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1.
Earth Alive |
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2006
19 September 2006. Time
to Move the Mississippi, Experts Say. By
CORNELIA DEAN. The New York Times. Excerpt:
Scientists have long said the only way to
restore Louisiana's vanishing wetlands is
to undo the elaborate levee system that
controls the Mississippi River, not with
the small projects that have been tried
here and there, but with a massive diversion
that would send the muddy river flooding
wholesale into the state's sediment-starved
marshes.
And most of them have long dismissed the idea as impractical,
unaffordable and lethal to the region's economy. Now, they are
reconsidering. In fact, when a group of researchers convened
last April to consider the fate of the Louisiana coast, their
recommendation was unanimous: divert the river. ... the sediment
it carries ends up in deep water, where it is lost forever. A
diversion would send the river's richly muddy water into marshes
or shallow-water areas where, Dr. Reed said, "the natural
processes of waves, coastal currents and even storms can rework
that sediment and bring it up and bring it into the coast."
"It's a lot," she said, enough to cover 60 square miles
half an inch deep every year, an amount that would slow or even
reverse land loss in the state's marshes, which have shrunk by
about a quarter, more than 1,500 square miles, since the 1930's.
Such a program would not turn things around immediately, "but
every year new land would be built," said Joseph T. Kelley,
a professor of marine geology at the University of Maine, who
took part in the April meeting.... |
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2005
15 November 2005. Louisiana's
Marshes Fight for Their Lives. By CORNELIA
DEAN, NY Times. Excerpt:
Shea Penland nosed his truck along a mud-covered
street, past uprooted trees, cars leaning crazily
on fences, torn-off roofs, and piles of ruined
furniture, wallboard and shingles - the waterlogged
evidence that Hurricane Katrina had been through
the New Orleans suburb of Chalmette. Twice,
he turned to avoid streets blocked by brick
houses apparently torn from their slab foundations
and dumped blocks away. Finally, he spotted
what he was seeking. "Look at that," he
said, pointing to what looked like misshaped
bowling balls tufted with long strands of yellow
grass, seemingly thrown onto the porch and through
the gaping doorway of a wrecked brick ranch
house. "Marshballs." For Dr. Penland,
director of the Pontchartrain Institute for
Environmental Studies at the University of New
Orleans, these clumps of black mud knitted with
roots and fronds are an alarming sight. The
marshballs, some as large as a sofa, others
as small as a shoebox, had floated from wetlands
to the east. Dr. Penland says they are more
evidence that after decades of human interference,
the marshes of Louisiana are in deep, deep trouble...
Now, as Louisiana struggles to recover from
the storm, scientists like Dr. Penland are studying
this marsh wreckage and the marshes themselves
for clues to what ails them and how they might
recover. The questions are complicated, and
the answers turn on a number of factors, including
the region's geology, the ways people have engineered
the flow of the Mississippi River, and the marsh-killing
activities of the oil and gas industry.
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2004
16 November 2004. Wetland
Changes Affect South Florida Freezes. [NASA
feature.] Orange and other citrus crops are
being squeezed by stronger freezes in South
Florida, due to changes in wetlands. Scientists
using satellite data, records of land-cover
changes, computer models, and weather records
found a link between the loss of wetlands
and more severe freezes in some agricultural
areas of south Florida. In other areas of
the state, land use changes resulted in slightly
warmer conditions.
18 May 2004. Michigan
Landowner Who Filled Wetlands Faces Prison,
By FELICITY BARRINGER, NY Times. A
federal jury found the actions taken by a
landowner to dry out his 175-acre property
to be in violation of the Clean Water Act.
9 March 2004. For
Wildlife, Migration Is Endangered Too By
JIM ROBBINS, NY Times. Around
the world, many great overland migrations
have ended as more and more habitat is converted
to human use. |
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2002
1
November 2002 Saving
Cajun Country - Archeologists
and engineers will soon be using NASA remote-sensing
satellite data to restore endangered wetlands
without accidentally destroying Native American
cultural sites.
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