October 21, 2021 – The Cosumnes River watershed is representative of many in California in that it extends from the Sierra Nevada mountain range to the Central Valley, providing water and recharging aquifers for municipal and agricultural regions, but unique in that it’s one of the last major rivers without a large-scale dam, enabling the […]
DOE Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
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How California Wildfires Can Impact Water Availability
September 4, 2019 – In recent years, wildfires in the western United States have occurred with increasing frequency and scale. Climate change scenarios in California predict prolonged periods of drought with potential for conditions even more amenable to wildfires. The Sierra Nevada Mountains provide up to 70% of the state’s water resources, yet there is little […]
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Berkeley Lab awarded $4.6 million for risk mitigation of natural gas storage and transmission
June 20, 2017 – The massive natural gas leak at Aliso Canyon shined a light on California’s aging natural gas infrastructure. And five years of extreme drought also exacted its toll on transmission pipelines. Now the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has been awarded $4.6 million by the California Energy Commission […]
Posted inCalifornia
Bay Area methane emissions may be double what we thought
Jan. 18, 2017 – Emissions of methane–a potent climate-warming gas–may be roughly twice as high as officially estimated for the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of the emissions come from biological sources, such as landfills, but natural gas leakage is also an important source, according to a new study from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence […]