Delta Science Center: Working on a video on what people call sinking islands

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Working on a video on what people call sinking islands

A lot of our project this year has been setting up a video on Delta levees and subsidence. There are 57 man-made islands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and to keep the rivers from flooding the islands levees have been built to surround the islands.

Over the years subsidence has caused the islands to look like they are sinking but that isn't what subsidence is. We interviewed two Doctors from UC Davis last week that explained to us that oxidation in the soil is causing the soil to disappear. You'll have to wait and see our video to learn more.

There are all kinds of important research being done on levees and subsidence, including the grant we're working on here on Jersey Island.

Below are pictures of some of the club members interviewing the docs.

Rezahn Abraha is interviewing Dr. Steve Dervel from Hydrofocus on subsidence and levees.

Monet Marie Kristina Gasca is interviewing Dr. Bees Butler on the economic impacts of failing levees due to subsidence.

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Introduction

About two thirds of the 740,000 acres in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta) are in agriculture. The drained peat soils of the Delta have provided fertile soils for agriculture since the late 1800s when these lands were reclaimed from existing wetlands. Since then, the Delta environment has dramatically deteriorated as evidenced by subsidence. 2.5 billion cubic meters of peat soils have oxidized causing subsidence up to 20 feet or more below sea level on many Delta islands.

Subsidence has been indicative of other severe consequences: extensive greenhouse gas emissions, construction of a 110 mile levee network, risks to California’s water supply through the California State Water Project, degradation of water quality. If current agricultural practices remain unchanged, things will only get worse. Peat oxidation will continue resulting in further subsidence over decades; GHGs will continue to be emitted with an additional estimated 158 Mtonnes CO2eq of C and N2O will be lost to the atmosphere by 2050; levee failure risks will increase from deterioration and from increasing hydraulic gradients across the levees from the superposition of sea level rise and subsidence; and water quality will continue to be degraded. Clearly, agriculture needs to change in the Delta.

The primary long-term goal of this project is to demonstrate rice based cropping systems as an agricultural solution in the Delta with important environmental benefits: mitigating subsidence and concurrently mitigating GHG emissions and soil loss; reducing risks to California water supply, including the agricultural users throughout the San Joaquin Valley downstream of the Delta; and protecting water quality.

This project will assess the technical, engineering, logistic, and economic and policy constraints and opportunities to expanding rice throughout the Delta and the regional and state-water project scale impacts.

This project was awarded in 2011 under the National Institute of Food and Agriculture Climate Change grant program.

DSC Board of Directors

President

Dr. Michael Painter

Ironhouse Sanitary District

Vice President

Keith Nance

Resident at large

Secretary

Janess Hanson

Delta Group of the Sierra Club

Chief Financial Officer

Russ Belleci

Resident at large

Treasurer

Linda Hardcastle

Resident at large

Directors at Large

Ron Gawer

Pacific Gas and Electric

Barney Parsons

Resident at large

Karyn Cornell

Representative Supervisor Mary Piepho

Contra Costa County District 3

Carol Boyd

Retire, Oakley Union Elementary School District

Dave Adler

Garaventa Enterprises

Local Representatives

Satinder Malhi

Representative Senator Mark DeSaulnier

Erica Rodriguez-Langley

Representative Assemblyman Jim Frazier

Rico Cinquini

Representative Diablo Water District

DSC Executive Director

Roni Gehlke