June 21st, 2022
Via the Los Angeles Times, an article on how – as the water crisis worsens on the Colorado River – an urgent call for Western states to ‘act now’ has been made: With the Colorado River’s depleted reservoirs continuing to drop to new lows, the federal government has taken the unprecedented step of telling the seven […]
Read more »Droughts and Societal Change: Impact of Drought On Emergence of Islam In Late Antique Arabia
June 20th, 2022
Via the Daily Mail, an article on a new report published by Science that examines the impact that extreme drought on the Arabian peninsula had upon the rise of Islam in the seventh century: For nearly 300 years, the Himyarite kingdom was the dominant power in ancient Arabia. Its economy, based on agriculture and foreign […]
Read more »June 20th, 2022
Via the Salt Lake City Tribune, commentary on how to save the Colorado River: The 40 million of us who depend upon the Colorado River are using more water than the river can provide. We are relentlessly plundering the water stored in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, to compensate for mounting water deficits. As these […]
Read more »The Southwest’s Unchecked Thirst for Colorado River Water Could Prove Devastating Upstream
June 20th, 2022
Via CNN, an article on how the Southwest’s unchecked thirst for Colorado River water could prove devastating upstream: Among those who love to chase trout with flies made of feathers, just the mention of a certain seven-mile stretch of Utah’s Green River can turn a hardened man rhapsodic. “I’ve guided in New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, […]
Read more »June 17th, 2022
Via Terra Daily, an article on a recent decision by some South African towns to cut water supply after years of drought: A South African municipality on Monday imposed six-hour daily water outages, as reservoirs risk “Day Zero” when they run dry after years of droughts. Kouga, a southern municipality of six towns and 120,000 […]
Read more »Drought’s Spillover Effect In U.S. West
June 17th, 2022
Courtesy of Circle of Blue, an article on how – in a region latticed with pipelines and canals – the consequences of dry conditions in one basin are exported to neighboring watersheds: The American West has been plumbed into a series of “mega-watersheds.” Because basins are connected by pipelines and canals, drought in one region […]
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