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LAKE COUNTY – Winter's days may be short, but they can have spectacular endings.
On Monday evening local photographer Ron Keas captured another spectacular Lake County sunset.
Throughout the year Keas has shared his talent for capturing great moments around the county, including morning and evening light shows.
View more of his photos at http://www.3dviewmax.com/ .
The Bureau of Land Management will host free guided hikes on Saturdays in January and February to view wintering bald eagles in Lake County's Cache Creek Natural Area.
Hikes will be held Jan. 16, 23 and 30, and Feb. 6, 13, 20 and 27.
The California Department of Fish and Game reported that the bald eagle is a regular winter visitor in the Cache Creek area, where they can be seen roosting or soaring from mid October through mid August.
California state law classifies the bald eagle as a “fully protected bird.” The bald eagle was added to the federal list of endangered species in 1967, and to the California list of endangered species in 1971 after its numbers dropped to 30 nesting pairs in California.
Use of the pesticide DDT was reported to have had the most effect on the bald eagle's population, although numerous other impacts also were reported to have dropped its numbers, including habitat changes because of timber harvests, agriculture, poisoning and shootings, according to the Department of Fish and Game.
Lake County is reported to have two nesting territories for bald eagles, one in the far north and the second in far south at the Napa County line, according to state records.
Fish and Game also reported that bald eagle numbers and the territories they inhabit also are increasing across the state.
Participants in the January and February hikes will meet at the Redbud Trailhead parking area, eight miles east of Clearlake Oaks on Highway 20 at 10 a.m. The trailhead is just west of the North Fork Cache Creek Bridge (38° 59' 13.20" N, 122° 32' 22.50" W).
The four-mile hikes last three to four hours. The trail includes a steep 600-foot climb in the first mile, so hikers should be in good physical condition.
Hikers should wear sturdy hiking boots suitable for wet conditions and dress for cold weather. They should carry water, a lunch and binoculars, as most eagle sightings are at a distance. Hikes will be canceled in rainy weather.
Those who join the hikes will enjoy scenic vistas of the Cache Creek Canyon, where eagles often soar over the creek or perch in streamside trees. Participants often spot other wildlife including tule elk, golden eagles, osprey, herons, red-tailed hawks and egrets.
Those interested in participating should reserve space for a specific date by calling the BLM Ukiah Field Office, 707-468-4000.
Early reservations are suggested for the popular hikes, which are limited to 25 participants each.
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At an Oct. 14 meeting held in Clearlake, the district's board voted to lay off 56 classified employees, as Lake County News has reported. That number later was adjusted to 58.
The college reported that the job losses will occur at the district's Marysville, Woodland and Clear Lake campuses, as well as district offices.
The layoffs are set to go into effect on Jan. 22, according to college spokesman Adrian Lopez.
The district, which covers eight rural counties including a portion of Lake, had a $48 million budget in the last fiscal year, and is expected to have just over 7,800 full-time students this academic year, according to a message Chancellor Nicki Harrington released earlier this fall.
The Yuba Community College District is facing a $4 million reduction in its operating budget due to state budget cuts, and 84 percent of the college's budget is spent on personnel costs, according to district officials.
California School Employees Association (CSEA) unit negotiator Donna Veal-Spenser said layoff notices have been coming out since the board's Oct. 14 vote.
Between retirements and layoffs she reported a total of 76 positions that could be lost – 51 at the Yuba College main campus in Marysville, 19 at Woodland and six at Clear Lake. Veal-Spenser said all of those numbers should change.
“It's bad,” she said.
Since the October vote – which was greeted by picketing employees who crowded into the meeting chambers, asking board members to consider other measures to meet the fiscal shortfall – the situation has changed, thanks to efforts on behalf of staff, faculty and administration.
In November, the college board of trustees unanimously passed a resolution requesting that all district staff make concessions to help offset state budget cuts, Lopez reported.
The board asked all of the college's employee groups to take reductions equaling a 3-percent pay cut. District management staff also took cuts or made voluntary concessions, which amounted to $65,000.
Other cost-cutting measures the district has reported taking include not filling positions left vacant by resignations or retirements, reducing adjunct – or part-time – faculty positions, cutting department operating expenses and compressing academic schedules.
Based on those concessions, grant funding and an employee resignation, the board of trustees was able to restore four positions at its Dec. 9 meeting, according to Lopez.
The positions in question included the director of Yuba College's Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) program – which young science and engineering students had asked the board to spare at the Oct. 14 meeting – two science lab technicians at Woodland Community College and a campus operations specialist at Beale Air Force Base.
Also on Dec. 9, the college board of trustees told Harrington to bring back a budget with 1 percent less of a reserve – totaling about $450,000 – in order to restore more of the positions slated for layoff, Lopez said.
The district's chief negotiator then met with the employee bargaining units on Dec. 11, Lopez reported.
The negotiations have gone in a positive direction, Veal-Spenser said.
The classified employees voted on Dec. 15 to accept a memorandum of understanding with the district that includes employees taking four furlough days during the fiscal year, she said.
There also may be some future discussion regarding retirement incentives, she added.
Veal-Spenser said they're hoping to see at least half of the layoffs restored, but she said that all of it depends on negotiations with the district.
“We don't know yet what positions are going to be brought back for sure and what the district is going to be proposing,” she said. “We're still going to have to hold their feet to the fire.”
While classified and management staff have provided concessions, some other units – like police and adjunct faculty – haven't yet, Lopez said.
The board's next meeting is Jan. 20, just two days before the layoffs go into effect, Lopez said.
In order to continue trying to save as many jobs as possible, “Meetings will be taking place between now and then,” Lopez said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
On Sunday, a US Geological Survey water gage showed that Clear Lake was at 0.69 feet Rumsey, the measurement used specifically for Clear Lake. On Dec. 27, 2008, the lake was at 1.16 feet Rumsey.
November and December typically are the months of the year when the lake is at its lowest level, based on a survey of lake level records.
Clear Lake is considered full at 7.56 feet Rumsey, according to the Lake County Water Resources Division.
Water Resources explains on its Web site that the lake's natural level is maintained by a rock sill – the Grigsby Riffle – located at the confluence of Cache and Siegler creeks near Lower Lake. The lake's natural low water level is “Zero Rumsey,” a measurement equivalent to 1318.26 feet above sea level.
Rains over the past two weekends have raised Clear Lake a small amount overall. While the lake is low, it was at its lowest point for the year on Nov. 20, when it was at 0.45 feet Rumsey, according to US Geological Survey records.
The last time it was as low, or lower, than that Nov. 20 measurement was in November of 1994, when records show it was down to 0.39 feet Rumsey.
US Geological Survey stream gages around the county also showed creek levels picking up over the past two weekends.
The lowest level recorded for the lake over the past century was -3.50 feet Rumsey, recorded in late September of 1920, according to Water Resources. The lake's maximum gage height, 11.34, was recorded on Feb. 21, 1986.
Yolo County Flood Control & Water Conservation District, which owns the water rights to Clear Lake as well as to Indian Valley Reservoir, reported that the reservoir was at 12,834 acre feet on Dec. 22, down by more than 6,300 acre feet from December 2008.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
The ongoing study demonstrates that an earthquake early warning system for earthquake-prone California is possible and lays out how such a system could be built, according to the US Geological Survey.
Earthquake early warning systems, already successfully deployed in Mexico, Japan and Taiwan, can detect an earthquake in progress and provide notice of seconds to tens of seconds prior to actual ground shaking.
Building on developments in other countries with significant earthquake risk, scientists are exploring early warning in the United States.
After a three-year earthquake early warning study funded by the US Geological Survey was completed in August 2009, a second project funded by the agency was launched to integrate the previously tested methods into a single prototype warning system.
When completed, this pilot system, called the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) ShakeAlert System, will provide warning to a small group of test users, including emergency response groups, utilities, and transportation agencies.
While in the testing phase, the system will not provide public alerts, the US Geological Survey reported.
The CISN ShakeAlert system will detect strong shaking at an earthquake's epicenter and transmit alerts ahead of the damaging earthquake waves. The speed of an electronic warning message is faster than the speed of earthquake waves traveling through the earth.
Potential applications include stopping elevators at the nearest floor, slowing or halting trains, monitoring critical systems, and alerting people to move to safer locations. In warning systems deployed abroad, alerts are distributed via TV and radio networks, the Internet, cell phones and pagers.
The earthquake early warning test uses real-time data from the CISN, which is part of the US Geological Survey's Advanced National Seismic System, through which the agency aims to broadly improve earthquake monitoring and reporting in the United States. Funding for the CISN is provided by the US Geological Survey and the state of California.
The study is a collaboration among the USGS, the California Institute of Technology, the University of California-Berkeley, the Swiss Seismological Service and the Southern California Earthquake Center.
In the next two years American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funding will be used to upgrade many of the older, slower seismic instruments throughout the CISN. These older instruments introduce time delays and would slow down early warning alerts.
Earlier this year, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said that the US Geological Survey would fund $29.4 million in earthquake network upgrades nationwide through stimulus money.
The upgrades are expected to improve the timely delivery of information to high-hazard regions such as the Bay Area.
The US Geological Survey will replace old instruments – some of which have not been upgraded in 40 years – with state-of-the-art, robust systems across the highest earthquake hazard areas in California, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Intermountain West, and the Central and Eastern United States.
Salazar said nearly 75 million Americans live within earthquake prone areas.
Statewide, California has more than a 99 percent chance of having a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake within the next 30 years, according to scientists using a new model to determine the probability of big quakes, officials reported. In the Bay area specifically, there is a nearly two out of three chance of an earthquake of that magnitude in that time period.
The funds will be used to upgrade the seismic and geodetic stations that monitor earthquakes; improve communication systems to make them more robust and reliable; lay the groundwork to enable earthquake early warning; support students at universities in California who will be involved in the installation, providing a unique educational experience and helping to train the next generation of earthquake scientists; and help save jobs that are threatened by cuts in state funding in California.
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University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering professor Fred Aminzadeh and his colleagues have won Department of Energy funding for a 3-D geothermal mapping and modeling effort.
The effort will focus on The Geysers area, a high-potential geothermal energy site straddling Lake and Sonoma counties that is already home to commercial operations.
The two-year, $1.5 million project will be carried out in collaboration with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Geysers Power Co., the operator of existing geothermal power plants in the area.
The objective is to develop new methodologies to characterize the northwestern part of the Geysers geothermal reservoir, gaining better knowledge of their porosity, permeability, fracture size, fracture spacing, reservoir discontinuities (leaky barriers) and impermeable boundaries.
The immediate focus will be creating improved methods for better characterization of fractures in an enhanced geothermal system.
“This will be accomplished by creating a 3-D seismic velocity model of the field using the micro-seismic data, collected under another Department of Energy-funded project,” said Aminzadeh, research professor in the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and managing director of the USC Energy Institute’s Global Energy Center.
Several complementary processing approaches will be used to develop and test new techniques for data collection and analysis. The approaches include micro-seismic data analysis both for compressional and shear waves using soft computing, anisotropic inversion and fractal concepts.
“Geothermal energy is potentially an extremely important energy source, particularly for California,” said Don Paul, executive director of the USC Energy Institute. “Many of the techniques used in oil and gas well engineering are applicable to geothermal, and we look forward to the opportunity to apply this technology in a new area.”
Two other USC faculty members will contribute to the effort: Charles Sammis from the earth sciences department at USC College and Muhammad Sahimi from the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.
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