By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News website The decline of honeybees seen in many countries may be caused by reduced plant diversity, research suggests. Bees fed pollen from a range of plants showed signs of having a healthier immune system than those eating pollen from a single type, scientists found. Writing in the journal […]
By Staff WritersParkes, Australia (AFP) Jan 18, 2010 Torrential rains in Australia have failed to quench the country’s “Big Dry”, a decade-long drought that has driven farmers to the wall and shows no signs of abating. While the rains flooded many areas in recent weeks, made parched rivers flow again and even halted the iconic […]
By BEN CUBBYJanuary 19, 2010 Life is blooming in Lake Pamamaroo, western NSW, as the Boxing Day floods wind their way down the Darling River. From the air the pale green, swollen river is a striking contrast to the scarred, orange plains on either side. On the ground the water level is visibly rising by […]
Changes in storage levels in the mid-1990s and the 2000s. Dam levels dropped from almost full in 1996 to a quarter full by 2009 along with a steep decline in the amount of water flowing into Australia’s major reservoirs. Decade in dam levels Technorati Tags: drought,freshwater depletion,Australia,global warming,climate change,agriculture
The long dry is sapping Melbourne’s dams and raising questions about the viability of the city’s water supply. … Since the network of dams was built several decades ago, Melbourne has never had less drinking water. The record low-water mark was broken in mid-April, when storages reached 28.3 per cent of capacity. With consumption outstripping […]
By TOM ALLARD, KALIMANTANDecember 14, 2009 A BOAT trip down the wide brown waters of the Kapuas River and the canals that flow off it, crisscrossing the hinterland of Central Kalimantan, makes for a depressing tour. What was once one of the world’s great swamp peat forests is a tangle of weeds and burnt trees. […]
ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2010) — The poster child for sustainable fish farming — the tilapia — is actually a problematic invasive species for the native fish of the islands of Fiji, according to a new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society and other groups. Scientists suspect that tilapia introduced to the waterways of the Fiji […]
By PETER KERJanuary 13, 2010 MELBOURNE’S dams collected more water than the city needed in 2009, but it was a rare triumph for the old system at the end of a dire decade. Data released yesterday showed the decade between 2000 and 2009 was easily the driest on record for inflows to the city’s major […]
By DEBRA JOPSONJanuary 12, 2010 They are the farmers who play god to the oysters which feed Sydney. In Tuross Lake there are no longer natural tides since the big dry closed the nearby river entrance to the sea last year, so Graeme Campbell and his son Daniel replicate the flow which keeps their stock […]
By MATT WEISER, Sacramento Bee SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Salmon didn’t make the big fall comeback in California’s Central Valley rivers that anglers and nature lovers yearned for, raising the likelihood of a third year of fishing restrictions. Some areas saw more fall-run chinook return from the ocean to the Sacramento River and its tributaries. This […]
