U.N. urges Central Asia talks on shrinking Aral Sea

  By Patrick Worsnip and Conor Sweeney; editing by Philippa FletcherMOYNAK, UzbekistanSun Apr 4, 2010 9:51am EDT MOYNAK, Uzbekistan (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Central Asian states to work together to tackle the disastrous effects of the shrinking Aral Sea Sunday after local people urged the United Nations to resolve a regional […]

Fishing banned on the Sea of Galilee

Fishing in the Sea of Galilee has been banned, Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture has announced, amid claims stocks have fallen to a dangerous low. By Nathan Jeffay, in Tiberias and Anita SinghPublished: 8:00AM BST 03 Apr 2010 It is the site where Jesus told his disciples: “I will make you fishers of men.” As the […]

Salmon fishermen losing water war with desperate California farmers

By COLIN SULLIVAN of GreenwirePublished: April 2, 2010 SAN FRANCISCO — California congressmen George Miller and Mike Thompson stumped for salmon fishermen yesterday during a political rally here meant to counter the political muscle of San Joaquin Valley farmers who tend to get more media attention in the long-running war over the state’s strained water […]

Countries blame China, not nature, for water shortage

By THOMAS FULLERPublished: April 1, 2010 BANGKOK — In southern China, the worst drought in at least 50 years has dried up farmers’ fields and left tens of millions of people short of water. But the drought has also created a major public relations problem for the Chinese government in neighboring countries, where in recent […]

Ocean acidification threatens Alaska fisheries

KUCB News (2010-03-26) UNALASKA, AK (kucb) – The cold waters and currents of the North Pacific Ocean make the ecosystems around the Aleutians more susceptible to ocean acidification. Brad Warren with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership spoke about the issue at the Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference Thursday. “It’s a cross cutting threat to food webs […]

Ecologists fear for Lake Baikal as Putin saves factory

  BAIKALSK, Russia (Reuters) – On the shores of Lake Baikal, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is held up as a savior and cursed as a scourge after allowing a Soviet-era paper mill to reopen beside the world’s largest freshwater lake. Ecologists have branded Russia’s most powerful man as the killer of Baikal, a 25-million-year-old […]

Depopulation may be harming the Amazon rainforest

By Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.comMarch 31, 2010 Urbanization may be having unexpected impacts in the Amazon rainforest by leaving forest areas vulnerable to exploitation by outsiders, report researchers writing in Conservation Letters. Conducting field surveys during the course of 10,000-kilometers of travel along remote Amazon rivers, Luke Parry of Lancaster University found that a sharp […]

Image of the Day: Manaquiri River Anoxia

Brazilian fisherman Elson de Oliveira, hauls a dead alligator into his boat at Reis Lake, in Manaus, Amazonas state, on Dec. 3, 2009. Plummeting water oxygen levels due to a severe drought have led to thousands of fish dying along the Manaquiri River. MARCIO SILVA / AFP / Getty Images The Big Thirsty: From contamination […]

Graph of the Day: Size of Hypoxic Zone in the Gulf of Mexico, 1977-2007

The relationship between the size of the hypoxic zone in July (km2) and the May nitrate+nitrite N loading (kg N) to the Gulf of Mexico each year. A linear regression of the data is shown. The individual data points are in four chronologically-sequenced groups separated from each other when the data fall below the slope, […]

Polynesia coral reefs wiped out by cyclone Oli

ScienceDaily (Mar. 27, 2010) — On 3-4 February 2010, tropical cyclone Oli hit western French Polynesia. From 7 February 2010, the Coral Observation Department at CNRS’s National Institute of Earth Sciences and Astronomy (INSU), based at the Centre de recherches insulaires et observatoire de l’environnement (CRIOBE, CNRS/EPHE) in Moorea, rapidly undertook an inventory of the […]

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