With the onset of the current storm system, rains within the last 48 hours have renewed a stagnant winter runoff. Parson's Creek is flowing again at the UC Hopland Research & Extension Center (HREC) located in southeastern Mendocino County.
The rain has also been welcomed by Dr. Emilio Laca, Professor at the Plant Sciences Dept. at UC Davis. Dr. Laca states that the idea of planting strips or subareas to improve rangelands has a long history, but most of the research was done before the new concepts of spatial ecology were fully developed. Here at HREC, Laca is capturing, measuring, and analyzing precipitation surface-runoff in 30 meter by 50 meter plots ... in order to assess six different treatments.
These large runoff plots are possibly the largest-ever rangeland plots that collect surface runoff. The measuring device is a large tip-bucket type of water collector that was designed and fabricated by Dr. Laca's staff and the HREC staff... the large size is unique. Here you see one of those tip-bucket measuring devices (photo 1) and one of the collection channels that feed runoff water to the tip-bucket (photo 2).
