It was with great regret that we learned of the passing of Dr. Kelly Redmond, deputy director of the Western Regional Climate Center and professor at the Desert Research Institute. Dr. Redmond passed away on November 4, 2016, after a long battle with cancer. He was a highly respected climatologist, a veteran science communicator, and an enthusiastic mentor to young climate scientists.

Ever since 1989, when NOAA created its six Regional Climate Centers, Dr. Redmond held the position of Regional Climatologist for the Western US. The NOAA RCCs were at the vanguard of federal attention to climate variability and change, and they helped pave the way for climate programs at other agencies, including the USDA Climate Hubs. Dr. Redmond provided advice and guidance to the California Climate Hub (and our sister Hub, the Southwest Climate Hub based in Las Cruces, NM) ever since our inception in 2014.

As Regional Climatologist, Dr. Redmond not only worked to improve data collection and analysis for the West’s complicated and variable climate, he strove to inspire and inform popular interest in these topics. He often gave public lectures (for example, on climate change and Western water at the Aspen Global Change Institute’s 2003 annual lecture) and media interviews (for example, to Capital Public Radio about ENSO influences on 2015 summer thunderstorms). His devotion to public service and outreach in no way diminished his prolific career as a research scientist.

At the 2015 US Drought Monitor Forum in Reno, NV, Dr. Redmond discussed the challenge of seasonal forecasts: land users want short-term predictions, but current models are unreliable at that time scale. “We need to consider the ‘angle of repose‘, Dr. Redmond said. “Some problems have a steep angle of repose: it doesn’t take long to stack the building blocks up tall and reach your answer. Other problems have a shallow angle of repose: you need to amass a huge base of additional knowledge before you can even begin to make headway. Which type of problem is this? The climate system is chaotic at monthly time scales, so I would argue that it is the latter – but it is still worth pursuing. We just need to be in it for the long haul.”

Thank you, Dr. Redmond, for your sustained effort on climate puzzles large and small, and for eloquently bringing these topics into the public view. Your Climate Hub colleagues will miss your insights and encouragement.

A memorial service for Kelly Redmond will be held at 2 PM on Friday, January 13, at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno. You can RSVP here.

The 2016 Natural Areas Conference (Davis, CA, 18-21 October) was a big success, with over 300 presenters on a wide variety of topics related to climate change, conservation, and natural and working landscapes.The California Climate Hub was proud to be a sponsor and organizer of this conference.

Though NAC is a national conference, this year’s meeting highlighted California ecosystems: for example, hydrological restoration of Sierra meadows; monitoring endangered fauna in California’s Central Valley; and managing cattle grazing to benefit rare plants in California grasslands.

A particular focus was the difficult question of how to manage California’s water-stressed forests under the assumption that future climate change will bring more droughts like the current one. In the organized session “Forests in the Oven,” researchers presented preliminary data on the effectiveness of techniques such as stand thinning and prescribed fire to reduce drought-related tree mortality. This is an active area of research for Climate Hub affiliates Jim Thorne and Mark Schwartz.

The final day of the Natural Areas Conference also included field trips near Davis. For example, Khara Strum from Audubon California led participants on a tour of Yolo Bypass, a local success story in integrating conservation lands, intensive agriculture, and urban development.

If you missed the conference, you can still catch up by taking a look at the abstract book and videos of the two plenary sessions – freely available to all.

On August 17-18, 2016, the North American Symposium on Climate Adaptation brought together practitioners from across the continent to discuss adaptation in a variety of systems from agriculture to resource-poor urban neighborhoods to coastal infrastructure. The USDA Climate Hubs were well represented, with members of the Northeast Hub (Dan Dostie, Lynn Knight), California Hub (Amber Kerr), and Northern Forests Hub (Todd Ontl) attending.

All Climate Hubs shared some of the successes and challenges they’ve had in trying to connect their stakeholders with adaptation advice. Todd Ontl described the user-driven, iterative framework behind their Forest Adaptation Workbook and presented data on forest managers’ adaptation activities. Dan Dostie emphasized the need to find “win-win-win” approaches that maximize climate benefits, ecosystem services, and economic profitability. Lynn Knight highlighted the role that Climate Hubs play in educating other USDA staff about climate change. And Amber Kerr (also presenting on behalf of Isabel Pares of the Caribbean Hub) described the issues involved in working with diverse farmers cultivating a variety of annual and perennial crops in an area with complex microclimates – a challenge that Puerto Rico and California both share.

The discussion at the “Climate Change and Agriculture” session of the Symposium reflected the fact that farmers’ major climate risks vary quite a bit according to where in North America they are located – for example, in California, the biggest concern is generally drought and limited water supply, whereas in the Northeast, excess or heavy precipitation is a major concern. However, at the moment, the Northeast is having its worst drought in many years. Stay tuned for more drought-related collaborations between the California Hub, the Northeast Hub, and other Hubs nationwide.

The symposium proceedings will be published in 2017 in the book “Climate Change Adaptation in North America: Experiences, Case Studies and Best Practices,” part of Springer’s Climate Change Management Series.

For those of us who are not agricultural experts, the different categories used to describe crops can be bewildering. Field crops. Row crops. Horticultural crops. Specialty crops. Vegetable crops. Cash crops. What are all these designations? Which ones are mutually exclusive, and which ones overlap?

In fact, it can be confusing for the experts, too. Some of these terms have ambiguous or disputed definitions. Some are used differently in the US versus in other parts of the world. And some are based on cultural preferences rather than on agronomic or botanical distinctions.

This post lays out some of the most common ways that the USDA groups and describes crops. Although it is not definitive, we hope that it will be a useful brief reference for anyone new to this topic.

Annual crops vs. perennial crops
This is a fairly straightforward distinction: annual crops are those that must be replanted every year (such as corn and sunflowers), whereas perennial crops are those with a multi-year lifespan (such as almonds and oranges). Most vegetables, grains, and oilseeds are annuals, whereas most fruits are perennials. Some crops that are really perennials (such as strawberries) or biennials (such as carrots and cabbage) are, in practice, treated as annuals and replanted every year to maximize yields.

Field crops vs. specialty crops
This distinction is unique to the USDA: specialty crops are defined as fruits, nuts, and vegetables (including floriculture and nursery plants), while field crops are everything else (grains, dry legumes, oilseeds, fiber crops, and hay). This can lead to some unexpected dichotomies: for example, green beans are a specialty crop, while dried beans are a field crop. Walnuts are a specialty crop, while peanuts are a field crop (because they’re dry legumes). Sunflowers grown for oil are a field crop, while sunflowers grown for the floral industry are a specialty crop. And, although you probably think of potatoes as vegetables, the USDA categorizes all potatoes (including sweet potatoes) as field crops.

Agronomic crops vs. horticultural crops
This is a less common terminology for making the same distinction as field crops vs. specialty crops, above. Agronomic crops are generally non-perishable crops such as grains, dry beans, oilseeds, and fiber, while horticultural crops are fruits and vegetables, mainly grown for their “contribution to the flavour and interest of food and for the supply of minor but essential nutrients.”

Row crops
Some non-technical dictionaries simply define “row crop” as “a crop planted in rows,” but almost all commercial crops – from delicate baby lettuces to massive olive trees – are grown in rows. In practice, the term “row crop” usually refers to annual crops that are mechanically harvested on a large scale. This makes it roughly synonymous with field crops / agronomic crops, but not exactly: “row crop” can include some mechanically harvested annual specialty crops (such as tomatoes and onions). Note that perennial orchard crops such as grapes and almonds are never referred to as row crops, even when grown in rows and mechanically harvested.

Fruit vs. vegetable crops
Botanically, a fruit is the mature reproductive part of a plant (containing seeds), while a vegetable can be any other part of the plant, such as leaves, stems, roots, or tubers. However, USDA uses colloquial definitions: tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and squash (even melons!) are all classified as vegetables by USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), even though they are botanically fruits. Nearly all “vegetables” are annuals and nearly all “fruit” are perennials, with the notable exceptions of strawberries (an annual fruit) and asparagus and artichokes (perennial vegetables).

Cash crops and commodity crops
A cash crop is simply a crop that is sold for cash, and a commodity crop is a cash crop that is traded on a large scale (usually globally). In the realm of international agricultural development, “cash crop” is often contrasted with “staple crop” or “subsistence crop” – i.e., a crop that a farmer grows for her own family’s sustenance. However, in the United States where nearly all farm output is sold rather than directly consumed by the farm family, you’re more likely to hear “cash crop” contrasted with “cover crop,” i.e., a crop that is primarily grown to improve the soil, not to be sold for a profit.

One final fact: Trees as crops
Trees and forests managed for timber are not considered crops by USDA (though felled orchards may produce salable wood as a byproduct). The only timber trees that appear in the NASS agricultural statistics are fresh Christmas trees, which are classified as a nursery crop. (In 2007, the most recent year for which NASS data are available, sales of cut Christmas trees totaled more than $210 million – that makes them a bigger player than many other specialty crops, such as asparagus or kiwifruit.)

Are there any other crop classifications or definitions you’d like clarified? Please let us know and we can discuss them in a future post!