Water spoken here
Posted on | June 9, 2010 | 3 Comments
This USGS poster of the water cycle was spotted on TajikWater.net. It turns out that the USGS has versions in dozens of languages. Click on the image for the international resource.
Butterflies in Claremont
Posted on | June 8, 2010 | No Comments
A new butterfly pavilion opens to the public at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden on June 12. Click here for details. For region-wide listings of classes on butterfly gardens, water-wise irrigation, replacing lawn with natives, looks inside the Arboretum library, hikes and preservation efforts, click here for June and here for July.
The week that was, 5/30-6/5/2010
Posted on | June 6, 2010 | No Comments
June 5, 2010 marked the 34th anniversary of the failure of Teton Dam. Click on the image for background from J. Davis Roger of the Missouri University of Science & Technology
Thirty-four years ago Saturday, eastern Idaho changed forever. The eight-month-old Teton Dam on the Teton River near Rexburg collapsed on June 5, 1976, drowning 11 people and 18,000 head of livestock and causing $2 billion in damage. — “Time to be blunt. The Teton dam won’t be rebuilt, nor should it be,” editorial in the Idaho Times-News, June 3, 2010
“The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.” — Anwar Sadat quoted in “War clouds gather as nations demand a piece of the Nile,” Times of London, June 4, 2010
Ethiopia this month opened the 460MW Tana Beles dam, which would have been considered an act of war in Sadat’s time. A string of new dams are planned to join the Beles on the Blue Nile. On the White Nile Uganda is opening the controversial Bujagali dam. — “Egypt warns that new Nile agreement could prove a ‘death sentence,'” The Independent, May 31, 2010 (Read this, it’s excellent. -ed)
...at least 472 million river-dependent people, some 8% of the world’s population, are estimated to live downstream of large dams and be affected by dam-induced changes in river flows and ecosystem conditions … — Achim Steiner, Former Secretary General of the World Commission on Dams; UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director UN Environment Programme (UNEP), “WCD + 10: Revisiting the Large Dam Controversy,” Water Alternatives, June 2010
Click here to keep reading ‘The week that was’
The Dry Garden: UCLA in theory and in practice
Posted on | June 4, 2010 | No Comments
Stephanie Landregan, program director of the UCLA Extension Landscape Architecture & Horticulture program. Click on the image to find out about certificate courses. Photo: Emily Green
Nobody ever said that doing the right thing was easy. Students in UCLA Extension’s landscape architecture and horticulture program now learn this before leaving with a certificate. “All of our advanced design classes used to be make-believe,” said Stephanie Landregan, appointed program director two years ago. “Now every one of our advanced classes is involved with the community. Every one of our students has real projects and reality checks. The big ideas get tested.”
Just such a test happened in November, when an undergraduate from UCLA’s environmental science department contacted Landregan wanting to know how his class might introduce a water-efficient landscape somewhere on the 400-plus-acre campus. Landregan partnered his class with a group of her graduate extension students, and the team soon learned that although UCLA might teach environmental ideals, facilities managers practice something else entirely. Every inch of waterlogged sod, every rose bed, was sacrosanct, she said.
Click here to keep reading this week’s Dry Garden column in the Los Angeles Times.
La Niña watch begins
Posted on | June 3, 2010 | 4 Comments
After 16.36* inches of rain recorded for downtown Los Angeles from June 2009-June 2010, ocean conditions indicate a transition from the mildly wet El Niño system that gave Southern California a slightly better than average rainfall year to a dry La Niña one, according to the National Weather Service. An experimental and unofficial outlook map set issued by its Climate Prediction Center lays out a hot and dry 2010/11. Jet Propulsion Laboratory oceanographer Bill Patzert is already betting on a dry La Niña 2010/11 season. “Two years of El Niño are just such a low probability,” he said. “Six out of ten years are dry. I wish I had those odds in Vegas.” For those who think in terms of “normal” rainfall for Los Angeles, he added, “Normal is a cycle on a washing machine.”
*From the NWS California Nevada Forecast Center. NWS Los Angeles / Oxnard records show the total for the same period to be 16.51 inches.
Click here to see a similar model for temperatures
Tags: Chance or Rain > Emily Green > La Nina > National Weather Service
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