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Tag Archives: central valley
Tracking Water Resources in Real Time
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Image credit: SEBAL North America
According to a recent press release, scientists at SEBAL North America, located in Davis, California, are tracking real-time consumption of water by crops, cities, and natural ecosystems using satellites.
This new technology, applicable to water management needs globally, reduces substantial uncertainties in traditional approaches, greatly increasing confidence in water management decisions. Grant Davids, the company’s president, notes the broad range of applications of SEBAL for water managers. “Water consumption is usually the most important yet often most poorly quantified water management parameter. More accurate and spatially discrete estimates of consumptive use lead to improved water management over a wide range of conditions, from local to basin scales and from historical analysis for planning to real-time operations decision support.”
The company will be providing weekly maps showing water use for the Central Valley. The company also makes image overlays that can be opened in Google Earth to allow users to look more closely at water use in specific areas. Maps and data can be found on the SEBAL website.
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Lots of Bay Area News
U.S. Representative and House Appropriator Mike Honda secured funding to the tune of $2 million towards extension of the BART system to Silicon Valley as part of the FY 2011 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development spending bill. What is the “BART to Silicon Valley” project? It’s an extension of the existing BART system to Milpitas, San Jose, and Santa Clara starting from the future Warm Springs station in Fremont (along the eastern side of the South Bay).
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Google Energy has signed its first contract, a 20-year wind power contract in Iowa. Google will sell the electricity on the spot market and retire the associated renewable energy credits (RECs) – via TechCrunch.
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More people are freaking out about smart meters, but this time not in the Central Valley…
The Fairfax Town Council gave the nod to the creation of an ordinance that, if passed, would try to prevent PG&E from installing smart meters in Fairfax – via the Marin Independent Journal.
The Marin Association of Realtors has issued a statement calling for a moratorium on its SmartMeter program due to concerns in three areas: concerns about overcharging, concerns about health effects from the radio waves, and concerns about PG&E imposing meters on folks that don’t want them – via the Marin Independent Journal.
The Marin Independent Journal also reports that the Marin supervisors have sent a letter to Michael Peevey, president of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), asking the CPUC to suspend PG&E’s SmartMeter rollout until a commission has reviewed the funtion of the meters and until the health implications of the electronic emissions from the wireless devices has been addressed…
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The Department of Energy announced yesterday that $122 million has been awarded to a team of scientists from California (including Lawrence Berkley National Lab) to establish an Energy Innovation Hub that will be focused on converting sunlight into liquid fuel.
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Zero Resource 