Quick Key Facts What Is ‘Flooding’? Flooding occurs when water submerges land that is typically dry. That water can come from a variety of sources, such as rainfall, a storm surge or high tide, a river overflowing its banks, a dam bursting or snow or ice melting. Some types of flooding can be beneficial for […]
Roberto David Castillo Mejía, a former top executive of a Honduran construction firm Desarrollos Energéticos (DESA), was the eighth person charged with the 2016 murder of environmental activist Berta Cáceres, Reuters reported. Castillo Mejía awaits sentencing on Aug. 2, which is expected to be between 24 and 30 years, said The Daily Beast. Co-founder of […]
Climate change, activities that contribute to it, and dams pose grave threats to America’s rivers, according to American Rivers. The annual report ranks the county’s 10 rivers most endangered by human activity that also have a critical decision point coming in the next year that could change the river’s fate. Four dams are choking the […]
By Rishika Pardikar Search operations are still underway to find those declared missing following the Uttarakhand disaster on 7 February 2021. “As of now [18 March], we have found 74 bodies and 130 people are still missing,” said Swati S. Bhadauria, district magistrate in Chamoli, Uttarakhand, India. Chamoli is the district where a hanging, ice-capped […]
By Tara Lohan Atlantic salmon have a challenging life history — and those that hail from U.S. waters have seen things get increasingly difficult in the past 300 years. Dubbed the “king of fish,” Atlantic salmon once numbered in the hundreds of thousands in the United States and ranged up and down most of New […]
By Tara Lohan It’s not too hard to find salmon on a menu in the United States, but that seeming abundance — much of it fueled by overseas fish farms — overshadows a grim reality on the ground. Many of our wild salmon, outside Alaska, are on the ropes — and have been for decades. […]
The Amazon rainforest likely emits more greenhouse gases than it absorbs, a first-of-its-kind study has found. The study, published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change on Thursday, is the first to consider emissions other than carbon dioxide, such as methane from floods and cattle, and black carbon from forest-clearing fires. “Cutting the forest is […]
By Jeff Masters The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave America’s infrastructure a C- grade in its quadrennial assessment issued March 3. ASCE gave the nation’s flood control infrastructure – dams and levees – a D grade. This is a highly concerning assessment, given that climate change is increasingly stressing dams and levees as […]
By Deborah Moore, Michael Simon and Darryl Knudsen There’s some good news amidst the grim global pandemic: At long last, the world’s largest dam removal is finally happening. The landmark agreement, which was finalized in November 2020 between farmers, tribes and dam owners, will finally bring down four aging, inefficient dams along the Klamath River […]