Food + farming
Rice & salmon, what a match! – California WaterBlog
By: Andrew L. Rypel, Derrick J. Alcott, Paul Buttner, Alex Wampler, Jordan Colby, Parsa Saffarinia, Nann Fangue and Carson A. Jeffres Long-time followers of this
Parsa Saffarinia
University of California, Davis
Postdoctoral Scholar
expertise:
state: CA
city: Davis
LGBTQ: NO
Tribal Affiliation: NO
languages: English, Farsi
race + ethnicity: Middle Eastern or Northern African
Right now I'm working on a project which is the focus of land managers, growers/farmers, conservationists, and scientists. Sometimes called the ""Nigiri Project,"" the ultimate goal is to use winter-flooded rice fields as endangered chinook salmon rearing habitat. This is essential because a majority of floodplain fish rearing habitat has been lost in the Central Valley of California. So, we have been working with farmers to use their land during the winter to run experiments on how to best utilize these areas as fish rearing habitat. In particular, I'm leading a synthesis of the past couple decades of work on this project to show the progress it's made as a whole.