Coastal Restoration
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Coastal Restoration
Coastal management and restoration of our planet's coastlines with a particular focus on California, Louisiana and the Pacific.  Emphasizing wetland restoration, aspects of agriculture in the coastal plain, fisheries, dealing with coastal hazards, and effective governance.
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Factory farming practices are under scrutiny again in N.C. after disastrous hurricane floods

Factory farming practices are under scrutiny again in N.C. after disastrous hurricane floods | Coastal Restoration | Scoop.it
As fecal waste and bacteria flow from hog lagoons into the water supply, North Carolina is revisiting a contentious battle between the pork industry, health experts and environmentalists.

 

In regions where hog farm density is high, there is an overall poor sanitary quality of surface waters. The presence of mass-scale swine and poultry lots and processing plants in a sandy floodplain – a region once dotted by small tobacco farms – has long posed a difficult dilemma for a state where swine and poultry represent billions of dollars a year for the economy. [Past] hurricane’s environmental impact in North Carolina were so severe in part because of the large number of hog lagoon breaches. Following Hurricane Matthew, the department has counted 10 to 12 lagoons that were inundated, with floodwaters topping the berms and spreading diluted waste.

 

Tags: food, agriculture, agribusiness, unit 5 agriculture, agricultural environment, environment, environment modify, pollution. 

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Drying of the Aral Sea

Explore a global timelapse of our planet, constructed from Landsat satellite imagery. With water diverted to irrigation, the inland Aral Sea has shrunk drama...
PIRatE Lab's insight:

The collapse of the Aral Sea ecosystem is one of the monumental environmental disasters of the last century.  Soviet mismanagement, water-intensive cotton production and population growth have all contributed the overtaxing of water resources in the Aral Sea basin, which has resulted in the shrinking of the Aral Sea--it has lost more of the sea to an expanding desert than the territories of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg combined.  The health problems arising from this issues are large for the entire Aral Sea basin, which encompasses 5 Central Asian countries and it has profoundly changed (for the worse) the local climates.  Compare the differences with some historical images of the Aral Sea onGoogle Earth or on ArcGIS Online (also see this article from GeoCurrents). 

Amanda Morgan's curator insight, October 19, 2014 8:19 PM

The drying of the Aral Sea opens our eyes to how fragile our environment is and the scarcity of resources.  We need to become more aware of our resources, because as they saying goes, the "well will run dry."

Kevin Nguyen's curator insight, December 7, 2015 1:14 PM

The massive changes to the Aral Sea can clearly be seen through the course of a decade. It's so unbelievable that from 2000 on ward it shrunk significantly and the video also showed the development of agricultural land that surrounds the rivers feeding into the Sea. The more water being irrigated and are not putting into the Sea the more it dries up because the water is evaporated with little to no rain going back to it. This is definitely one of the worst man-made disaster that have happened to this region.

Corey Rogers's curator insight, December 15, 2018 11:44 AM
Aral Sea is getting more and more dried up and not many people seemed to be caring about this issue. What was once a vast and huge sea is now just a drying up lake that will soon be gone forever. People need to wake up and start thinking of ways to fix this issue.