Tag archives for Water
Parallel Worlds: Water Management in Israel and California
Posted by Jay Famiglietti of University of California, Irvine in Water Currents on February 27, 2013 
Posted from Jerusalem by Kate Voss, UCCHM Water Policy Fellow. This is the second in a series of posts on our Water Diplomacy trip to Israel, Jordan and Palestine. Other posts in the series: 1) Middle East Lost a Dead Sea Amount of Water in 7 Years, by Jay Famiglietti ; and 3) Desalinating Holy…
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It is in the nature of human hubris to assume Man Knows Better than Nature. Which is why, perhaps, when it comes to trout, things are a downright mess. Thanks to the British, as the Empire expanded beyond the sunset, so did trout. In 1864, they were introduced to Tasmania, India in 1889 and South…
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Except for the occasional shriek of a raven or the muffled voices of hikers passing on the rocky trail, Santa Elena Canyon was silent. The canyon’s high walls shielded us from the hot Texas sun, which beat down with a vengeance even in November, when I visited Big Bend National Park with family. Our…
Posted by A crew of recent grads from Colorado College have shared their epic paddle down the Colorado River in a new video Mirror River. It’s the story of a 113-day adventure told in three minutes, featuring the river’s famed canyons and rapids, all the way from Wyoming down to Mexico. And it ends (spoiler alert) with…
The Middle East Lost a Dead Sea-Size Amount of Water in 7 Years
Posted by Jay Famiglietti of University of California, Irvine in Water Currents on February 22, 2013 Posted from Amman, Jordan. This is the first in a series of posts on our water diplomacy trip to Israel, Jordan and Palestine. Other posts in the series: 2) Parallel Worlds: Water Management in Israel and California, by UCCHM Policy Fellow Kate Voss; 3) Desalinating Holy Waters with the Red Sea – Dead Sea Conveyance,…
I’m posting Freshwater Species of the Week a day early because I just caught wind that biologists have discovered “monster” goldfish breeding in Lake Tahoe. I visited Lake Tahoe a few winters ago, and can say with experience that it’s a stunning natural gem. Snow-capped peaks ring the crystal-clear blue water, which supports a diverse…
In lieu of Freshwater Species of the Week this time around, I wanted to share this postcard I picked up a few years ago in Idaho. Made by Duckboy Cards Inc. of Hamilton, Montana, it pokes fun at an area of tension that has affected much of the dry West, as well as many other…
The Colorado River may have cut the Grand Canyon, but for much of its course the river is no longer so mighty. Most of the time, the Colorado no longer even reaches the sea. The moisture the Colorado River brings to an arid part of the United States and a piece of northern Mexico has sustained generations…
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We often don’t associate the problem of water scarcity with mobile phones but, as Zarah Rahman of the Aquaya Institute explains, water is about much more than turning on a tap. Helping people in the developing world access safe water requires not just H2O but information – in order to monitor cleanliness, distribution, infrastructure –…
Making Rain in the American Southwest: How Irrigation Strengthens the Monsoon
Posted by Jay Famiglietti of University of California, Irvine in Water Currents on February 10, 2013 
Mad science. That’s what I thought when I first read the 1973 Scientific American classic ‘The Control of the Water Cycle’ by Professors Jose Peixoto and Ali Kettani. The two discussed a radical idea, originally proposed by their colleagues Victor Starr and David Anati of MIT. Why not build giant, solar-heated water vapor towers on…
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By Rod Parnell of Northern Arizona University The American Southwest faces water challenges, and few easy solutions are in sight. Demand for water is increasing rapidly: as the primary water resource in the Southwest, the Colorado River (see map) sustains seven U.S. states and Mexico, including major – and fast-growing – cities like Los Angeles,…
As any gardener or farmer should be able to tell you, earthworms can play an important role in ecosystems, by churning up soils, leaving copious amounts of nutrient-rich waste, and serving as food for a wide range of wildlife. Many young students dissect earthworms in biology 101, but there is still a lot we don’t…
In case you weren’t aware, every February 2 is not just Groundhog Day. It is also World Wetlands Day. From the official website of World Wetlands Day: This day marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the…
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The latest figures on water quality in the Ganges, straight from the Central Pollution Control Board—a government organisation charged with monitoring it daily during the Kumbh Mela—suggest that contrary to earlier reports, it’s neither drinkable nor batheable. Given that 80-odd million people are expected to bathe in the river during the festival, I asked head of medical…
Allahabad is a city of 1.2 million people, and despite the proximity of its bigger, noisier neighbour, the Kumbh Mela, life goes on there—including death. The funeral ghats on the Ganges were moved away from the sangam—the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers—for the duration of the festival, but they are still within the…
Today I flipped through a reference book called A Handbook of Global Freshwater Invasive Species (always a cheerful read). My eye was caught by purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria L.), since I have often encountered it on wetlands hikes around the country. Purple loosestrife is native to Eurasia, but has become an aggressive invader in North…
If you climb up to high ground above the river plain, you begin to get a sense of the scale of the Kumbh Mela, especially at night. It stretches off in all directions. The sky above it is as light as the sky over a large metropolis, only there are no highrises here—nothing much higher than a lamp-post, in fact. The noise from hundreds of loudspeakers is incessant and very loud—like a human rainforest, technically enhanced.
The stars are aligned. The first aiders are on standby. The latrines are dug. And the city of Allahabad is waiting to see how many tens of millions of people will descend on it between now and March 10. One thing is certain: the Kumbh Mela, a giant gathering of Hindu pilgrims that takes place every 12 years in four cities in northern India, and that is celebrated this year in Allahabad, is unique.
The inauguration of President Barack Obama for his second term was viewed by millions and will be remembered in the history books. There is a lot at stake in this presidency; there always is. But I sat up and took notice when I heard Richard Blanco, the inaugural poet, read “One Today,” the work…
Posted by In this guest-article, Dr. Christopher S. Clarke of the Osprey Foundation describes their work in Palestine and Israel to address the most pressing environmental needs of communities impacted by growing inequality and access to resources, and how such an ecological approach might be a means of overcoming despair. The Middle East is a region where…
China may be struggling with air quality, but the world’s most populous nation is getting some things right when it comes to safeguarding drinking water, according to a report released this week by Forest Trends’ Ecosystem Marketplace. That report, State of Watershed Payments 2012, is the second installment of a survey of efforts around the world to…
A Christmas Present for the Colorado River
Posted by Brian Richter of The Nature Conservancy and University of Virginia in Water Currents on January 5, 2013 
Just days before Christmas, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation released the results of a comprehensive study of the Colorado River basin’s water situation. The “Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study” assessed a Christmas tree of more than 150 different proposals for balancing the water budget of the Colorado River. One of those…
We’re Heading Into the Rapids All Wrong
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on January 4, 2013 
My experience running a rapid on the Payette River in Idaho offers a metaphor and lesson for our time. Lately, as I ponder our societal response, or lack of it, to the challenging times ahead – the droughts and floods and heat waves and crop failures, which we’ve tasted only as appetizers so far –…
Man always kills the things he loves, and so we the pioneers, have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may. I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?
—Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949
In 1922, having completed work on the first comprehensive management plan for the Grand Canyon, Aldo Leopold, along with his younger brother, set out by canoe to explore the mouth of the mighty Colorado. At the time the main flow of the Colorado reached the sea, carrying with it each year millions of tons of silt and sand and so much fresh water that the river’s influence extended some forty miles into the Gulf of California.
The alluvial fan of the delta spread across two million acres, well over three thousand square miles, a vast riparian and tidal wetland the size of the state of Rhode Island. It was one of the largest desert estuaries on earth. Off shore, nutrients brought down by the river supported an astonishingly rich fishery for bagre and corvina, dolphins, and the rare and elusive vaquita porpoise, the world’s smallest marine cetacean. At the top of the food chain was the totoaba, an enormous relative of the white sea bass that grew to three hundred pounds, spawned in the brackish waters of the estuary and swarmed in the Sea of Cortez in such abundance that even fishermen blinded in old age, it was said, had no difficulty striking home their harpoons.
Four Water Resolutions for a New Year
Posted by Brian Richter of The Nature Conservancy and University of Virginia in Water Currents on January 2, 2013 
Yes, it’s that time again – time to reflect on the year that has passed, and anticipate what could come of the year ahead. My head has been unusually full of water lately, to the point of distraction. Over the holidays I worked through two chapters of a new water book and set the course…
