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Archive for February, 2011
Megadroughts once reigned supreme in Southwest — and may again
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 26th, 2011
USA Today: As the southern tier of the USA suffers through a drought that stretches from Arizona to Virginia – a distance of some 2,000 miles – new research this week finds that "megadroughts" used to be a common feature of the southwestern USA, and may be again, thanks to our favorite villain, climate change.
These "megadroughts" lasted for, um, millennia, which I think is a long, long time.
The authors, in a study published this week in the British journal Nature, say that "megadroughts" were a regular...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Megadroughts once reigned supreme in Southwest — and may againSpecies-Rich Hawaii Poses Unique Challenges for Wind Power Industry
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 25th, 2011
GreenWire: First in a two-part series.
Plans to harness Hawaii's legendary ocean breezes to generate electricity for local utilities have produced a negative blowback from critics who say Hawaii's status as a world-class wildlife sanctuary could be undermined by wind turbines that have been linked to bird and bat mortalities in other parts of the United States.
And while so far wind power development blueprints for Hawaii have been modest compared to some of the massive wind farms of California or Texas,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Species-Rich Hawaii Poses Unique Challenges for Wind Power IndustryFloating solar panels: Solar installations on water
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 25th, 2011
ScienceDaily: Floating Solar Panels: Solar Installations on Water
Most of the solar energy systems on the market today bare two major weaknesses: they require vast land areas in order to be built, and the costs related to solar cells fabrication and maintenance are high. A new technology is about to overcome these challenges and many more: floating solar power plants.
Developed by a Franco-Israeli partnership,* this innovative solar power technology introduces a new paradigm in energy production. Solar power...
A Mini-Compromise in California’s Water Wars
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 25th, 2011
New York Times: Fish and Wildlife Service A temporary accord is expected to assure the protection of the tiny endangered delta smelt.
Like an early spring bud poking out of a thicket, a compromise emerged on Thursday in one of the intertwined legal battles that pit California`s major agricultural and urban water users against federal scientists and environmentalists. For the moment, both sides agree on how to protect the endangered delta smelt while managing water deliveries through the West Coast`s largest and...
Ancient Drought Leads To Question: How Severe Can Climate Change Become?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 25th, 2011
RedOrbit: Extreme megadrought in Afro-Asian region likely had consequences for Paleolithic cultures
How severe can climate change become in a warming world?
Worse than anything we've seen in written history, according to results of a study appearing this week in the journal Science.
An international team of scientists led by Curt Stager of Paul Smith's College, New York, has compiled four dozen paleoclimate records from sediment cores in Lake Tanganyika and other locations in Africa.
The records...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Ancient Drought Leads To Question: How Severe Can Climate Change Become?Volcanic lakes spew large amounts of carbon dioxide
Posted by Our Amazing Planet: None Given on February 25th, 2011
Our Amazing Planet: Lakes that form on and around volcanoes can spew out significant amounts of the global warming gas carbon dioxide, researchers have found.
These new findings could help scientists refine their models on how Earth's climate is changing.
Called volcanic lakes, these bodies of water form either in the craters that are left after a volcano explodes, the calderas left after a volcanic peak or flank collapses, or after lava, ash or mud from volcanoes dam up rivers and streams.
It's a well-known...
Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra lose 9% of forest cover in 8 years
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 25th, 2011
Mongabay: Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra lose 9% of forest cover in 8 years
Forest cover loss for Sumatera and Kalimantan mapped at moderate spatial resolution for the 2000–2008 interval superimposed on a Landsat image composite (bands 5/7/4 as R/G/B). Image and caption courtesy of Broich 2011
Kalimantan and Sumatra lost 5.4 million hectares, or 9.2 percent, of their forest cover between 2000/2001 and 2007/2008, reveals a new satellite-based assessment of Indonesian forest cover.
The research, led...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Indonesian Borneo and Sumatra lose 9% of forest cover in 8 yearsGreat Green Wall to Stop Sahel Desertification
Posted by Guardian: Julio Godoy on February 25th, 2011
Guardian: Imagine a green wall – 15km wide, and up to 8,000km long – a living green wall of trees and bushes, full of birds and other animals. Imagine it just south of the Sahara, from Djibouti in the Horn of Africa in the east, all the way across the continent to Dakar, Senegal, in the west.
The building of this pan-African Great Green Wall (GGW) was approved by an international summit this week in the former German capital Bonn, a side event of the joint conference of the committees on science and technology...
Answering Questions About Island Species
Posted by New York Times: CHRIS FILARDI on February 25th, 2011
New York Times: Chris Filardi of the American Museum of Natural History studied evolution and conservation in the Solomon Islands.
It has been over three months since I descended out of the clouds on Kolombangara. Tucked into the heart of this snowy winter that so many in North America are experiencing, the Solomon Islands seem far away, dreamlike. It is not the steamy weather there, the palms and strange whoop and cackle of the forest; it is more the raw distance in time and space. The islands are oceans away....
Fishers in Survival Battle With Turtles
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 25th, 2011
Inter Press Service: A growing number of endangered olive ridley sea turtles have been getting killed in Eastern India’s coastal state Orissa by mechanized vessels defying a fishing ban on one of the world’s largest turtle sanctuaries, Gahirmatha.
While the government said "no more than 800" were killed since November last year, environmentalists counter that the casualty count of these tiny turtles is actually 5,000.
The problem illustrates the situation that confronts Orissa and other coastal states in India....