Understanding Public Views about Air Quality and Air Pollution Sources in the San Joaquin Valley, California.

The San Joaquin Valley of California has poor air quality and high rates of asthma. Surveys were collected from 744 residents of the San Joaquin Valley from November 2014 to January 2015 to examine the public's views about air quality. The results of this study suggest that participants exposed to high PM2.5 (particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in size) concentrations perceived air pollution to be of the worst quality. Air quality in the San Joaquin Valley was primarily perceived as either moderate or unhealthy for sensitive groups. Females perceived air pollution to be of worse quality compared to males. Participants perceived unemployment, crime, and obesity to be the top three most serious community problems in the San Joaquin Valley. Participants viewed cars and trucks, windblown dust, and factories as the principle contributors to air pollution in the area. There is a need to continue studying public perceptions of air quality in the San Joaquin Valley with a more robust survey with more participants over several years and seasons

Geology of the Tehachapi Mountains, California

The San Joaquin-Sacramento Valley, also known as the Great Valley of California, separates the Coast Ranges on the west from the Sierra Nevada on the east. The southern part of this major physiographic and structural province is about 50 miles in average width, and is terminated abruptly at its southeastern end by the Tehachapi Mountains, a range that trends roughly northeast. Uplifted principally by faulting, this mountain mass rises boldly (fig. 2) from the floor of the San Joaquin Valley-a floor so smooth and so extensive that in early days it was referred to as the San Joaquin Plains. The range also presents a rather straight and imposing, though somewhat less formidable, front toward the Mojave Desert to the southeast

Down in the Valley: Financial Neglect in Rural California

The most powerful banks in California and the nation are failing to meet the financial services and credit needs of residents and businesses in the San Joaquin Valley. Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo (the "Big 3 banks") provide a lower level of affordable consumer, housing and small business lending and services to Valley residents and businesses than they do to consumers in other parts of California. Bank regulators contribute to this failure because they do not enforce the necessary attention from banks to nonmetropolitan areas like the Valley. As a result, the San Joaquin Valley lags in growth -- a bleak fact that has become increasingly apparent during the current economic recovery. The report documents disinvestment in the San Joaquin Valley

Attitudes and perceptions of high school career and technical education in California\u27s Central Valley

The purpose of this study was to investigate and analyze the attitudes and perceptions of community college leadership, union officials and high school school-to-career counselors regarding high school vocational education in the California\u27s Central San Joaquin Valley, and to identify characteristics deemed most necessary in the design of a high school vocational education program. This researcher investigated this problem using the following questions as guides: 1. What are the attitudes/perceptions of community college leaders, union officials and high school school-to-career counselors, regarding high school vocational education in California\u27s Central San Joaquin Valley? 2. How do the attitudes/perceptions of community college leaders, union officials and high school school-to-career counselors, with and without prior work related experience, compare regarding high school vocational education in California\u27s Central San Joaquin Valley? 3. What characteristics do community college leaders, union officials and high school school-to-career counselors deem most important in the design of a high school vocational education program in California\u27s Central San Joaquin Valley? The design of this study was descriptive in nature and survey in methodology. Specifically, this study utilized 2 written questionairres with rating scales. One questionnaire evaluates attitudes/perceptions regarding vocational education in the Central San Joaquin Valley of California. The other questionnaire evaluates the importance of vocational education program design characteristics. The first survey, the IVE, contained 28 questions. The second survey contained 21 close-ended statements. Both surveys were rated on a 5 point Likert scale. Study findings suggest that community college leaders, union officials and high school counselors collectively view vocational education in California\u27s Central San Joaquin Valley in a positive light. Respondents in all 3 subgroups identified access to further education and training, employer involvement and curriculum alignment with local labor market to be the characteristics most needed in the design of a program to serve students of California\u27s Central San Joaquin Valley

Emissions of organic carbon and methane from petroleum and dairy operations in California's San Joaquin Valley

Petroleum and dairy operations are prominent sources of gas-phase organic compounds in California's San Joaquin Valley. It is essential to understand the emissions and air quality impacts of these relatively understudied sources, especially for oil/gas operations in light of increasing US production. Ground site measurements in Bakersfield and regional aircraft measurements of reactive gas-phase organic compounds and methane were part of the CalNex (California Research at the Nexus of Air Quality and Climate Change) project to determine the sources contributing to regional gas-phase organic carbon emissions. Using a combination of near-source and downwind data, we assess the composition and magnitude of emissions, and provide average source profiles. To examine the spatial distribution of emissions in the San Joaquin Valley, we developed a statistical modeling method using ground-based data and the FLEXPART-WRF transport and meteorological model. We present evidence for large sources of paraffinic hydrocarbons from petroleum operations and oxygenated compounds from dairy (and other cattle) operations. In addition to the small straight-chain alkanes typically associated with petroleum operations, we observed a wide range of branched and cyclic alkanes, most of which have limited previous in situ measurements or characterization in petroleum operation emissions. Observed dairy emissions were dominated by ethanol, methanol, acetic acid, and methane. Dairy operations were responsible for the vast majority of methane emissions in the San Joaquin Valley; observations of methane were well correlated with non-vehicular ethanol, and multiple assessments of the spatial distribution of emissions in the San Joaquin Valley highlight the dominance of dairy operations for methane emissions. The petroleum operations source profile was developed using the composition of non-methane hydrocarbons in unrefined natural gas associated with crude oil. The observed source profile is consistent with fugitive emissions of condensate during storage or processing of associated gas following extraction and methane separation. Aircraft observations of concentration hotspots near oil wells and dairies are consistent with the statistical source footprint determined via our FLEXPART-WRF-based modeling method and ground-based data. We quantitatively compared our observations at Bakersfield to the California Air Resources Board emission inventory and find consistency for relative emission rates of reactive organic gases between the aforementioned sources and motor vehicles in the region. We estimate that petroleum and dairy operations each comprised 22% of anthropogenic non-methane organic carbon at Bakersfield and were each responsible for 8-13% of potential precursors to ozone. Yet, their direct impacts as potential secondary organic aerosol (SOA) precursors were estimated to be minor for the source profiles observed in the San Joaquin Valley

Geographic variation and evolutionary history of Dipodomys nitratoides (Rodentia: Heteromyidae), a species in severe decline

We examined geographic patterns of diversification in the highly impacted San Joaquin kangaroo rat, Dipodomys nitratoides, throughout its range in the San Joaquin Valley and adjacent basins in central California. The currently recognized subspecies were distinct by the original set of mensural and color variables used in their formal diagnoses, although the Fresno kangaroo rat (D. n. exilis) is the most strongly differentiated with sharp steps in character clines relative to the adjacent Tipton (D. n. nitratoides) and short-nosed (D. n. brevinasus) races. The latter two grade more smoothly into one another but still exhibit independent, and different, character clines within themselves. At the molecular level, as delineated by mtDNA cytochrome b sequences, most population samples retain high levels of diversity despite significant retraction in the species range and severe fragmentation of local populations in recent decades due primarily to landscape conversion for agriculture and secondarily to increased urbanization. Haplotype apportionment bears no relationship to morphologically defined subspecies boundaries. Rather, a haplotype network is shallow, most haplotypes are single-step variants, and the time to coalescence is substantially more recent than the time of species split between D. nitratoides and its sister taxon, D. merriami. The biogeographic history of the species within the San Joaquin Valley appears tied to mid-late Pleistocene expansion following significant drying of the valley resulting from the rain shadow produced by uplift of the Central Coastal Ranges

Geology of the Tehachapi Mountains, California

The San Joaquin-Sacramento Valley, also known as the Great Valley of California, separates the Coast Ranges on the west from the Sierra Nevada on the east. The southern part of this major physiographic and structural province is about 50 miles in average width, and is terminated abruptly at its southeastern end by the Tehachapi Mountains, a range that trends roughly northeast. Uplifted principally by faulting, this mountain mass rises boldly (fig. 2) from the floor of the San Joaquin Valley-a floor so smooth and so extensive that in early days it was referred to as the San Joaquin Plains. The range also presents a rather straight and imposing, though somewhat less formidable, front toward the Mojave Desert to the southeast

New middle Pliocene rodent and lagomorph faunas from Oregon and California

The purpose of this paper is the description of two rodent faunas in the collections of the California Institute of Technology. Although coming from widely separated areas, these assemblages are of approximately the same age. The first fauna to be discussed is that from Pliocene strata near Rome, Malheur County, Oregon. It exhibits some diversity of type although the associated larger mammals are known by very fragmentary remains. The second rodent fauna comes from the Kern River deposits, San Joaquin Valley, California. The Kern River rodents and lagomorphs, and the larger mammals found with them, share with other Tertiary assemblages of the San Joaquin Valley the important task of determining the time relationships between the nonmarine deposits in which they are found and the standard marine sections of the Pacific Coast. The illustrations for this paper are from photographs by the late H. Wm. Menke, and have been carefully retouched and arranged into plates by John L. Ridgway