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Archive for January 11th, 2016
Wildfires broke record in 2015 – scorching an area seven times the size of Toronto
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 11th, 2016
Vancouver Sun: Wildfires scorched a record amount of Canada’s national parks last year — the latest in a number of long, hot summers that have almost entirely depleted Parks Canada’s firefighting reserve. “We had a very busy fire year,” said director of fire management Jeff Weir. “We had more wildfires than normal and those fires burned larger areas than normal.” The agency’s annual fire report recorded 122 wildfires in 2015 that burned through 4,600 square kilometres — seven times the area of the city of Toronto....
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Wildfires broke record in 2015 – scorching an area seven times the size of TorontoBattle over Dominion coal-ash ponds heads to state water board this week
Posted by Washington Post: Antonio Olivo on January 11th, 2016
Washington Post: After months of contentious debate, a state regulatory board will decide this week whether to allow Dominion Virginia Power to divert water from coal-ash ponds into a nearby creek after treating that water to remove pollutants. The battle pits environmentalists and local elected officials -- both Democrats and Republicans — against a politically powerful utility company that, critics say, has won too much leniency from the state. Advocates fighting Dominion’s proposal last year exposed the existence...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Battle over Dominion coal-ash ponds heads to state water board this weekBack to school for children displaced by LA-area gas leak
Posted by Reuters: Alex Dobuzinskis on January 11th, 2016
Reuters: In the latest disruption from the biggest methane gas leak in California history, nearly 2,000 Los Angeles children returning to class this week after winter break have been reassigned to schools outside the affected area over health concerns.
The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second-largest public school system, announced the plan after students described headaches, bloody noses, nausea and breathing irritations.
Eleven-year-old Cameron Michaels said he suffered daily health...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Back to school for children displaced by LA-area gas leakGreenland’s sponge-like snow can no longer absorb meltwater, adding sea level rise
Posted by Christian Today: Andre Mitchell on January 11th, 2016
Christian Today: People already know that global warming triggered by man-made climate change is causing massive ice sheets in Greenland to melt, which in turn leads to the alarming rise of global sea levels.
Even worse than that, a team of international scientists recently found out that climate change has been hurting the world's biggest island more than previously imagined.
In their findings published last week on the scientific journal "Nature," the research team revealed that aside from melting ice sheets,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Greenland’s sponge-like snow can no longer absorb meltwater, adding sea level riseCanada: Global warming threatens the backyard rink
Posted by CBC: None Given on January 11th, 2016
CBC: A Canadian tradition, the backyard rink, may be in trouble in the coming years in much of the country, including P.E.I.
That's the conclusion of a group of geographers at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, which has been studying ice conditions in rinks since 2012.
They're the founders of Rink Watch, a website that allows people to pin their rinks on a map, and then update ice conditions all winter.
They've just crunched the first two years of data, along with global climate...
Shallow groundwater poses pollution problem for Africa
Posted by SciDev: None Given on January 11th, 2016
SciDev: The groundwater in many of Africa's most crowded regions lies close to the surface, making it vulnerable to pollution, a study shows.
Regions along the Gulf of Guinea are at highest risk of groundwater pollution on the continent, according to a map drawn by researchers at the Université Catholique de Louvain's Earth and Life Institute in Belgium. Much of Central Africa and some coastal lands in northwest Africa are also vulnerable, the map shows.
The study, to be published in next month's issue...
The status quo on Europe’s mussels
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 11th, 2016
ScienceDaily: Mussels are the natural treatment plants of bodies of water and, therefore, just as important as bees. Unfortunately, they are equally threatened: most of the world's mussel stocks are in decline and some species face extinction. For this reason, scientists from 26 European countries have compiled the first comprehensive survey on the status quo of freshwater mussel species in Europe. TUM Professor Juergen Geist and two colleagues from Porto coordinated the project and can now provide recommendations...