Download or read book The Fall and Rise of the Wetlands of California s Great Central Valley written by Philip Garone and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive environmental history of California’s Great Central Valley, where extensive freshwater and tidal wetlands once provided critical habitat for tens of millions of migratory waterfowl. Weaving together ecology, grassroots politics, and public policy, Philip Garone tells how California’s wetlands were nearly obliterated by vast irrigation and reclamation projects, but have been brought back from the brink of total destruction by the organized efforts of duck hunters, whistle-blowing scientists, and a broad coalition of conservationists. Garone examines the many demands that have been made on the Valley’s natural resources, especially by large-scale agriculture, and traces the unforeseen ecological consequences of our unrestrained manipulation of nature. He also investigates changing public and scientific attitudes that are now ushering in an era of unprecedented protection for wildlife and wetlands in California and the nation.
Download or read book The Naturalist s Illustrated Guide to the Sierra Foothills and Central Valley written by Derek Madden and published by Heyday.ORIM. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This guide to the wildlife and vegetation of California’s Central Valley and Foothills Regions features more than seven hundred detailed line drawings. California’s San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys and the nearby Sierra Nevada Foothills are host to abundant, varied, and often surprising plants and wildlife. This fully illustrated guide pairs over seven hundred meticulous line drawings with descriptions of the birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fishes, invertebrates, plants, and fungi that make this diverse and beautiful region their home. Like a ranger-led nature walk, each species receives a lively overview; readers will learn about freshwater jellyfish, mushrooms that decompose railroad ties, handstanding spotted skunks, salt-shedding pickleweed—not to mention insects. Every write-up not only contains fun facts but also conveys a sense of the complex connections and interactions that sustain life in a unique place. Previously published as Magpies and Mayflies (Heyday, 2005), The Naturalist’s Illustrated Guide to the Sierra Foothills and Central Valley features updated scientific and common names, and a full redesign.
Download or read book Drought Water Law and the Origins of California s Central Valley Project written by Tim Stroshane and published by University of Nevada Press. This book was released on 2016-10-27 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an account of how water rights were designed as a key part of the state’s largest public water system, the Central Valley Project. Along sixty miles of the San Joaquin River, from Gustine to Mendota, four corporate entities called “exchange contractors” retain paramount water rights to the river. Their rights descend from the days of the Miller & Lux Cattle Company, which amassed an empire of land and water from the 1850s through the 1920s and protected these assets through business deals and prolific litigation. Miller & Lux’s dominance of the river relied on what many in the San Joaquin Valley regarded as wasteful irrigation practices and unreasonable water usage. Economic and political power in California’s present water system was born of this monopoly on water control. Stroshane tells how drought and legal conflict shaped statewide economic development and how the grand bargain of a San Joaquin River water exchange was struck from this monopoly legacy, setting the stage for future water wars. His analysis will appeal to readers interested in environmental studies and public policy.
Download or read book Highway 99 written by Stan Yogi and published by Great Valley Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the myths of the Yokuts Indians, to stories and poems by famous contemporary writers, this anthology showcases the best literature of Californias Great Central Valley, and provides a rich view of the regions physical and emotional landscape
Download or read book The Great Central Valley written by Gerald W. Haslam and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the natural and social history of California's agricultural heartland. This book celebrates the tenacious people of the Valley, where hard work and ingenuity are the means to both survival and success.
Download or read book Rewilding Agricultural Landscapes written by H. Scott Butterfield and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2021-04-08 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the world population grows, so does the demand for food, putting unprecedented pressure on agricultural lands. In many desert dryland regions, however, intensive cultivation is causing their productivity to decline precipitously. "Rewilding" the least productive of these landscapes offers a sensible way to reverse the damage, recover natural diversity, and ensure long-term sustainability of remaining farms and the communities they support. This accessibly written, groundbreaking contributed volume is the first to examine in detail what it would take to retire eligible farmland and restore functioning natural ecosystems. The lessons in Rewilding Agricultural Landscapes will be useful to conservation leaders, policymakers, groundwater agencies, and water managers looking for inspiration and practical advice for solving the complicated issues of agricultural sustainability and water management.
Download or read book The Dreamt Land written by Mark Arax and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid, searching journey into California's capture of water and soil—the epic story of a people's defiance of nature and the wonders, and ruin, it has wrought Mark Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers, a writer with deep ties to the land who has watched the battles over water intensify even as California lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land, he travels the state to explore the one-of-a-kind distribution system, built in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, that is straining to keep up with California's relentless growth. The Dreamt Land weaves reportage, history and memoir to confront the "Golden State" myth in riveting fashion. No other chronicler of the West has so deeply delved into the empires of agriculture that drink so much of the water. The nation's biggest farmers—the nut king, grape king and citrus queen—tell their story here for the first time. Arax, the native son, is persistent and tough as he treks from desert to delta, mountain to valley. What he finds is hard earned, awe-inspiring, tragic and revelatory. In the end, his compassion for the land becomes an elegy to the dream that created California and now threatens to undo it.
Download or read book The Other California written by Gerald W. Haslam and published by Western Literature and Fiction. This book was released on 1994 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oildale native, Gerald Haslam, doesn’t like it when folks dismiss the Central Valley as boring and flat. In this collection of essays, he argues that it is California’s heartland and economic hub. In addition, the valley has produced a crop of gifted writers. These nineteen essays range from reminiscences of childhood and adolescence to a portrait of Mexican-Americans and their position in the Valley’s society to a moving essay about having the author’s aging father come to live with the family. Even if you have never lived in the Valley, reading this book will give you an entirely new perspective the next time you drive into it.
Download or read book Framing the Valley written by Maria Ogrydziak and published by Oro Editions. This book was released on 2021-11 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emerging from the vivid landscape of California's Central Valley, architect Maria Ogrydziak's iconic, light-filled houses reflect a region where growth abounds, rich soil runs deep, and blue sky goes on and on. She designs for a new California dream, outside the hustle of the big cities, far from the deep turquoise of the Pacific. Framing the Valley follows eight case study houses where everyday people find extraordinary lives through architecture. Written in an approachable style by Maria, it is full of design wisdom from over 40 years of 400 built projects. Projects include Art Barn, a steel horse barn transformed into an art gallery, overlooking picturesque fields dotted with California poppies; Flight house, a budget-friendly remote-work homestead just outside town; two remodels of California's classic ranch-style and mid-century modern tract homes; and a 15,000-square-foot luxury homestead clad completely in iridescent glass.
Download or read book My San Joaquin written by Nels Hanson and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-07-11 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two California Central Valley natives and former farmers have produced this vibrant book of poetry and art about the San Joaquin Valley they love, where they learned to accept both the bounties and the hazards of the changing seasons. Nels Hanson has received numerous awards for his writing, and Rees Nielsen's painting, poetry and fiction have been widely published in literary magazines.
Download or read book Picturing California s Other Landscape written by Heath Schenker and published by Heyday Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring 150 years of paintings, photographs, tourist and advertising art, and maps.
Download or read book The New College Encyclopedia of Music written by Jack Allan Westrup and published by W. W. Norton. This book was released on 1981-01-01 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thousands of entries and hundreds of illustrations cover musical works, instruments, composers, performers, technical terms, critics, scholars, and other subjects.
Download or read book Ground Water in the Central Valley California written by G. L. Bertoldi and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Godshot written by Chelsea Bieker and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Imagine if Annie Proulx wrote something like White Oleander crossed with Geek Love or Cruddy, and then add cults, God, motherhood, girlhood, class, deserts, witches, the divinity of women . . . Terrifying, resplendent, and profoundly moving, this book will leave you changed." —T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen–year–old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it’s an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms. In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. He promises, through secret “assignments,” to bring the rain everybody is praying for. Lacey has no reason to doubt the pastor. But then her life explodes in a single unimaginable act of abandonment: her mother, exiled from the community for her sins, leaves Lacey and runs off with a man she barely knows. Abandoned and distraught, Lacey May moves in with her widowed grandma, Cherry, who is more concerned with her taxidermy mouse collection than her own granddaughter. As Lacey May endures the increasingly appalling acts of men who want to write all the rules and begins to uncover the full extent of Pastor Vern’s shocking plan to bring fertility back to the land, she decides she must go on a quest to find her mother no matter what it takes. With her only guidance coming from the romance novels she reads and the unlikely companionship of the women who knew her mother, she must find her own way through unthinkable circumstances. Possessed of an unstoppable plot and a brilliantly soulful voice, Godshot is a book of grit and humor and heart, a debut novel about female friendship and resilience, mother–loss and motherhood, and seeking salvation in unexpected places. It introduces a writer who gives Flannery O’Connor’s Gothic parables a Californian twist and who emerges with a miracle that is all her own. “[A] haunting debut . . . This is a harrowing tale, which Bieker smartly writes through the lens of a teenager on the cusp of understanding the often fraught relationship between religion and sexuality . . . It's a timely and disturbing portrait of how easily men can take advantage of vulnerable women—and the consequences sink in more deeply with each page."—Annabel Gutterman, Time “Drawn in brilliant, bizarre detail—baptism in warm soda, wisdom from romance novels—Lacey's twin crises of faith and femininity tangle powerfully. Fiercely written and endlessly readable, a novel like this is a godsend. A–.”—Mary Sollosi, Entertainment Weekly
Download or read book Central Valley Pagans written by Penny Verin-Shapiro and published by Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Heart of California written by Aaron Gilbreath and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-11 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2022 Oregon Book Award Finalist A vivid journey through California's vast rural interior, The Heart of California weaves the story of historian Frank Latta's forgotten 1938 boat trip from Bakersfield to San Francisco with Aaron Gilbreath's trip retracing Latta's route by car during the 2014 drought. Latta embarked on his journey to publicize the need for dams and levees to improve flood control. Gilbreath made his own trip to profile Latta and the productive agricultural world that damming has created in the San Joaquin Valley, to describe the region's nearly lost indigenous culture and ecosystems, and to bring this complex yet largely ignored landscape to life. The Valley is home to some of California's fastest growing cities and, by some estimates, produces 25 percent of America's food. The Valley feeds too many people, and is too unique, to be ignored. To understand California, you have to understand the Valley. Mixing travel writing, historical recreations, western history, natural history, and first-person reportage, The Heart of California is a road-trip narrative about this fascinating region and its most important early documentarian.
Download or read book Landscapes and Landmarks of the Great Central Valley written by Janice Stevens and published by Craven Street Books. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gorgeously illustrated tour of California's heartland, lovingly depicted in over 100 original watercolor paintings. From Tejon Pass in the south to Mount Shasta in the north stretches one of California's hidden gems, the heartland of the Great Central Valley. The most productive agricultural region anywhere in the world, the Central Valley is an entirely different California most tourists never see--a rural land of farms and industry, stunning natural beauty, and historic cities, populated by friendly, hard-working people. Superbly illustrated with over 100 full-color original watercolor paintings, Landscapes and Landmarks of the Great Central Valley is a loving tribute to the Valley created by two native daughters, award-winning artist Pat Hunter and acclaimed writer Janice Stevens. Hunter and Stevens take the reader on a personal tour of their home region, showing the charms of the Valley's agricultural heritage, natural scenery, history and architecture.
