Two images from the Thematic Mapper on the Landsat 5 satellite show some of the stark changes on the eastern end of Lake Mead since 1985. 22 August 1985 11 August 2010 Caption by Michael CarlowiczSeptember 23, 2010 In August 2010, Lake Mead reached its lowest level since 1956. The largest reservoir in the […]
The NAWQA trends assessment for nutrients in streams reflects periodic measurements of concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus from 1993 to 2003 (yellow vertical shaded area). This was a period of relatively small changes in nitrogen fertilizer use, which followed a more than 10-fold increase in fertilizer use between about 1950 and the early 1980s. There […]
ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2010) — Tile drainage in the Mississippi Basin is one of the great advances of the 19th and 20th centuries, allowing highly productive agriculture in what was once land too wet to farm. In fact, installation of new tile systems continues every year, because it leads to increased crop yields. But a […]
Baby fish show up in big numbers despite spill By Ben Raines, Press-Register Sunday, September 26, 2010, 5:00 AM Baby snapper are everywhere. So are baby trout, grouper and grunt. Early results from an annual count of juvenile fish in grass beds scattered around the northern Gulf of Mexico suggest that the larvae of some […]
By Guy Busby, Press-Register Wednesday, September 22, 2010, 8:00 AM ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — Thousands of feet of steel pipe intended to protect Perdido Pass from the Gulf oil spill lie in a city storage yard off Canal Road. Crews dismantled the multimillion-dollar boom project just two weeks after it was completed. The floating steel […]
By Ben Raines, Press-Register Thursday, September 23, 2010, 5:00 AM A good deal of oil remains in the shallow waters closest to the beaches in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, according to a federal team using shovels and snorkeling gear to survey the coastline for submerged oil. The team found tarballs washing ashore with every wave […]
Mountain Pine Beetle in BC (1981-2005) 2, 3 The area of BC forest affected by the Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) has more than doubled, from 4 million hectares in 2003 to 8.7 million hectares in 2006, with much of this in the Fraser Basin. The MPB reduces trees’ nutrient and water uptake, resulting in defoliation […]
By Brett Israel, www.LiveScience.com Tue Sep 21, 8:31 pm ET NEW YORK – Now that BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well has been sealed, the long, hard work of assessing the damage begins even as the oil is dispersing throughout the Gulf. A research team from Columbia University in New York returned this past weekend (Sept. […]
ScienceDaily (Sep. 8, 2010) — The potential for outbreaks of spruce and mountain pine beetles in western North America’s forests is likely to increase significantly in the coming decades, according to a study conducted by USDA Forest Service researchers and their colleagues. Their findings, published in the September issue of the journal BioScience, represent the […]
By Christopher Dunagan, Kitsap SunSeptember 21, 2010 at 10:45 a.m. HOODSPORT — The massive fish kill that many researchers warned about Monday may have begun early this morning, as many hundreds of dead fish and thousands of shrimp washed up on Hood Canal beaches, officials say. “We have hypoxic (low oxygen) conditions all the way […]
