Image of the day: Beautiful Blighty
IT’S not surprising that more than half of the winning images in the Guardian newspaper’s UK-wide landscape photography competition involved water. Another name for the place is the British Isles. What is striking is a creeping urban edge in a normally pastoral style of photography. While the winner featuring sunrise over the Isle of Skye was a lyrical ideal, this image by John Parminter, “Food for thought,” finds beauty and horror in its image of an abandoned shopping cart in the harbor of Aberdeen in northeastern Scotland.
For the full series, click here. The images will be on exhibit at London’s National Theatre after December 5th.…
Workshops explain new statewide landscape irrigation ordinance
Use of lawn will be reduced indirectly in AB 1881 by a reduction in allowed evapotranspiration rates. Photo: Florian's photostream on Flickr.
CALIFORNIA’S new ordinance on water use in landscapes, AB 1881, became law in September. Counties and cities will be required to comply with it, or stricter local standards, by January 1, 2010. Starting tomorrow (Tuesday October 20th) in Los Angeles, Wednesday in San Diego and Thursday in Chino, workshops will be held around the state to explain what this involves. Click here for details and a state-wide schedule, along with information on how to register by e-mail. Admission is free.
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The week that was, 10/11-17/2009
The Spruce Mine, Logan Co., West Virginia. Source: The Charleston Gazette. Click on the map to be taken to the Gazette blog "Coal Tatoo."
The Spruce Mine as currently configured would bury more than seven miles of streams. –– Ken Ward, Jr, Coal Tatoo blog at the Charleston Gazette, October 16, 2009
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it planned to use its authority for the first time to revoke a previously issued permit for a West Virginia surface mine. — NPR / AP, October 16, 2009
Region III is aware that EPA has never before used its Section 404(c) authority to review a previously permitted project since Congress enacted the Clean Water Act in 1972. That it is necessary in this circumstance … reflects the magnitude and scale … of this mountaintop removal mining operation — the largest strip mining operation ever proposed in Appalachia …
Color me stupid
Infrared aerial photographs help the Southern Nevada Water Authority identify lawn during a water crisis in the Mojave Desert city. Computer treatment of the photographs pinpoints the most wasteful use of water on grass -- on front lawns -- shown here in yellow. Back lawns are shown in green, trees in red and the pools in blue. Photo: Southern Nevada Water Authority via the Las Vegas Sun
TODAY’S Las Vegas Sun has an interesting story on the forced retirement of the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s aerial landscape conservation program.
The gist of it is that Las Vegas wants to save water by aerial identification of water wasters, but the Southern Nevada Water Authority can’t afford to keep the program going.
The SNWA skint? Since when? A Friday story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that the Authority had just spent $4m …
The Dry Garden: Weeding in the rain
With the first rain of the season fast evaporating from the tree leaves outside the window, it feels as if I may never again enjoy perfect gloom. So much rain in Los Angeles fails to come at all; other times it comes down too hard, and so often it falls at night. By contrast, this week water met daylight. From morning till night, the atmosphere was like gray milk, making visibility down among the plants incomparably good. Without its normal cover of glare, the garden stood for inspection … By Wednesday afternoon, it was time to admit a knuckle-scraping truth. The job that needed doing was weeding.
To keep reading the Dry Garden in the Los Angeles Times, click here.…
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