key variables of lake change,” said Geoff Schladow, director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center. “It helps us all recognize the differences between natural variability and long-term change, and how our efforts toward the restoration of Lake Tahoe are progressing.” Reuter emphasized that the lake is not out of the woods, "but it does have the ability to improve, provided that pollution control is achieved." The new report also shows these 2009 events: Potentially disastrous invasive quagga mussels were found on 10 boats inspected by Tahoe management agencies as they headed for the lake. More precipitation fell as rain and less as snow. Algae attached to rocks and docks increased along the northeast shoreline. The amount of water-clouding particles and nutrients reaching the lake by west-side streams increased as precipitation rose from previous years. Lake levels fell below the natural rim of the lake, causing water to stop flowing into the Truckee River. The full 69-page report is online at <a href="http://terc.ucdavis.edu">http://terc.ucdavis.edu</a>.

Source: Pakistan's water problems
Even before this year's catastrophic flooding, Pakistan faced major problems in managing its scarce water resources -- and those challenges are now even greater, says Ken Verosub, distinguished professor of geology at UC Davis. Verosub recently completed a year as a Jefferson fellow in the U.S. State Department, where he worked on water issues with a focus on Pakistan. Almost all of Pakistan's water is used for farming, although the country's urban population is increasing rapidly, Verosub said. The irrigation methods in use are wasteful; the distribution system is old, deteriorating and likely has been severely damaged by floods; and groundwater is being depleted by pumping from wells. Contact: Ken Verosub, klverosub@ucdavis.edu (Verosub is currently a visiting scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va., and can best be reached by e-mail).

Pioneering study finds small amounts of dairy antibiotics in groundwater
In the first large study to track the fate of a wide range of antibiotics given to dairy cows, UC Davis scientists found that the drugs routinely end up on the ground and in manure lagoons, but are mostly broken down before they reach groundwater. The findings should help alleviate longstanding fears that dairy farms, and the fields fertilized with their waste, might lead to large-scale groundwater contamination. “What we found is that antibiotics can frequently be found at the manure-affected surfaces of the dairy operation (such as corrals and manure flush lanes) but generally degrade in the top 12 inches of soil," said Thomas Harter, an expert on the effects of agriculture on groundwater quality and the Robert M. Hagan Chair for Water Management and Policy at UC Davis. "A very small amount of certain antibiotics do travel into shallow groundwater. Our next task is to determine whether these particular antibiotics are further degraded before reaching domestic and public water wells." Harter said the study findings should be particularly useful to people who get drinking water from wells (such as water companies and homeowners), dairy producers and policymakers. It provides the first comprehensive data set to assess and compare potential local impacts to groundwater from the wide variety of antibiotics in use on "freestall" dairy farms, where cows are free to enter and leave resting cubicles rather than being confined in stanchions or pens. California is the nation's largest producer of milk and the second-largest producer of cheese, with 1.8 million milking cows. More than 90 percent of those are housed in freestall operations. California dairies typically administer antibiotics to young cows (calves and heifers, which are cows that have not had a calf), and to nonlactating adult cows, but not to lactating, or "milking," adult cows. Health officials are concerned that antibiotics could travel from cows' urine and feces into the groundwater that supplies drinking water to people and livestock, potentially fostering antibiotic resistance in disease-causing bacteria. Harter said that the health effects of antibiotics in drinking water at the low levels he detected are not known. The new UC Davis study looked at two large freestall operations in the San Joaquin Valley, in a region with highly vulnerable groundwater due to its shallow depth and sandy soils. The two dairies had a total of more than 2,700 milking cows and 2,500 heifers. Soil and water samples were collected from the ground surface under the animals; surfaces such as flush lanes, which carry waste; manure lagoons, where feces and urine are collected; farm fields where lagoon contents were spread for fertilizer; the first 12 inches of soil immediately below the surface of various sections in the dairy operation; and from groundwater 10 to 30 feet beneath the animal areas, adjacent to the lagoons, and beneath the manured fields. (The study did not test surface water, such as creeks. Dairies are not permitted to discharge waste-containing runoff to surface water.) Harter and colleagues from UC Davis and the U.S. Geological Survey's Water Science Center in California conducted the field work in 2006-2008, with analytical support from the U.S. Geological Survey's Water Science Center in Kansas. The research was funded with $568,000 from the CALFED Bay-Delta Authority Drinking Water Program, which is administered by the California State Water Resources Control Board, and $65,000 from the California Department of Food and Agriculture, using funds collected from dairy producers to support research and marketing. The study was published in the online version of Environmental Science & Technology, a journal of the American Chemical Society.

UC Davis study says climate 'big fizz' happened fast at South Pole
Researchers at the University of California, Davis, today report new information on the mechanism of carbon flow from the Earth's oceans at the end of the last ice age, based on chemical analyses of the shells of tiny plankton fossils. "As we alter Earth's climate by burning oil, gas and coal, we urgently need to understand how the deep ocean sequesters carbon, and how that carbon can flow between the atmosphere and ocean in Earth’s past," said study co-author Howard Spero, a UC Davis geology professor. "This study tells us more about the where-and-when mechanics of this cycle, which are still critical questions in climate science." The new report appears in today's issue of the journal Nature. Spero's co-author, Elisabeth Sikes of Rutgers University, will present the findings Monday (Aug. 30) at the 10th International Conference on Paleoceanography at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego. Spero said most experts agree on this general scenario: Marine phytoplankton remove carbon dioxide from the ocean surface, grow, die and sink down into the ocean’s interior, where they are broken down into carbon dioxide by the ocean’s microbial community. (This mechanism is so effective at pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and upper ocean, it’s called the “biological pump.”) Warm upper water layers form a cap on the cold, deep waters -- and the carbon dioxide -- somewhat akin to a bottle cap that holds the fizz in a carbonated drink. Deepwater currents move the dissolved carbon dioxide around the planet. Thousands of years pass; glaciers grow, then start to melt. Eventually, these "old" carbon-rich waters well up to the surface and release their carbon dioxide -- a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change -- back into the atmosphere. Where experts diverge is: Where and how quickly does this release occur at the end of an ice age? Earlier studies suggested that it was spread out over time and place, taking centuries to millennia, and occurring in both the southern and northern hemispheres. Spero and his colleagues tested that theory by analyzing the carbon-14 content in the fossil shells of tiny sea animals called foraminifera that were living at the end of the last ice age, about 18,000 years ago. Spero is a leader in using foraminifera to reconstruct Earth's paleoclimate. The fossil shells, sifted from ancient sediments drilled from beneath the ocean, contain records of the physical and chemical conditions that existed when the animals were alive. Spero previously has used foraminifera to better understand the oceans' acid-base (pH) balance; correlate temperature shifts in the tropical Pacific Ocean with the birth and death of ice ages; and link the circulation system of the north Atlantic Ocean to salinity levels in the Caribbean Sea. In the new study, Spero and his colleagues say, the foraminifera carbon-14 data suggest that the carbon-dioxide release that preceded the current warm period on Earth was more of a big fizz than a slow leak. It lasted about 6,000 years and took place largely in the icy Southern Ocean (the waters south of 60 degrees south latitude that encircle Antarctica). This has important implications for understanding where and how carbon dioxide comes out of the ocean -- and, especially critical, how fast it comes out. "We now understand that the Southern Ocean was the fundamental release valve that controlled the flow of carbon dioxide from the ocean to the atmosphere at the end of the last ice age. The resulting atmospheric increase in this greenhouse gas ultimately led to the warm, comfortable climate that human civilization has enjoyed for the past 10,000 years," Spero concluded. The two lead authors on the paper are Kathryn Rose, who conducted her master's degree research in Spero's UC Davis laboratory and now is a research associate at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Mass.; and Elisabeth Sikes, a Rutgers University marine scientist. Co-authors are Spero; Tessa Hill, also a UC Davis geology professor; Thomas Guilderson of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Phil Shane of the University of Auckland, New Zealand; and Rainer Zahn of Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, Evolving Earth Foundation, Geological Society of America and the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Lake Tahoe clarity held steady in 2009
Lake Tahoe clarity held steady in 2009 for the ninth year in a row, but remains significantly poorer than in previous decades, according to UC Davis scientists who have monitored the lake for more than 40 years. The lake was clear to an average depth of 68.1 feet in 2009, the researchers found. That’s down from 102.4 feet in 1968, when UC Davis researchers first measured the lake’s clarity. Geoff Schladow, director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, said the latest test results may be cause for some optimism. Even though precipitation was much higher in 2009 than in 2008 or 2007, the annual average clarity remained relatively stable, Schladow noted. Rainfall and snowmelt wash water-clouding particles into the lake. Another hopeful finding: 2009 summer clarity readings were much better than 2008 summer readings. Overall, clarity during the summer months of 2009 was 10 feet better than in summer of 2008. Schladow, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said the improvements were in part due to the realization that fine particles are so important. “For the last eight or nine years, the science has shown that fine particles are the major cause of clarity decline. Today we have many projects in the basin that are being designed to better retain these fine particles and keep them out of the lake.” UC Davis and many other academic institutions and public agencies are working with the private sector to restore and preserve the Tahoe Basin ecosystem. Led by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, the collaborative Environmental Improvement Program is among the nation’s most ambitious public-private restoration initiatives. “Holding steady on lake clarity is a tremendous accomplishment, considering the increased precipitation and runoff we experienced,” said Joanne S. Marchetta, executive director of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. “We believe the environmental restoration work we’ve been engaged in over the last decade is taking hold and making a positive difference.” UC Davis researchers measure the lake's clarity throughout the year by lowering a white Secchi disk, named after its inventor, Italian scientist Angelo Secchi, at two fixed locations. The depth at which the disk, the size of a dinner plate, disappears from sight is referred to as the Secchi depth, a measurement of clarity. The more than four decades of data collected so far strongly indicate that Lake Tahoe’s long-term clarity loss is caused by increased fine particles and nutrients in the lake. The particles and nutrients enter the lake through erosion, runoff and atmospheric deposition. Once in the lake, they affect clarity by scattering light and fueling the growth of algae, which absorb light. Funding for the clarity analyses comes from the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. CLARITY READINGS SINCE 2000 Lake Tahoe’s average annual Secchi clarity measurements since 2000: <ul> <li>2009 -- 68.1 feet (20.8 meters)</li> <li>2008 — 69.6 feet (21.2 meters)</li> <li>2007 — 70.1 feet (21.4 meters)</li> <li>2006 — 67.7 feet (20.6 meters)</li> <li>2005 — 72.4 feet (22.1 meters)</li> <li>2004 — 73.6 feet (22.4 meters)</li> <li>2003 — 71 feet (21.6 meters)</li> <li>2002 — 78 feet (23.8 meters)</li> <li>2001 — 73.6 feet (22.4 meters)</li> <li>2000 — 67.3 feet (20.5 meters)</li> </ul> <h3>About the Tahoe Environmental Research Center</h3> The Tahoe Environmental Research Center is dedicated to research, education and public outreach on lakes and their surrounding watersheds and airsheds. It is committed to providing objective scientific information for restoration and sustainable use of the Lake Tahoe Basin. The center is part of the UC Davis John Muir Institute of the Environment.

'Virtual Haiti' demonstration
UC Davis geologists and computer scientists will demonstrate how they are using virtual reality technology at the W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES) to study the effects of recent earthquakes in Haiti and Baja California.

Warming climate means harsher smog season for California
Rising temperatures from climate change will increase ozone levels in California’s major air basins, according to a new report to the California Air Resources Board from scientists at UC Davis and UC Berkeley. The study also predicts that peak concentrations of dangerous airborne particles will increase in the San Joaquin Valley due to the effects of climate change on wind patterns. “Our study reveals that climate change and regional air pollution are intertwined problems," said Michael Kleeman, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis and lead author of the study. "We must consider climate change and air pollution together as we plan for the future.” The new study provides evidence of what is becoming known as the “climate penalty,” in which rising temperatures increase ground-level ozone and airborne health-damaging particles, despite the reductions achieved by programs targeting smog-forming emissions from cars, trucks and industrial sources. “We already know that climate change will bring us increased forest fires, shorter winters, hotter summers and impact our water supply,” said Mary D. Nichols, chair of the Air Resources Board. “Now we have scientific evidence that higher temperatures are hurting our lungs, too. To protect public health, we need to take cost-effective measures to slash greenhouse gases now and continue to ratchet down all sources of smog-forming emissions and harmful soot and particles.” Kleeman and his co-authors found that California could experience as many as six to 30 more days when ozone concentrations exceed federal clean-air standards, depending on the extent of increased temperatures and assuming that pollutant emissions in California remain at 1990-2004 levels. The researchers predicted the effects of climate change on California regions by merging the results from large-scale global models with detailed models for the South Coast and San Joaquin Valley. These detailed models utilize high-resolution information about the regions’ geography, meteorology and emissions. Failure in the future to reduce ozone and particulate matter to federally required levels could lead to the loss of transportation funds used by the state to maintain and develop roadways. On a positive note, the study also found that climate change would decrease average annual particulate matter concentrations in coastal regions of the state. “California’s interests are best served by taking a broad scientific view of climate change and air pollution together,” said Bart Croes, research division chief for the Air Resources Board. “Programs to protect California’s public health from the linked threats of global warming and air pollution need the guidance of the best science available, which is certainly exemplified by this study." Kleeman's co-authors on the study are Shu-Hua Chen, assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, and Robert Harley, professor in the UC Berkeley Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The study was funded by the California Air Resources Board, a department of the California Environmental Protection Agency. The board oversees all air pollution control efforts in California to attain and maintain health-based air quality standards. The full report and an executive summary are available at: <a href="http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/apr/past/climate.htm">http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/apr/past/climate.htm</a>. <h3>About UC Davis</h3> For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has 32,000 students, an annual research budget that exceeds $600 million, a comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges — Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional schools — Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.

FDA taps UC Davis lab to test Gulf seafood for oil spill contamination
A diagnostic laboratory at the University of California, Davis, is gearing up to test seafood from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill area for petroleum-based chemicals, including some that have the potential to cause cancer in people. The California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory at UC Davis is one of eight state and federal laboratories nationwide — and the only one in California — chosen by the federal government to monitor seafood from the Gulf of Mexico for toxins related to the oil spill. Seafood from the oil spill area is expected to begin arriving at the UC Davis lab for testing by early August. “We will be looking at a variety of different seafood, including finfish, crabs, oysters and shrimp, from the impacted areas of the Gulf of Mexico,” said Robert Poppenga, a UC Davis veterinary toxicologist who is coordinating the UC Davis lab’s seafood analysis team. The federal surveillance program will rely on two levels of testing. First, a panel of experts at an initial lab will administer sensory tests, checking for the telltale odors of petroleum contamination. If contaminants are suspected following these tests, the samples will then be sent on for more sensitive chemical diagnostic tests at UC Davis and other participating laboratories. The other participating labs are located in Colorado, Arkansas, Georgia, Missouri, Arizona, Wisconsin and Florida. In preparation for the seafood-testing program, UC Davis has received equipment valued at roughly $140,000 from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to complement its existing diagnostic equipment. The FDA is coordinating the testing program in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Petroleum crude oil is a very complex mixture of chemicals, and some of the chemicals within that mixture are potential cancer-causing agents,” Poppenga said. “So we’re going to focus on those that are of primary concern to human health.” Of interest to the UC Davis surveillance team is a group of chemicals known as polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) such as benzene, naphthalene, fluorine, anthracene, pyrene, benzo(a)pyrene and others. Poppenga noted that the UC Davis lab is currently doing test runs to validate its analytical methods and establish baseline levels for some petroleum compounds that are commonly found at very low levels in most indoor environments. “The method used to detect these chemicals is very complex and sensitive because we are examining for contamination down to the parts-per-billion level,” he said, noting that it would probably take four to five days to process each seafood sample. All data from the tests will be reported back to the FDA. The results will be used to determine which areas of the Gulf of Mexico have oil-contaminated seafood and which areas can be reopened to commercial fishing. The California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory, operated by UC Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine for the State of California, routinely performs diagnostic tests to identify livestock and poultry diseases. It was selected to participate in the seafood diagnostic program because it is part of the Food Emergency Response Network, a group of local, state and federal laboratories that are equipped to test for food contamination. <h3>About UC Davis</h3> For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has 32,000 students, an annual research budget that exceeds $600 million, a comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges — Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional schools — Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.

Scientists roll out 'not-welcome' mats to kill Tahoe clams
Watch a video of UC Davis scientist divers Marion Wittmann and Brant Allen roll out rubber mats on the lake bottom: <object height="300" width="400"> <param value="true" name="allowfullscreen" /> <param value="always" name="allowscriptaccess" /> <param value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=13218392&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" name="movie" /><embed height="300" width="400" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=13218392&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1"></embed></object> <a href="http://vimeo.com/13218392">TERC Clam Barrier Installation</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1451887">Hal Sloane</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>. - - - - - - - Lake Tahoe scientists at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Nevada, working with government and conservation organizations, this week began a novel attempt to control a dime-sized clam that threatens the spectacular lake's ecological balance -- including its trademark clarity. The problem is the non-native Asian clam, Corbicula fluminea. First observed in the lake in 2002, the Asian clam population in some places now has reached thousands per square yard, mainly along the California-Nevada state line in the southeast corner of the lake. The Asian clam is undesirable because it: <ul> <li>Displaces native clams, snails and other organisms living on the lake bottom, which are important members of the lake's native food web;</li> <li>Fosters the growth of bright green algae, which change the look of the water, and smell when they decompose; and</li> <li>Could help foster an invasion of quagga mussels, another aggressive non-native species, by creating desirable habitat for them.</li> </ul> The novel control effort involves installing an acre of rubber sheeting on the lake bottom to kill the clams by depriving them of oxygen. The sheeting will remain in place all summer. “The goal of this experiment is to determine whether it is feasible to control clams using impermeable bottom barriers," said Geoffrey Schladow, director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center. "We need to know how to efficiently deploy and remove large areas of rubber sheeting, and when it is all done, we must know whether the clams recolonize the treated areas.” The "dissolved oxygen deprivation" strategy was devised and tested on small patches of lake bottom last summer by Lake Tahoe experts at UC Davis and the University of Nevada, Reno. That study and the results of this year's acre-scale experiment will be used to help Tahoe Basin agencies develop a clam-management strategy. The scientists leading the experiment are UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center postdoctoral researcher Marion Wittmann, director Schladow and associate director John Reuter, and University of Nevada, Reno, associate professor Sudeep Chandra. The Asian clam experimental control effort is coordinated by the Lake Tahoe Asian Clam Working Group, a collaboration of scientists, environmental agencies and water suppliers. Members include the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center; University of Nevada, Reno; Tahoe Resource Conservation District; Tahoe Regional Planning Agency; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board; California Department of Parks and Recreation; Nevada Division of State Lands; Nevada Division of Environmental Protection; Round Hill General Improvement District; and Incline Village General Improvement District. The estimated $648,000 cost of the experimental treatment will be funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Nevada Division of State Lands and the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act. In total, $1.4 million has been allocated by working group agencies for Asian clam control work around Lake Tahoe. The Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board has dedicated $700,000 to controlling Asian clams in Lake Tahoe, some of which will be used to expand work into Emerald Bay in 2011. <h3>About the Tahoe Environmental Research Center</h3> The Tahoe Environmental Research Center is dedicated to research, education and public outreach on lakes and their surrounding watersheds and airsheds. Lake ecosystems include the physical, biogeochemical and human environments, and the interactions among them. The center is committed to providing objective scientific information for restoration and sustainable use of the Lake Tahoe Basin. <h3>About UC Davis</h3> For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has 32,000 students, an annual research budget that exceeds $600 million, a comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges — Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional schools — Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.

UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship hosts Green Tech Academy
Nearly 50 scientists, researchers and engineers from more than 20 universities are gathering at the UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship's Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy this week for a series of seminars and workshops on how to launch a successful green-tech company. All of the sessions are held at the UC Davis Tahoe Center for Environmental Research in Incline Village, Nev., and are open to the media. The academy includes a Tuesday morning session with John Bissell, a UC Davis and academy alumnus who started Micromidas, a West Sacramento-based company that converts carbon found in organic wastewater into biodegradable, recyclable bioplastics. Most plastic products today are petrochemical-based and difficult to recycle. Bissell will share his experience in starting a new venture based on green technology research. On Friday, the academy's last day, attendees will present commercialization strategies to a panel of investors and corporate partners, including representatives from Pacific Gas & Electric Co.; Chevron Corp.; Mohr Davidow Ventures, a Menlo Park-based venture capital firm; and Nth Power, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm focused on energy technology. Panelists will offer their insights and perspectives on the attendees' proposals. The academy is taught by leading experts from top venture capital and law firms, UC Davis and other research institutions. “Our biggest impact is to foster these network relationships connecting researchers with investors, big companies, utilities and the public sector. This has been a big missing piece in the puzzle of getting innovation out of the labs,” said Andrew Hargadon, director of the UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship. Hargadon, a professor who holds the Soderquist Chair in Entrepreneurship at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, is one of the nation’s foremost experts on entrepreneurship and management of technology innovation. He wrote the book, "How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth about How Companies Innovate." Since 2007, more than 420 scientists, engineers and business students from universities worldwide have attended the UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship’s 12 academies — including one devoted to green technology and one focused on food and health. In the process, more than two dozen companies have been launched or supported, with more in the pipeline. This week’s participants — graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and faculty working in a wide range of science and engineering fields — come to the green technology academy with a wealth of knowledge and work on cutting-edge, sustainable technologies. The academy’s faculty is drawn from the Northern California venture capital and angel investor community, including CalCEF Clean Energy Angel Fund, DFJ Element, DCM, Physic Ventures and Sierra Angels. Attorneys from Morrison & Foerster and DLA Piper also will be on hand. Guest entrepreneurs include Professor Paul Hudnut of Colorado State University, a co-founder of Envirofit International, Ltd, a company that makes clean cook-stoves; and Bissell, whose company, Micromidas, recently raised $3.6 million in its first major round of financing. “The network that we developed from the 2008 academy has been absolutely instrumental in developing our company,” said Bissell. “Two years down the road, I still keep in touch with our academy mentor on a weekly basis. He has been key in helping us secure partnerships and scale our business.” In addition to Chevron and PG&E, major sponsors include the Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization and the National Institute of Environmental Sciences’ Superfund Research Program. Additional support is provided by the Sierra Angels and Sierra Nevada College. For more information: <a href="http://entrepreneurship.ucdavis.edu/green">http://entrepreneurship.ucdavis.edu/green</a> <h3>About the UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship</h3> The Center for Entrepreneurship at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management serves as a springboard for innovations developed in university and corporate research programs. The center’s research focuses on developing effective practices for early-stage innovation and entrepreneurship; its educational programs blend effective theory with hands-on exercises to help participants create solution-specific innovations and individual action plans. Through academic programs including the UC Davis MBA entrepreneurship concentration, the Business Development Fellows program for graduate science and engineering researchers, and several entrepreneurship academies, the center provides science, engineering and business students the knowledge and networks that are critical to successful innovation. <a href="http://entrepreneurship.ucdavis.edu">http://entrepreneurship.ucdavis.edu</a> <h3>About UC Davis</h3> For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has 32,000 students, an annual research budget that exceeds $600 million, a comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges — Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional schools — Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.

Don’t kill oiled birds, say UC Davis experts
Rescuing oiled birds is the right thing to do because more of them survive and reproduce than previously thought, say UC Davis oiled wildlife experts in the first scientific review of all oiled-bird survival studies. “Photos of extremely oiled pelicans in the Gulf spill have raised the question: ‘Are we helping these animals more by saving them, or by ending their suffering?’ said Michael Ziccardi, a UC Davis associate professor of veterinary medicine and oiled-wildlife expert who has responded to more than 45 spills and treated more than 6,500 oiled birds. “It’s an entirely appropriate question to ask. I ask it myself every time I work in an oil spill. And my answer, based on our research and on caring for these injured birds throughout the world, is that we help them more by saving them.” Certainly, some individual oiled birds are so sick that euthanasia is the right choice, medically, ethically and ecologically, Ziccardi added. But those cases typically account for a small percentage of birds brought alive to spill rescue centers. The paper's authors are: • Ziccardi, an international expert on the rescue of oiled birds and other wildlife who leads California’s Oiled Wildlife Care Network, which UC Davis manages for the state. He has been based in Louisiana since April 29, where he leads the sea turtle and marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation efforts in this oil spill, in concert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and • Nils Warnock, a bird biologist who until last week oversaw the capture of oiled wildlife in California for the Oiled Wildlife Care Network, and now is the executive director of Audubon Alaska. Dan Anderson, a UC Davis expert in ecotoxicology and brown pelicans, said he generally agrees with Ziccardi and Warnock’s conclusions. Anderson is a UC Davis professor emeritus of wildlife, fisheries and conservation biology, and an expert on brown pelicans and marine bird ecology. He studied pelicans in California and Mexico for more than 40 years, throughout their DDT-caused population crash and subsequent recovery. Anderson is not an author of the paper. “In our studies of oiled pelicans and coots in the mid-1990’s, survival was not as successful as we would have liked,” Anderson said. “But there is some more encouraging research coming out lately on the survival rates of birds that received improved veterinary care, summarized by Warnock and Ziccardi. “I would caution, though, that rehabilitation of oiled birds is not the solution to the conservation problem. It helps a small part of the population, even though I am personally concerned about saving individual pelicans from a strictly moral viewpoint. “But this spill has permanently damaged the ecosystem where the birds and their descendants will live, and even the best veterinary care cannot overcome that obstacle. Only onsite restoration and conservation can, in the most optimistic view.”