14 November 2013 (CIRES) – Reducing the amount of desert dust swept onto snowy Rocky Mountain peaks could help Western water managers deal with the challenges of a warmer future, according to a new study led by researchers at NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder. With […]
By Jeff Barbee and Mira Dutschke in Nata, Botswana, David Smith in Johannesburg 17 November 2013 (The Guardian) – Botswana has been accused of sacrificing the Kalahari, one of the world’s most precious wildlife reserves, to commercial fracking while ignoring the concerns of environmentalists and communities who could lose access to scarce water. Hydraulic fracturing, […]
3 November 2013 (AAP) – The federal government has approved a massive coal mining project in central Queensland that will be the largest in the country. Environment Minister Greg Hunt approved the 37,380 hectare Kevin’s Corner project on Friday. The mine, to be operated by a joint India-Australia consortium, GVK-Hancock, is the first to be […]
Contact: Press Officepress@pik-potsdam.de49-331-288-2507Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)8 October 2013 More than 500 million people might face increasing water scarcity This is shown by complementary studies now published by scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) [Comparing projections of future changes in runoff from hydrological and biome models in ISI-MIP, Asynchronous […]
BEIJING, 23 September 2013 (Reuters) – For China, global warming has become something of a convenient truth. Beijing blames climate change for wreaking havoc on scarce water resources, but critics say the country’s headlong drive to build its industrial prowess and huge hydro projects are just as responsible. On the eve of a global climate […]
19 May 2013 (The New York Times) – Portions of the High Plains Aquifer are rapidly being depleted by farmers who are pumping too much water to irrigate their crops, particularly in the southern half in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Levels have declined up to 242 feet in some areas, from predevelopment — before substantial […]
By Jon Campbell10 September 2013 (USGS) – Drought is a stealthily incremental disaster that is much more costly to the national economy than most people suspect. Even as the eastern states have seen an unusually wet summer, citizens in the midsection of the country read in May that the High Plains Aquifer could no longer […]
(NASA) – Elephant Butte Reservoir dwindled to its lowest level in 41 years during the summer of 2013, despite monsoon rains in early July. It had been filled nearly to capacity for most of 1985 to 2000; the left-hand image from 1994 shows it about 89 percent full. At right, it has been reduced to […]
Groundwater pumpage within the Death Valley area began around 1913 in Pahrump Valley. Pumpage began mainly to support rising agricultural interests, but also supplied mining, industry, rural, and urban growth. The number of pumping wells in the region had increased from three in 1913 to over 9,300 in 1998. Pumpage for irrigation in the DVRFS […]
8 August 2013 (CalEPA) – Since 1906, the fraction of annual unimpaired runoff into the Sacramento River that occurs from April through July (represented as a percentage of total water year runoff) from the accumulated winter precipitation in the Sierra Nevada, has decreased by about 9 percent. The Sacramento River system is the sum of […]
