The documentary film River, coming to theaters this Earth Day, opens with a view of a river flowing calmly between shadowed banks, shimmering with the liminal light of dusk or dawn. “Thousands have lived without love,” a quote from W.H. Auden appears over a reflected cloud bank. “Not one without water.” Yet the film that […]
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 […]
The latest warning of the Earth’s mounting extinction crisis is coming from its lakes and rivers. A new report from a coalition of 16 conservation groups warns that almost a third of freshwater fish species face extinction because of human activity. “Nowhere is the world’s nature crisis more acute than in our rivers, lakes and […]
A piece of Himalayan glacier in the Indian state of Uttarakhand broke off and fell into a river Sunday, triggering an avalanche and floods that have killed at least 20 people so far, while nearly 200 remain missing. The incident comes as Himalayan glaciers are melting twice as fast as they were in 2000 largely […]