Page 15 - Sonoma County Gazette January 2017

WATER cont’d from page 14
We know floodplains grow bigger salmon from studies that show salmon put in 3 foot deep pens in rice fields (pictured below) grow twice as fast as fish in the Sacramento River, and bigger juvenile fish lead to more returning spawners that re-build populations. Like any wildlife population, the biggest regulator for Salmon numbers on the Russian River is how much food the river makes. When you shrink the river by 75-80% it produces that much less food and therefore we have less salmon.
Fish raised in pens in rice elds/floodplains grew twice as large as sh in River, which means more returning adults.
All these problems will get far worse with a changing climate. In the simplest terms, the hotter the air temperatures, the more extreme the weather is on both sides of the coin. When we have floods, they will be much bigger, and damage will be more costly. When we have droughts they will be longer and have more dire effects due to hotter temperatures. Water is a major part in seven out of ten jobs in our watershed, so a prolonged ten-year plus drought would devastate not just our environment, but our economy.
Climate Change Impact
It’s obvious to many we have a very big problem. Can we fix it?
Luckily that answer is yes, we can get back many of those lost ecosystem services to help us survive more severe weather. This is why Riverkeeper, after fighting with gravel miners for decades, is now working with them to restore former gravel pits back to floodplains. We’ve spent considerable time and effort
over the last four years with Hanson Aggregates to come up with a plan to turn their brownfield pits into floodplains. This is a big deal as land along the river is very expensive but Hanson is willing to give the restored floodplain area – 350 acres to Sonoma County Regional Parks for a public park. A UC Davis study shows us that adding this much area
will boost groundwater recharge by more than double.
This is a win-win for the river and the community and increases the size
of the middle reach by 30% in one project, as
What kind of future do we want in the watershed? A future of tipping from one disaster to another, or should we invest the time and money now to avoid disasters completely or reduce the impact to manageable levels?
Russian Riverkeeper is a Healdsburg based not for profit community benefit organization that depends on your tax deductible contributions for our work. To donate or learn more about our work, please visit russiariverkeeper.org!
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well as feed up to 100,000 juvenile salmon! The time to act and restore our floodplains is now before the next drought or next flood. When those bigger storms do hit us, it will be too late to act.