This is part 3 of a 4 part series by Brad Walker of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment analyzing The Nefarious Connection Between Agriculture and Our Rivers. Read parts 1 and 2 Part 3: Small steps towards river repair There are currently effective Congressionally-authorized programs on the Missouri, Illinois and Upper Mississippi Rivers that
This is part 2 of a 4 part series by Brad Walker of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment analyzing The Nefarious Connection Between Agriculture and Our Rivers. Read Part 1 Part 2: The major culprit There are many well-documented critiques of the industrialized agricultural system, so we will not dwell in detail about why
This is a 4-part article as written by Brad Walker, Rivers & Sustainability Director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment (bio below). I provided the illustrations and a few other minor contributions. The article will run one part per week for the next four weeks. Part 1: Introduction — What we have wrought on
Not only have we settled in disaster prone areas, but when things get bad because of Climate Change, we move to even worse areas. Last year, according to the United Nations, 210 million people – about three per cent of the global population – migrated between countries, and in 2009 about 740 million people moved within countries.
Researchers from Texas A&M University who have just returned from a visit to the Gulf of Mexico to explore the scope and size of this year’s dead zone have measured it to be currently around 8,500 square kilometres; approximately the same size as the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.
However researchers believe that 2011’s dead zone may continue to grow and become one of the largest ever.
The recent flooding of the Mississippi River has created an unexpected boon for the wetlands around the city of New Orleans.
Hello Planetsavers! I thought I’d start doing a monthly wrap-up of our top 20 posts for people to have a glance at. Many of the top stories this month, as you’ll notice, were clearly tied into major world news events. Google is the main traffic driver for the large majority of sites on the Internet and ours isn’t an exception. Covering environmental news consistently, this often results in the biggest news stories rising to the top.
With all the climate change denier propaganda and bad messaging/confusion in the media, I have to wonder how much a ‘normal’ person recognizes the relationship between tremendous flooding of the Mississippi River and drought in Texas and a few other states (at the same time).
Satellite imagery captured by the Landsat satellite by the United States Geological Survey and NASA on May 10 show just how devastating the flooding along the Mississippi River is.
The U.S. Geological Survey released this prediction of flood crests compiled by the National Weather Service on May 4, 2011.
The Mississippi River reached 47.87 feet (14.59 meters) in Memphis, Tennessee, on May 10, 2011, according to the Advanced Hydrological Prediction Service (AHPS) of the U.S. National Weather Service. The photos and videos below show just how far-reaching the flooding of the Mississippi River is.
That’s not the kind of thing you want to hear, especially not with the flooding going on. But, reportedly, Grand Gulf Nuclear Plant workers in Mississippi “accidentally released water from an abandoned unit into the river.” A large amount of tritum, a cancer-causing radionuclide, was in the water according to sensors.
Massive rainfalls towards the end of April, 2011, have increased water levels along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, bringing them to record level highs. Flood waters have inundated homes, businesses and agricultural fields throughout the region.
[UPDATED: Sept. 27, 2013; see addendum at bottom] In the spirit of both Halloween and Environmental Awareness, I hereby offer thirteen environmental horror stories of anthropogenic origin. I have chosen to narrow my sample field to the post World War II time period. I have also excluded nuclear weapons tests and chemical weapons usage (such
In a first-ever “world-wide synthesis”, an international team of scientists has analyzed data on 23 “drivers of environmental stress” that impact the health and quality of the world’s major rivers. The findings: 65% of the world’s riverine ecosystems are “moderately to highly threatened”. The team’s assessment is the first to “jointly consider human and biodiversity
A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee samples river water for endocrine disrupting pollutants. [social_buttons] Study results publicized this week suggest Twin Cities water resources and the Mississippi River downstream from the Cities are suffering from pollution by road salt and endocrine disrupting chemicals. The results are from U.S. Geological Survey analysis of watersheds around
