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Archive for July 13th, 2015
Resilience: A New Conservation Strategy for a Warming World
Posted by Yale Environment 360: Jim Robbins on July 13th, 2015
Yale Environment 360: The San Francisco Bay was once one of the richest estuaries in North America. Almost completely enclosed and protected from the open ocean, and with more than 200 freshwater creeks feeding into it, it was a fertile refuge for young salmon, halibut, sturgeon, anchovy, and smelt. It was lined with some 200,000 acres of tidal marsh, and the connected Sacramento Delta doubled that, creating a region so rich and productive it was known as the Everglades of the West. By the middle of the 20th century,...
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Farming is driving force drying soil in Northern China
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 13th, 2015
ScienceDaily: An important agricultural region in China is drying out, and increased farming may be more to blame than rising temperatures and less rain, according to a study spanning 30 years of data. A research team led by Purdue University and China Agricultural University analyzed soil moisture during the growing season in Northern China and found that it has decreased by 6 percent since 1983. The optimal soil-moisture level for farmland is typically 40 percent to 85 percent of the water holding capacity,...
Climate change muddies algae solutions
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 13th, 2015
Toledo Blade: In 2013, leading Great Lakes scientists convinced a state task force that western Lake Erie’s annual onslaught of toxic algae could be reversed — in only a year or two — if the vast Maumee River watershed across northwest Ohio and into Michigan and Indiana could achieve an ambitious 40 percent reduction in phosphorus loading.
Most of that load comes from agriculture, in the form of animal manure and commercial fertilizer that escapes fields after heavy rains.
Now, just as that lofty goal is...