Region near Tulare Lake has been put on ‘probation’ as overpumping of water has caused faster sinking of ground
Even after two back-to-back wet years, California’s water wars are far from over. On Tuesday, state water officials took an unprecedented step to intervene in the destructive pumping of depleted groundwater in the state’s sprawling agricultural heartland.
The decision puts a farming region known as the Tulare Lake groundwater subbasin, which includes roughly 837-sq-miles in the rural San Joaquin valley, on “probation” in accordance with a sustainable groundwater use law passed a decade ago. Large water users will face fees and state oversight of their pumping.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
04/17/2024 - 14:33
04/17/2024 - 13:00
Experts believe remains belong to a type of ichthyosaur that roamed the seas about 202m years ago
Fossils discovered by an 11-year-old girl on a beach in Somerset may have come from the largest marine reptile ever to have lived, according to experts.
The fossils are thought to be from a type of ichthyosaur, a prehistoric marine reptile that lived in the time of dinosaurs. The newly discovered species is believed to have roamed the seas towards the end of the Triassic, about 202m years ago.
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04/17/2024 - 12:10
During the unusually dry year of 2018, Sweden was hit by numerous forest fires. A research team has investigated how climate change affects recently burnt boreal forests and their ability to absorb carbon dioxide.
04/17/2024 - 10:21
Cost of environmental damage will be six times higher than price of limiting global heating to 2C, study finds
Average incomes will fall by almost a fifth within the next 26 years as a result of the climate crisis, according to a study that predicts the costs of damage will be six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C.
Rising temperatures, heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense extreme weather are projected to cause $38tn (£30tn) of destruction each year by mid-century, according to the research, which is the most comprehensive analysis of its type ever undertaken, and whose findings are published in the journal Nature.
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04/17/2024 - 10:00
Cambridge scientists critique research that concluded the disease is no longer a threat to the species’ survival
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Cambridge researchers have challenged a previous study finding that a facial cancer that devastated the Tasmanian devil population was on the decline.
Devil facial tumour disease, a fatal cancer spread through biting and sharing of food, first emerged in the 1980s. The spread of DFTD led to the species being listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2008.
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04/17/2024 - 09:37
Westerners see elephants as pets, said Mokgweetsi Masisi, whose government threatened to send 30,000 elephants to Germany and the UK to demonstrate their dangers
Many Europeans value the lives of elephants more than those of the people who live around them, the president of Botswana has said, amid tensions over potential trophy hunting import bans.
Botswana recently threatened to send 30,000 elephants to the UK and Germany after both countries proposed stricter controls on hunting trophies. The country’s president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, said it would help people to understand human-wildlife conflict – which is among the primary threats to the species – including the experiences of subsistence farmers affected by crop-raiding by the animals.
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04/17/2024 - 08:53
Steve Green says vehicle bought in Australia in 1998 and now part of a plastic waste collection team has many more miles in it
The owners of VW campervans often become deeply attached to their characterful vehicles, regarding them as companions in adventure, workhorses, part of the family.
But Steve Green is prouder than most of his van – rejoicing in the name Cecil – which is well on the way to totting up a million miles and still gainfully employed clearing the Cornish coast of plastic.
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04/17/2024 - 07:54
City records more than 142mm of rain in a day, about as much as it expects in a year and a half, as highways and malls flooded
Highways and malls have been flooded, schools have been closed, and flights disrupted at one of the world’s busiest airports after the United Arab Emirates experienced what the government described as its largest amount of rainfall in 75 years.
At least one person was killed, a 70-year-old man who police said was swept away in his car in Ras Al Khaimah, one of the UAE’s seven emirates.
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04/17/2024 - 06:30
Notorious for drawing large crowds, Emerson was removed by officials who were surprised to find him back in Victoria in a week
Last week, gun-wielding conservation officers stuffed a 500-lb elephant seal in the back of a van, drove him along a winding highway in western Canada and left him on a remote beach “far from human habitation”.
The plan was to move the young seal far from British Columbia’s capital city, where over the last year, he has developed a reputation for ending up in “unusual locations”, including flower beds, city parks and busy roads.
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04/17/2024 - 05:00
Phoenix broke several heat records last year. Now Grant Park, which has inequitable tree cover, is seeing a tree-planting drive that promises some respite from 100F temperatures
It was a relatively cool spring day in Phoenix, Arizona, as a tree-planting crew dug large holes in one of the desert city’s hottest and least shaded neighborhoods.
Still, it was sweaty backbreaking work as they carefully positioned, watered and staked a 10ft tall Blue palo verde and Chilean mesquite in opposite corners of resident Ana Cordoba’s dusty unshaded backyard.
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