Mountain pine beetle (MPB) is an insect native to the forests of western North America and is also known as the Black Hills beetle or the Rocky Mountain pine beetle. MPB primarily develop in pines such as lodgepole, ponderosa, Scotch and limber pines, and less commonly affect bristlecone and piñon pines. Symptoms of Infestation Popcorn-shaped […]
[12,588 hectares = 48.6 square miles. This afternoon, the sky in Seattle is an eerie, hazy yellow from Siberia smoke carried on the jet stream, the incinerated remains of trees and animals. This may be the most under-reported story of 2012.] By Jennifer Zielinski 13 August 2012 It may be forest fire season but the […]
Record drought across the United States in 2012 followed a year of record flooding in the Mid-West in 2011, producing two very different areas of hypoxia, or oxygen deficient water, on the Louisiana continental shelf. The 2012 area of low oxygen, commonly known as the ‘Dead Zone,’ measured 7,480 square kilometers (= 2,889 square miles) […]
By BERNIE KRAUSE28 July 2012 Glen Ellen, California. YEARS ago, when selective logging was first introduced, a community near an old-growth forest in the Sierra Nevada was assured that the removal of a few trees here and there would have no impact on the area’s wildlife. Based on the logging company’s guarantees, the local residents […]
By the Editors 6 August 2012 A new analysis of worldwide temperatures over the past 60 years has found more evidence that global warming is already upon us, and is responsible for extreme heat waves — such as the ones in Russia in 2010 and in Texas and Oklahoma last year. Naturally, this refocuses attention […]
WASHINGTON, 8 August 2012 (AP) – Barack Obama promised to tackle climate change when he first ran for the White House four years ago, but – battling this summer for a second term – he speaks little of the issue even as the United States suffers through a drought of historic proportions, wild storms and […]
WASHINGTON, 8 August 2012 (AP) – This probably comes as no surprise: Federal scientists say July was the hottest month ever recorded in the Lower 48 states, breaking a record set during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. And even less a surprise: The U.S. this year keeps setting records for weather extremes, based on […]
ITHACA, New York, 7 August 2012 (AP) – No surprise for Northeast residents sweating out the summer after a winter barely touching their snow shovels: This is the hottest year on record in the region so far. The Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University reported Tuesday that the average temperature in the 12-state region […]
By Mike Jaccarino5 August 2012 Thousands – perhaps millions – of various types of fish, some endangered, have died in the Midwest, as record summer temperatures dry up rivers and raise water temperatures in some spots to nearly 100 degrees. About 40,000 shovelnose sturgeon were killed in Iowa last week as the water reached 97 […]
By Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post 5 August 2012 POINT HOPE, Alaska – Fermented whale’s tail doesn’t taste the same when the ice cellars flood. Whaling crews in this Arctic coast village store six feet of tail — skin, blubber and bone — underground from spring until fall. The tail freezes slowly while fermenting and […]
