Water is life. Knowledge is power.
Photo: Swimmers make their way up the Russian River in the Barb’s Tri, a triathlon for women at the Healdsburg Memorial Beach on Saturday. (John Burgess/The Press Democrat)
Here’s what you need to know
In the 1990s the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identified storm water runoff from industrial land use properties as a source of pollution in surface water, including rivers, creeks, and lakes.
In most urban settings, storm … [more…]
Photo: Farmland abutting prairie potholes, a type of ephemeral wetland, in North Dakota.Jim Brandenburg/Minden Pictures
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Thursday will finalize a rule to strip away environmental protections for streams, wetlands and other water bodies, handing a victory to farmers, fossil fuel producers and real estate developers who said Obama-era rules had shackled them with onerous and unnecessary burdens.
From Day 1 of his administration, President … [more…]
At the 8th Binational Meeting of the Lake Erie Millennium Network, 125 scientists gathered at the University of Windsor in Ontario to hear experts weigh-in on the health of the southernmost, warmest and shallowest of the Great Lakes.
They presented research on everything from climate change, water quality, phosphorous, agricultural run-off, cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), hypoxia (deficiency in oxygen), cladophora (green algae) to ice, invasive species, sediment concentrations, and much, much … [more…]
Photo: This colony of Spiny Flower Coral (Mussa angulosa) shows sections that are partially bleached, completely bleached, and even some dead sections already overgrown with algae. A bleached Fire Coral stands alongside. (Credit: Joyce & Frank Burek/NOAA Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary)
Many people are curious about Iowa stream nitrate before modern agriculture became established across the landscape. They want to know what the “natural” level of nitrate was. It turns out we do have some actual data. In 1955, the Iowa Geological Survey published a document titled “Water-Supply Bulletin No. 5, Quality of Surface Waters of Iowa, 1886-1954” (1). Some of these data are shown below (as nitrogen).
Confluence of the … [more…]