By Kelly Ryan24 September 2015 FOLSOM LAKE (CBS13) – A Northern California reservoir ran dry overnight, killing thousands of fish and leaving residents looking for answers. While a $3.5 million drought safety net at Folsom Lake finishes, a lake in another part of the state is left high and dry. Thousands of fish lay dead […]
By Ryan J. Foley26 September 2015 DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Deep inside a complex of huge tanks, drinking water for Iowa’s capital city is constantly cleansed of the harmful nitrates that come from the state’s famously rich farmland. Without Des Moines Water Works, the region of 500,000 people that it serves wouldn’t have a […]
By Sarah Kaplan 25 September 2015 (The Guardian) – Vast swathes of forest are so brittle and bone-dry that they burn up in an instant. A vicious wildfire, whipped up by hot, arid winds and moving faster than anything in recent memory, consumed tens of thousands of hectares in a matter of hours. Hundreds of […]
By Lynn Jenner23 September 2015 (NASA) – The widespread burning of lowland forests on Borneo as well as southern Sumatra, as seen in this image taken by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite, is an annual, manmade occurrence. People use fires to manage agricultural lands which in this part of the world includes large […]
By Emily Chung21 September 2015 (CBC News) – The river that provides water to the oilsands industry is much more prone to multi-year droughts than modern records show, suggesting that the industry’s current level of water use may not be sustainable, a new study suggests. The oilsands industry needs 3.1 barrels of fresh water to […]
By Nicholas St. Fleur14 September 2015 (The New York Times) – The snow that blanketed the Sierra Nevada in California last winter, and that was supposed to serve as an essential source of fresh water for the drought-stricken state, was at its lowest levels in the last 500 years, according to a new study. The […]
2 September 2015 (CU-Boulder) – The longest and largest controlled burn experiment ever conducted in the Amazon rainforest has yielded new insight into the ways that tropical forests succumb to—and bounce back from—large-scale wildfires, according to new research co-authored by a University of Colorado Boulder professor. The findings, which were published today in the journal […]
By Veronica Rocha, Paige St. John, Frank Shyong, and Hailey Branson-Potts22 September 2015 SACRAMENTO, California (Los Angeles Times) – As firefighters continued to advance on the deadly wildfires in Northern California, President Barack Obama declared a major disaster for the Valley fire. The move frees up federal assistance for home repairs, replacements and other aid. […]
By Adam Voiland13 September 2015 (NASA) – Russians normally flock to the shores of Lake Baikal during the summer to camp and enjoy spectacular views of the world’s deepest freshwater lake. In summer 2015, such views were frequently obscured by smoke. For months, fires have raged around the lake, inspiring observers to use words like […]
[Translation by Bing.] By André Martins 14 September 2015 (O Globo) – The drought, the worst in a century in the São Francisco River, affects the lives of Brazilians of all ages and backgrounds who live in cities or villages bordering the river. The problems range from difficulty in taking care of the Earth up […]
