Many of the fruits and vegetables you eat come from a region that, before long could be too parched to grow anything...
The Southwest is climatically a dry region, but population pressures put an added strain on finite water resources and agricultural production typically consumes much of the world's available freshwater. This article argues that California should follow the lead of Israel and use drip irrigation to conserve water while still producing food in a dry area.
If we accept that controversial dams will continue to be built for economic benefit, how can we limit their damage on the environment?
"Of all the ways we have engineered Earth in the Anthropocene, the Age of Man, surely nothing rivals our audacious planetary-wide re-plumbing of the world's waterways. But is our control of Earth's arteries causing dangerous clots?" The human-environmental interaction theme of geography is as readily apparent in this issue as any.
NASA researchers are expressing concern about something they've never seen before: the melting of ice across nearly the entire surface of Greenland earlier this month.
Climate changes are afoot in the Arctic and the Greenland ice sheet. For more on the Arctic. In related news, Texas and Louisiana have introduced education standards that require educators to teach climate change denial as a valid scientific position. South Dakota and Utah passed resolutions denying climate change. Tennessee and Oklahoma also have introduced legislation to give climate change skeptics a place in the classroom.
"The final 32 generators went into operation this week, making it the world's largest hydropower project, pictured, built on the Yangtze River in China." This photo gallery has a tremendous video at the end that displays vividly the raw power that moves the turbines. Economically, what are the benefits? Environmentally, what are the costs?
The three gorges dam displays the extraordinary things man can do to manipulate the environment. This man made dam also shows how much technology influences our geographic space.
While I do enjoy this video, it is especially interesting in in how it conceptualizes the world in the two frames. Urban, human, civilized society on one side, with natural, unsettled wilderness on the other. The video attempts to bridge the divide, hoping that more people will see more interconnections between the human/urban world and the natural/wildlife world. While geographers recognize that all elements of the planet are interconnected, most people still think of the world through dichotomies such as these: civilization vs. wilderness, cultural vs. natural and human vs. animal. How do these terms shape our thinking about the world?
An in-depth, multimedia look at climate change, its global impact, and efforts to combat it.
This guide on climate change from the Council on Foreign Relations (independent think tank) covers many of the geopolitical, economic and environmental issues that confront the Earth as global temperatures rise. Rather than produce a full length feature film, they have organized the this as an interactive video, allowing the user to get short (a couple of minutes) answer to specific questions about the science, foreign policy or economic ramifications of adapting to climate change.
A new study using data from a pair of gravity-measuring NASA satellites finds that large parts of the arid Middle East region lost freshwater reserves rapidly during the past decade.
"[This] data show an alarming rate of decrease in total water storage in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins, which currently have the second fastest rate of groundwater storage loss on Earth, after India," said Jay Famiglietti, principal investigator of the study and a hydrologist and professor at UC Irvine. "The rate was especially striking after the 2007 drought. Meanwhile, demand for freshwater continues to rise, and the region does not coordinate its water management because of different interpretations of international laws."
Water is a big issue in an arid area. The fact that we can measure the amount of groundwater present in an area with a satellite is amazing to me. The issue of water rights and control in this region will someday over take that of oil rights and use in my opinion. Once people get used to free flowing water to use on demand it will cause problems politically when these sources of ground water inevitably dry up.
"77 Photos of the mass production of the Earth's natural resources. In the picture above, a Tibetan villager works in a salt field. Salt has been the most common food preservative, especially for meat, for thousands of years."
Tags: consumption, agriculture, resources, labor, industry, economic, unit 6 industry.
Climate change has numerous casualities: the melting of the Arctic Sea ice is one such environment nightmare that's a result of global warming (don't worry Texans, you can just call it a "freak heat wave" or an "inexplicable anomaly"). But like all global processes, not all places are impacted equally. Even in an economic recession, some find fortune while the majority flounder. Same is true with the melting of the Artic; the melting might potentially opening up the fabled Northwest Passage and create new, seasonal shipping lanes. Who would benefit from this? Who would suffer? To see a short video on this, see: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/09/melting-arctic-sea-ice-and-shipping-routes
It's not two photos stitched together, and it's not an installation. This red line is the stain of toxic sludge.
This is a great issue that highlights the human-environmental interactions theme. In 2011, this site in Hungary witnessed a horrific toxic sludge spill at an aluminum oxide plant that literally created a toxic mudslide.
Scientists capture dramatic footage of Arctic glaciers melting in hours Scientists have captured dramatic footage of massive lakes in the Arctic melting away...
An amazingly extreme place that is far removed from inhabited regions of our planet, but still heavily impacted by people nonetheless.
The torrential rains that caused widespread flooding in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, have left the city reeling...
This is a grim, but captivating photo gallery showing how people adapt to environmental disasters. Human settlements are vulnerable to disasters based on their environmental situations but people still display an amazingly capacity to be resilient in the face of danger. "The torrential rains that caused widespread flooding in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, have left the city reeling. Thousands of people remain in evacuation shelters, and those who stayed in their homes during the deluge face a major clean-up operation."
Pictures truly are worth a thousand words. Seeing the disaster occur in someone home, or seeing how a locasl business has lost so much due to the disaster is powerful. It is one thing to read an article and it is another to see precious photos ruined by the disaster.
Flooding causes serious damage both emotionally and physically. People lose everything when floods happen. Their homes, cars and lives literally get lost in the water. Tragedy like this happens more often than we think. Being prepared for when something like this strikes is the key.
The flooding in the Manila caused widespread displacement and loss. Many flood victims have resorted to go to temporary evacuation centers provided by the red cross to seek shelter and food. People of Manila are have been forced to figure out how to work thru this crises because there is a limited amount of emergency workers. floods destroyed home, businesses, and the environment across Manila. kids are being quarantined at a designated hospital with dengue fever. Manila has a long road for clean up and recovery.
As climate change alters rainfall patterns and river flows, tensions are bound to rise between states and countries that share rivers that cross their borders. In the Rio Grande Basin of the American Southwest, that future inevitability has arrived.
Both Texas and New Mexico share the water supply that is giving by the rivers that cross between the border and can have a profound effect on the growth of farmland and agriculture of both Texas and New Mexico, which shows that many places can be effected by the geography that is intertwined among places in the world.*
In this NASA article, the authors explain that Saudi Arabia has uncovered water in the Syrian Desert. In doing so, the Saudi Arabian people are able to cultivate the land and grow crops for roughly 50 years.
Saudi Arabia is known to be a dry region, but over the past thirty years there has become patches of green apparent in Saudi Arabia. Mainly this country is known for drilling of oil as one of their main resources. However, a resource that Saudi Arabia is drilling for is water. The water that Saudi Arabia is looking for is located in aquifers under the ground. Water to Saudi Arabians is a more precious resource than oil because water helps a population thrive not just economically, and to only a few members of a society. This new vegetation and water resource in Saudi Arabia has now turned useless land into useful land. They are making this land more livable for its inhabitants. The water that is being found is helping feed vegetation possibly reducing the costs that they have to spend on foreign food imports by a small margin (not anything dramatic). Drilling for water in such a dry climate I believe is more remarkable than their ability to produce oil resources to the world. I think this because they export the oil to other countries benefitting the economy mainly. The discovery of aquifers however benefits the lives of those people that lie in Saudi Arabia for the better. Internal progress for this country I believe will help them as a whole.
In the Saudi Desert, there are old water deposits hidden deep under the sands that are now starting to be discovered and used for irrigation. Water is a very important resource to those in the region, but it's also a non-renewable resource. Hydrologists estimate water there can only be pumped for 50 years, so it is interesting to think what will Saudi Arabia choose to do with this new commodity.
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