High good, low bad: Mead in September
Fireworks over Hoover Dam in 2002 for the US Bureau of Reclamation centennial. Photo: USBR. The year of Reclamation's centennial was at the time the worst on record for snowmelt recharging the Colorado River. Fast shrinking reserves in Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam convinced quarreling states along the Colorado River that the days of surpluses were over and the Colorado River was headed into an epochal drought.
COMPLETION of Hoover Dam in 1936 created Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States. It holds Colorado River water serving California, Arizona, Nevada and the Republic of Mexico. Climate change and population growth in Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego and Los Angeles have reduced the lake’s elevation more than 32 feet in the last five years. Here are year-on-year US Bureau of Reclamation closing elevations for September going back to 2004:
DATE ELEVATION
September 30, 2009…
Guiberson fire burn scar
Burn scar from the Guiberson Fire in Ventura County, California, September 26, 2009. Source: NASA. Click on the image to be taken to the original image with background text from the Earth Observatory.
Baja on show
Spiny-Tailed Iguana (Ctenosaura hemilopha conspicuosa) eating Cardon Cactus (Pachycereus pringlei) blossoms. Photo: Ralph Lee Hopkins. All rights reserved. Click here to be taken to the San Diego Natural History Museum
THE WORK OF National Geographic photographer Ralph Lee Hopkins is included in the new show “Baja California” at the Ordover Gallery of the San Diego Natural History Museum. Also on view will be photographs by Octavio Aburto, Pilar Artola, Miguel Angel de la Cueva, Jack Dykinga, Patricio Robles Gil, Flip Nicklin, Abe Ordover, and Julio Rodriguez Ramos. All artwork in The Ordover Gallery is for sale. A substantial portion of proceeds will benefit the museum. For more information, go to: www.ordovergallery.com.
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Arachnophiles, rejoice
EVERY fall, the Butterfly Pavilion of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County metamorphoses into the Spider Pavilion. It happened this Sunday. Arachnophiles, rejoice. The Spider Pavilion is officially open. For details, click here. For help identifying the authors of the autumn webs now in most eaves and trees, click here.
This post has been updated. The headline has been changed to reflect this spider lover’s glee.…
US Fish and Wildlife Service publishes climate change plan
Green-winged teal at Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, Lincoln County, Nevada. Source: US Fish and Wildlife Service. Click on the image to be taken to the refuge's website.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released its plan for dealing with the effects of climate change on the country’s natural resources, including rising sea levels, the spread of invasive species and changing wildlife migration patterns reports the Riverside Press-Enterprise. The proposed strategy is up for public review and comment until Nov. 23.
To keep reading, click here.
To go to the Service’s draft plan, click here. Via Aquafornia.
For links to a Guardian guide to a draft global agreement on climate change, a Time Magazine article on our “long summer” and a Nature special report, click here.
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