Our project California Watch has launched a new section for kids called Junior Watchdogs. In a new video (above), we use finger puppets to teach kids about water pollution. Let us know what you think!
“Nearly 1,000 public water systems in Texas restricted water last year. Even now, after some winter rains, 17 systems are projected to run out of water in six months or less. The 2011 drought was the most intense one-year drought in Texas since at least 1895, when statewide weather records began. Losses reached $10 billion in crops, livestock and timber.” - Hari Sreenivasan in the PBS NewsHour segment (above) “Texas Towns Run Out of Water as Drought Takes its Toll.”
Just one of the food-and-water facts from the campaign organizers at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
Nearly 10 percent of the 2.6 million people living in the Tulare Lake Basin and Salinas Valley might be drinking nitrate-contaminated water, according to a new study out today from researchers at UC Davis. If nothing is done to stem the problem, the report warns, those at risk for health and financial problems may number nearly 80 percent by 2050. Read the full story.
Photo by Paolo Vescia/FERNnews
Iran’s Lake Urmia (Oroumieh), the largest lake in the Middle East and the third largest salt water lake on earth, is turning to salt. Urmia is “home to some 212 species of birds, 41 reptiles, 7 amphibians, and 27 species of mammals, including the Iranian yellow deer.” According to a new report by AP, the lake “has shrunken by 60 percent and could disappear entirely in just a few years, experts say — drained by drought, misguided irrigation policies, development and the damming of rivers that feed it.”
Photo: An abandoned ship is stuck in the solidified salts of the Oroumieh Lake, some 370 miles NW of Tehran, Iran, April 29, 2011. (Vahid Salemi)
Via Slate:
What do 28,000 time-lapse photos tell us about Everest’s melting glaciers?
Everest, the Earth’s highest peak, is sometimes called the water tower of the world, because as many as 2 billion people rely on its glaciers as a source of water, Balog explains. Aside from their visual appeal, time-lapse photographs also help scientists to map changes in the position and surface of the ice, which in turn helps them to determine how much snow accumulates during the year and how fast the glaciers are melting.
(Photograph courtesy the Extreme Ice Survey, originally published by Slate)
As you celebrate Earth Day, take a look at how climate change is affecting people around the world. In East Africa, for example, as temperatures rise and water supplies dry up, semi-nomadic tribes along the Kenyan-Ethiopian border increasingly are coming into conflict with each other. When the Water Ends focuses on how worsening drought will pit groups and nations against one another.
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