Tag Archives: rivers

Dam it all: More than half of the world’s long rivers are blocked by infrastucture

It hasn’t even been a week since the U.N. released a depressing report on biodiversity, and now, a new study in Nature shows that 63 percent of the world’s longest (at least 620 miles) rivers are impeded by human-built infrastructures such as dams and reservoirs. Dam(n).

Rivers are a key source of food and water for agriculture, energy, and humanity. They’re critical to many cultures and communities and home to a plethora of species like salmon and trout. They also bolster ecosystems by restoring groundwater and serve as a buffer against drought.

But with the increasing demand for more water, energy generation, and flood management, the construction of dams, levees, reservoirs, and other river-obstructive infrastructures is becoming ubiquitous.

“Free-flowing rivers are important for humans and the environment alike, yet economic development around the world is making them increasingly rare,” lead author Günther Grill of McGill University said in a statement. Here are a few gloomy statistics from the study.

  1. There are 60,000 large dams and more than 3,7000 hydropower dams currently planned or are under construction worldwide.
  2. The longest uninterrupted rivers are restricted to remote regions in the Arctic, the Amazon and Congo basins.
  3. The last two uninterrupted long rivers in Southeast Asia are critical sources of food for fisheries that provide over 1.2 million tonnes of catch each year.
  4. While Asia is flowing with dam installations, the Amazon, Balkans, China, and the Himalayas are facing a huge increase in hydropower construction. Other countries such as India, Brazil and China are also planning and building infrastructure that will harm rivers through dredging and building dams.

Rivers are vital to our ecosystems. But hydropower is a difficult balancing act in a planet where there’s a desperate need for more clean energy.

There’s one bit of good news. Carmel River in California is seeing a big recovery of fish populations after a centuries-old dam was removed. The demolition is considered the largest dam removal in California history. And four years later the dam went down, species such as trout and lampreys are rebounding and other tributaries are reviving.

“We don’t want to do the touchdown dance yet, but so far things are looking good,” Tommy Williams, a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Mercury News. “It’s just amazing how fast these systems come back. Everything is playing out like we thought.”

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Dam it all: More than half of the world’s long rivers are blocked by infrastucture

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Flying microplastics? Researchers find plastics on remote French mountaintop

Plastic takes a ton of energy to produce and lasts hundreds of years. It accumulates in our food web, fills our landfills, and now, tiny microparticles have been found in the most pristine and remote parts of the French Pyrenees. Is nothing sacred anymore?

The new study measured the amounts and sizes of microplastic particles raining down on the Pyrenees. The French researchers found that, on average, 365 pieces of microplastic filaments fell on each square meter per day. The source? Since there were no significant nearby populations or industries, the researchers think the plastic traveled over 60 miles on the wind from larger cities like Barcelona to deposit in the mountains.

Microplastics have been an environmental conundrum for years. They’re tiny pieces of plastic — some small enough to inhale — that are degraded remnants from larger plastics, filaments shed from synthetic clothing, or tiny beads in toothpaste and exfoliating face wash. These particles eventually end up … everywhere. Rivers and lakes, Arctic fjords, table salt, even human stool have been shown to contain microplastics. And these particles, when ingested, have been linked to health problems in animals and could harm people, too.

At this very moment, we’re all surrounded by these invisible filaments. However, this discovery in the French Pyrenees shows just how far and in what quantities these plastic particles can travel.

Deonie Allen, a researcher on the team, spoke about the results to The Guardian: “Because we were on the top of a remote mountain, and there is no close source, there is the potential for microplastic to be anywhere and everywhere.”

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Flying microplastics? Researchers find plastics on remote French mountaintop

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Phosphorus pollution poses a major threat to the world’s lakes

Humans dump millions of tons of phosphorus into lakes every year, and it’s destroying their ecosystems. From: Phosphorus pollution poses a major threat to the world’s lakes ; ; ;

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Phosphorus pollution poses a major threat to the world’s lakes

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World Briefing: Mexico: Mining Company Lied on Spill, Official Says

Environment Secretary Juan Jose Guerra Abud said Tuesday that a mining company lied about a spill of 10 million gallons of acids and heavy metals that contaminated two rivers and a dam downstream. Source:   World Briefing: Mexico: Mining Company Lied on Spill, Official Says ; ;Related ArticlesOn Books Since 1988, Ohio River Dam Project Keeps Rolling AlongObservatory: Pacific Octopus Holds Egg-Brooding RecordDot Earth Blog: From Tree Planting Along a Dirt Road to Car-Free Village Living ;

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World Briefing: Mexico: Mining Company Lied on Spill, Official Says

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World Briefing: Chile: Patagonia Dams Rejected

A government commission rejected an $8 billion proposal to dam Patagonian rivers to meet growing energy demands, handing a victory to environmentalists who praised the ruling on Tuesday. Continue reading: World Briefing: Chile: Patagonia Dams Rejected Related ArticlesFuture Fossils: Plastic StoneBattle Over Fracking Poses Threat to Colorado DemocratsOff the Shelf: Review of Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper

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World Briefing: Chile: Patagonia Dams Rejected

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Dot Earth Blog: On World Fish Migration Day, Recalling When America’s Rivers Ran Silver

A biologist explores the great fish migrations that once enriched eastern rivers and charts ways to restore at least a shadow of that past bounty. View the original here: Dot Earth Blog: On World Fish Migration Day, Recalling When America’s Rivers Ran Silver Related ArticlesWorld Briefing: Groups Pool Funds to Protect More of Amazon Rain ForestWorries Turn to Disease as Waters Recede in BalkansExtreme Weather: How El Niño Might Alter the Political Climate

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Dot Earth Blog: On World Fish Migration Day, Recalling When America’s Rivers Ran Silver

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America’s top 10 most endangered rivers in 2014

If a country is a body, rivers are its arteries through which vital blood flows. We must revive our waterways before more damage is done. Credit –  America’s top 10 most endangered rivers in 2014 ; ; ;

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America’s top 10 most endangered rivers in 2014

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Electric Cars Give Rise to a Recharging Industry

High-voltage, superfast public devices are appearing more frequently, though some are more expensive for drivers than home chargers, or even gasoline. View post: Electric Cars Give Rise to a Recharging Industry ; ;Related ArticlesMAP: Is Your State Ready for Climate Disasters?Oregon activists push for food instead of grass from farmersDot Earth Blog: The Poverty and Population Factors Behind Vast Typhoon Losses ;

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Electric Cars Give Rise to a Recharging Industry

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Scientist at Work Blog: A Vital River, Drained of Wildlife

A researcher and his family watched as pairs of Irrawaddy dolphins breached and frolicked, their whimsical play in sharp contrast to the species’ grim reality. Link to article:   Scientist at Work Blog: A Vital River, Drained of Wildlife ; ;Related ArticlesGerman beer-makers are concerned about the impact of fracking on beer qualityScientist at Work Blog: A Forest Denizen at RiskDot Earth Blog: Old Batteries Crossing Borders Leave a Toxic Lead Trail ;

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Scientist at Work Blog: A Vital River, Drained of Wildlife

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How Climate Change Worsened Violence in Syria

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International security experts explain how low rainfall can evolve into violent conflict. Epic drought in Syria’s farmland, shown here, may have inflamed civil unrest. CharlesFred/Flickr In October 2010, just months before a Tunisian street vendor self-immolated and sparked what would become the Arab Spring, a prolonged drought was turning Syria’s verdant farmland into dust. By last month, more than 70,000 Syrians, mostly civilians, had been killed in the brutal and ongoing conflict between President Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorial regime and a coalition of opposition forces; just today, the UN announced that over one million refugees the country in the last two years. International security experts are now looking at the connection between recent droughts in the Middle East and the protests, revolutions, and deaths that followed, and building a body of evidence to suggest that climate change played a key role in Syria’s violence and the Arab Spring generally. The possibility that climate change could affect security is nothing new: The US Department of Defense has proven to be surprisingly progressive on planning for global warming. But Caitlin Werrell and Francesco Femia, co-founders of the Washington-based Center for Climate and Security, argue that if you want to see the connection between climate and conflict in action today, look no further than Syria. The pair contributed to a series of essays released last week by the Center for American Progress, all arguing that the Arab Spring is a textbook example of the link between climate change and social instability. Climate Desk called them up to discuss how lack of rainfall leads into violent uprising, and how the international community can prepare for the future of extreme weather. Climate Desk: How does climate change play into civil unrest? Where does it rank compared to other violence-causing factors? Caitlin Werrell: We use the term “threat multiplier” or “accelerant of instability,” in the sense that climate change can exacerbate other threats to national or international security. The way it does that is often through water: You have an increased prevalence of drought or floods or changing rainfall patterns, and what this does is it changes your ability to grow food, it has impacts on food security, it influences your ability to produce energy, it influences your infrastructure. Francesco Femia: We wouldn’t actually rank climate change amongst other factors; we would say that climate change is one of those almost special factors that exacerbates other drivers of unrest and/or conflict. It just makes other drivers of unrest worse. CD: What has happened in the case of Syria, specifically? FF: In Syria, prior to the unrest that eventually exploded into revolution and armed conflict, Syria had experienced an unprecedented drought, lasting about five years. In 2011, NOAA produced a report showing that the Mediterranean littoral and the Middle East had significant drought conditions that were directly related to climate change. And then we found some reporting that had been done over the course of the drought which were showing that in Syria the drought, connected with natural resource mismanagement by the Assad regime, had led to a mass exodus, rural-to-urban migration, as farmers lost their livelihood. The UN estimated that about 800,000 people in Syria during the course of the drought had their livelihoods entirely destroyed. In the run-up to the unrest in Syria, a lot of international security analysts, even on the eve of the exploding unrest, had determined that Syria was generally a stable country, and that it was immune to social unrest and immune to the Arab Spring. It was clear that there were some stresses underneath the surface, and those migrations that we’re talking about, internal migrations, also put pressure on urban areas that were already economically stressed, and that was added on top of refugees that had been coming in from Iraq since the US invasion. CD: Generally speaking, how well is the connection between climate change and civil unrest understood, by international aid organizations, by governments? Where is there opportunity or need for understanding it better? FF: In the past water scarcity has not necessarily led to conflict. Historically, it has sometimes led to cooperation, as conflicting parties come together to deal with their water resources. But we’re looking at an unprecedented picture in the future that we haven’t seen before. The historical record really doesn’t tell us too much about what to expect for the next 20 or 30 years, just given that we’re talking about an unprecedented climate situation and an unprecedented water situation. The international community is still piecing together how climate change is linked to these particular weather events, whether it’s drought or floods, and then how is that related to conflict. CW: Part of it is that [climate change] is one of many stressors. A lot of conflict, it’s a very complex process, there’s not direct causality between one aspect and another. But as we continue to see instances like Syria, like Egypt, that were indirectly impacted by droughts in Russia and China, these are the type of connections we will see more and more of in the future. And so the understanding we have now is a good foundation for developing more resilient practices, both mitigation and adaptation to the risks of climate change. CD: How well is this connection understood by average Syrians? Do they see the link between the conflict of which they’re a part, and climate change? FF: Generally speaking, we would say that populations are not very well educated about the links between climate change and specific weather events, and there’s a need for more education. And by generally, I mean globally. What is certainly clear is that there’s an understanding from Syrians about how this drought has impacted their own livelihoods, given that so many of them have had to pick up and move. And so, this is unprecedented within their own lifetimes, and unprecedented within the history of the region. In the Middle East and North Africa, these countries have been dealing with drought for a long time. Many of them are arid states, and they’ve had to deal with that. And so naturally there is an openness to making those connections between what is essentially increasing aridity in the region and why that’s happening, and that’s the connection to climate change. And so certainly the leadership in these regions, especially those who deal with water and energy, are very acutely aware of these things. CW: In other work we’ve done in Mali, drought is not something new, and people for thousands of years have been dealing with how do you survive in very arid regions. What is new is the rate of change, how long these droughts are lasting, the intensity of the drought. So to some degree, people in these regions are best-equipped to deal with water scarcity, but a lot of times these changes are very different from the floods and droughts of yesterday. CD: Given the likelihood that we’ll encounter more droughts like this in the future, what can be done to ensure that each one isn’t followed by some kind of violence or unrest? FF: There are certain things that governments and the international community will never be able to control. There are so many factors that feed into civil unrest and conflict, particularly armed conflict, that have to do with historical grievances, economics, democratic practice, etc., that there’s certainly no silver bullet on climate resilience, that’s going to prevent conflict. In other words, doing something about climate change is not going to bring world peace, in and of itself. However, it is very important that governments and the international community recognize that we can do something about mitigating climate change and also adapting to the risks. Governments can climate-proof their infrastructure: We’re talking about better water practices, better irrigation techniques. It also means climate-proofing institutions we normally don’t think of as associated with climate change, such as health infrastructure. If diseases are going to spread differently because of climate change, then governments should be prepared for that. In the Arab World right now, governments that are going through transition, whether it’s Libya, or Egypt, or Syria, that’s still in the midst of an armed conflict, in rebuilding post-conflict, and there really is an opportunity to get this right.

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How Climate Change Worsened Violence in Syria

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How Climate Change Worsened Violence in Syria

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