Along the twisted trail I’ve traveled to save some beavers, I have picked up vocabulary to aid me in my quest. Words that I never knew or needed to employ as a fairly competent child psychologist. Words like ‘riparian’ or ‘invertebrate’ or ‘aquifer’ have gradually replaced the use of word like “bipolar’, ‘dissociative’ and ‘atypical’. I’m in a new world now, and I have even started dreaming in that once foreign tongue.

So of course I thought of beavers when Bob Kobres of Georgia sent me this article this morning.

New report on climate change in the Sierra Nevada shows need for human adaptation

The Sierra Nevada mountain range looms over California, stretching 400 miles from Oregon to Tehachapi Pass in Kern County. The range contains the highest point in the continental United States, Mount Whitney, and is home to both the oldest and largest trees in the world—as well as diverse wildlife, from mountain lions to mosquitos.

The range also looms large in the lives of California’s 40 million residents. The food we grow and water we drink depends on the mountains and their effects on climate. That’s why researchers in UCLA’s Center for Climate Science spent the past three years projecting how climate change will affect the Sierra Nevada. On April 2, the final report was released.

The state’s climate is expected to change dramatically by the end of the century, presenting challenges to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to new climate realities.

• More precipitation will fall as rain instead of snow, and snow will melt more rapidly.
• On average, snowpack across the entire Sierra on April 1 would be 64 percent less than it was when measured in the years 1981–2000.
• The midpoint of peak snowmelt and runoff would occur 50 days earlier, on average, than it did from 1981–2000.

• Because less water will be stored naturally as snow and will melt faster, it will be difficult to store using our current system of dams and reservoirs.

Snowpack is another one of those many words I’ve picked up. I mean I heard it on the news before, but never gave a thought about its importance to the water that came out of my Bay Area faucet.  It crept into my vocabulary when I heard Suzanne Fouty on the beaver documentary in Elko Nevada discuss whether beaver dams can help eek out the water lost because of the changing snow pack. Remember that awesome scene?

This is my favorite part of Jari Osborne’s documentary, and shows beautifully what a dramatic difference beaver can make on a dry landscape. The longer segment shows Suzanne talking about how that stored water can help recover the water lost because of the depleted snow pack.

In a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed, Hall and climate center associate director Katharine Reich urged the state to prepare now. California currently relies on snowpack for 60 percent of its water supply. They said the state should perform a comprehensive assessment of current infrastructure to account for their projections. Hall and Reich suggest that increasing groundwater could provide one promising solution.

And do you think the results of the fancy study or this important article mention the heroic work of one particular rodent that can recharge the water table and store water to make up for that lost snow pack? Of course it doesn’t. Because if you want to read information that sensible and bleedin’ obvious you have to come here instead.