ON THE WESTERN side of the San Fernando Valley, behind the bleachers of Canoga Park High School, two concrete drainage ditches merge. Here in parched Southern California, barely a trickle runs through these channels. Most days it’s more like a sheen of greenish moisture, a puddle filtering across cl...
A recent article on The National Geographic website titled Los Angeles River: Concrete Ditch to Urban Oasis tells us that a restoration plan has been made for the practically empty 51 miles that was once a river. Success for the city of angels, indeed! Make sure to read up on the plans, it is really...
What did the L.A. Basin look like before there was a Los Angeles? A common misconception—one that resonates with genuine concerns about the city's aridity and reliance on imported water—is that the city's natural state is desert. But early accounts of the landscape painted a different picture, ...
From the shoreline at North Avenue Beach in Chicago, the blue water of Lake Michigan stretches as far as the eye can see. But beneath that pristine image, there's a barely visible threat, says Jennifer Caddick of the Alliance for the Great Lakes: microbeads.
These tiny bits of plastic, small scrubb...
Although recent declines in nitrate in the Illinois River are promising, increasing nitrate levels at other sites throughout the basin are a continuing cause for concern.
Nitrate levels in the Illinois River decreased by 21 percent between 2000 and 2010, marking the first time substantial, multi-ye...
Hundreds of tundra swans suddenly rose off of a marsh, the strokes of their powerful wings making a whistling sound as they flew.
They landed a short distance away at another marsh, where other tundra swans were gliding over the water like a flotilla of toy sailboats.
Mike Schlepp doesn't know wha...
The annual pace of wetland loss increased by 25 percent between 2004 and 2009 compared to the previous six years, according to a study released late last year.
Battered by a series of hurricanes and ongoing subsidence, or sinking land, the 68 million acres of Gulf Coast wetlands had the most loss d...
While the earth is blessed with 11 quintillion gallons of fresh water, waste and inefficient distribution systems have turned this theoretically inexhaustible resource into a key commodity for long-term investors, nations and non- government groups to fight over.
The investment opportunity is vast,...
The culmination of the five-year project has been the development of an integrated action planning toolkit on wetland conservation and management, which can be adapted to help provide bespoke solutions to protect valuable ecosystems around the globe.
Launched today at events in China, India and Vie...
Mopti — At the noisy market in Mali's central city of Mopti, 49-year-old Alimatou Maiga complains about how hard it is to find big fish for sale these days.
Extracting a dried fish from a dish full of others, Maiga said supplies have become less plentiful even though the region is Mali's main sourc...
Before Disney World, Silver Springs in Central Florida was for decades one of the state's most popular tourist destinations.Even if you've never visited Silver Springs, you might have seen it — if you're old enough. The 1960s television show Sea Hunt was filmed here, as were countless movies includi...
