Retired Military Officials on Looming Water Crisis

clipped from blog.sciam.com Yet another report declares that global warming is a "serious threat to America's national security." written by six retired admirals and five retired generals unique in its focus on water shortages "Weakened and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies," the report says. "The U.S. will be drawn more frequently into these situations." "We will pay for this one way or another," writes Zinni, former commander of U.S. Central Command. "We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we'll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll."

Photo of Matanuska Glacier, Alaska

clipped from www.alaska.com Matanuska Glacier in the fall Rapidly turning foliage paints a brilliant frame for Matanuska Glacier in a view from a state recreation site along the Glenn Highway. Fall colors brightened the scene for several mid-September days in the area, about 100 miles east of Anchorage along the Glenn Highway. (Erik Hill / Anchorage Daily News)

World's Largest Organism - Humongous Mushroom

Very strange!

clipped from www.sciam.com The blue whale is big, but nowhere near as huge as a sprawling fungus in eastern Oregon HIDDEN GIANT:  A small outcropping of honey mushrooms on the surface hide the largest known organism on Earth, a fungus infesting the woods of eastern Oregon. occupies some 2,384 acres (965 hectares) of soil in Oregon's Blue Mountains. Put another way, this humongous fungus would encompass 1,665 football fields, or nearly four square miles (10 square kilometers) of turf. he fungus is estimated to be 2,400 years old but could be as ancient as 8,650 years, The team paired fungal samples in petri dishes to see if they fused (see photo below), a sign that they were from the same genetic individual, and used DNA fingerprinting to determine where one individual fungus ended. A. ostoyae, causes Armillaria root disease, which kills swaths of conifers in many parts of the U.S. and Canada An Armillaria individual consists of a network of hyphae

Richat Structure, Mauritania

Photo clipped from Live Science Image Collection: Earth as Art.

clipped from www.livescience.com LiveScience Image Gallery Richat Stucture, Mauritania Astronauts often note this prominent circular feature, known as the Richat Structure, in the Sahara desert of Mauritania because it forms a conspicuous 50-kilometer-wide (30-mile-wide) bull's-eye on the otherwise rather featureless expanse of the desert. Initially mistaken for a possible impact crater, it is now known to be an eroded circular anticline (structural dome) of layered sedimentary rocks. Extensive sand dunes occur in this region and the interaction of bedrock topography, wind, and moving sand is evident in this scene. Note especially how the dune field ends abruptly short of the cliffs at the far right as wind from the northeast (lower right) apparently funnels around the cliff point, sweeping clean areas near the base of the cliff.

Biofuel Production May Exacerbate Water Crisis

clipped from www.sciencedaily.com President Bush called for the production of 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2017, which would equal about 15 percent of the U.S. liquid transportation fuels National Research Council committee was convened to look at how shifts in the nation's agriculture to include more energy crops, and potentially more crops overall, could affect water management and long-term sustainability of biofuel production gricultural shifts to growing corn and expanding biofuel crops into regions with little agriculture, especially dry areas, could change current irrigation practices and greatly increase pressure on water resources quality of groundwater, rivers, and coastal and offshore waters could be impacted by increased fertilizer and pesticide use for biofuels High levels of nitrogen in stream flows are a major cause of low-oxygen or "hypoxic" regions, commonly known as "dead zones," which are lethal for most living creatures

Reflections on the Global Water Crisis

I am writing this post as part of Blog Action Day, an internet initiative in which bloggers from around the world are blogging on environmental issues. The topic I have chosen to spotlight is the global water crisis. I am in no way able to do this topic justice in a single post. In this post, I will simply attempt to identify some of the major features of this problem. My purpose is to raise awareness. While individual conservation efforts are very important locally, the problem requires large-scale, systematic action. However, this is unlikely to occur without broadscale awareness and individuals putting pressure on governments, agriculture, and industry to adopt freshwater-friendly policies.

What do Arizona, Bangladesh, Colorado, the Gaza Strip, India, and Iran have in common?
A shortage of fresh water in populated areas.

About 97% of earth's water is salt water, found in the oceans and seas. This water is unsuitable for human consumption, agriculture, and many industrial needs. It is only readily available in coastal areas, and even then, desalination is a costly energy intensive process. A lot of the remaining 3% is tied up in polar ice caps and glaciers. A very small fraction of all the water on earth is available for human use. This includes surface water found in rivers, lakes, and streams, and groundwater found in aquifers. (See groundwater clips in the clip roll).

In many parts of the world, once plentiful sources of surface water are drying up. (See the clips on the Aral Sea and on rivers affected by global warming). This makes groundwater resources even more important. However, it's a lot easier to see how much surface water we have than it is to determine how much water is contained under the ground. Groundwater modeling is an area of active research in hydrology and mathematics. The goal here is to be able to use a limited number of measurements to predict future water levels given a certain amount of pumping. Ideally, communities would be using the best groundwater models available to strive for sustainability -- that is, pumping no more out of the aquifer than will be replaced through precipitation, runoff, or in some cases, artificially recharging the aquifer by pumping treated waste water back in. However, such planning is not the norm in most places.

In the Western US, communities that are outgrowing local water supplies are buying water rights from other communities, building pipelines and importing water. This in turn places a large strain on the water resources of the community that the water is being piped from. (See the clip on "Water Wars in Arizona.")

Since the ground serves as a natural filter, groundwater is often assumed to be clean and safe to drink. This is not always the case. Minerals found in the soil may make the water unsafe. For example, arsenic in the drinking water is a problem in some parts of India. Additionally, agricultural and industrial practices pollute the surface water, which is not isolated from the groundwater. Aquifers are replinished in part by runoff. Many aquifers are now contaminated with pesticides and other industrial and agricultural wastes.

Lack of sanitation also results in contaminated water supplies. This is a problem in many parts of the world and is responsible for many deaths every day, especially among children.

The consequences of lack of sanitation and depletion and contamination of fresh water resources include human disease and death, loss of biodiversity, wildfires, loss of land for agriculture leading to great economic strain, and regional conflict.

Please take a look at the clips below and follow the links to the articles that you would like to know more about. Wikipedia has a good article on the water crisis. The United Nations website is also a good source of information.

I will continue to post information and links related to this topic.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Eight Burst Nebula

Another beautiful astronomy photo.

clipped from antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov NGC 3132: The Eight Burst Nebula Explanation: It's the dim star, not the bright one, near the center of NGC 3132 that created this odd but beautiful planetary nebula. Nicknamed the Eight-Burst Nebula and the Southern Ring Nebula, the glowing gas originated in the outer layers of a star like our Sun. In this representative color picture, the hot blue pool of light seen surrounding this binary system is energized by the hot surface of the faint star. Although photographed to explore unusual symmetries, it's the asymmetries that help make this planetary nebula so intriguing. Neither the unusual shape of the surrounding cooler shell nor the structure and placements of the cool filamentary dust lanes running across NGC 3132 are well understood.