I vote for him
University of California hydrologist Jay Famiglietti is calling, loudly, for a national science policy to map, model and understand fresh water reserves to enable coherent planning for the future.Image of the day: River of No Return
“The Middle Fork of the Salmon is not so much a river as an exuberant expression of water at play,” writes Joel K. Bourne, Jr. “It tumbles and turns and trips over itself for a hundred miles through the largest unbroken wilderness in the lower 48, the 2.3-million-acre Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness, named for the pristine Salmon River gorge and the Idaho senator who made sure most of its vast watershed would stay that way. No dams temper its flow. No roads line its banks. It dances down its canyon much as it has since the glaciers receded 10,000 years ago—in spring as a raging, tree-felling torrent, in late summer as a spare, crystalline rivulet.
“Today it is one of the ultimate white-water experiences in the United States, drawing thousands of visitors each year. But 60 years ago its future—and that of hundreds of other rivers across …
Santa Barbara’s asphalt volcanoes
From National Geographic News: Strange undersea domes spotted off the California coast are extinct “asphalt volcanoes” made from a mixture of hardened crude oil and marine fossils … But there’s little point in harvesting the asphalt mounds for fuel. “The quality of the material is very poor. … It’s not worth something like light sweet crude,” said lead study author David Valentine, an earth scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Click here to keep reading. Via Aquafornia.…
‘Oddball’ crocs
From National Geographic: Built to move on land, DuckCroc may have been quick-witted, as well as quick on its feet. Scans of DuckCroc's brain shows it surrounded by air pockets — signs that it was a turbocharged organ in need of cooling. DogCroc also shared similar characteristics. You might call them the corvettes of crocodiles. But DuckCroc had an even bigger fore brain that was connected to a very specialized nose - perhaps something like a duck-billed platypus.
Amphibian lovers, set your TiVos. National Geographic is set to unveil a new group of “oddball” crocs at 9pm, Saturday November 21st in “When Crocs Ate Dinosaurs.”
“There’s an entire croc world brewing in Africa that we really had only an inkling about before,” Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago, told National Geographic News. “We knew about SuperCroc, the titan of all crocs, but we didn’t …
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