The Sierra Nevada stretches for around 640 kilometres and encompasses Mount Whitney, the highest peak; Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in the United States, and also Yosemite National Park as well as other internationally famous landmarks.
The Sierra snowpack, which is a critical source for water and recreation in California, achieved a 500-year low this year, upsetting snowboarders and other visitors to the region and affected everything from agriculture, migrating birds, fish, forests, boaters, and the once glorious wetlands.
According to new research published in Nature Climate Change earlier this month, it is the driest it’s been in at least 500 years. After an analysis of more than 1,500 California blue oak tree rings dating back to the early 1500s, it was found that no other year was even close to as dry as 2015.
This is all due to the double whammy of drought and heat that California experienced this year, which has made this snowpack low so extremely low according to Valerie Trouet, a tree-ring research specialist at the University of Arizona in Tucson and co-author of the study.
The 2015 Sierra snow water equivalent was a mere 5 %of the average over the past half-millennium, with the next-closest lows in 1977 and 2014 sitting at 25% of average. It is thought that this year’s low could actually be the lowest it has been in 3,100 years, based on a different analysis also reported in the study.
California blue oaks were used for the study because they are “really really reliable recorders of the amount of rainfall that falls in the winter season,†Trouet says, because they produce wide rings after wet winters.
The California Water Project, which oversees 154 reservoirs in the state, is only able to deliver around 20% of its customer’s water needs, according to Doug Carlson, information officer for the Department of Water Resources.
Although Californians have cut their water use by a whopping 31% by taking shorter showers, infrequently flushing their toilets and not watering spacious lawns, it is nature that is taking the brunt of the shortage; Native salmon fry, the state-wide wildfire count is up more than 1,500 over last year, and most wildlife is in danger.
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