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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(4)
Plague/Virus:(2)
Climate Chaos:(7)
Resource Depletion: (4)
Biology Breach:(7)
Recovery:(5)
This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
ecosystem interrelationships  ~ oil issues  ~ water issues  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ health impacts  ~ toxic buildup  ~ ocean warming  ~ climate impacts  ~ tipping point  ~ deniers  ~ drought  



ApocaDocuments (4) matching "water issues" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "water issues"]
Sat, Oct 23, 2010
from Associated Press:
Horror disease hits Uganda
A disease whose progression and symptoms seem straight out of a horror movie but which can be treated has killed at least 20 Ugandans and sickened more than 20,000 in just two months. Jiggers, small insects which look like fleas, are the culprits in the epidemic which causes parts of the body to rot. They often enter through the feet. Once inside a person's body, they suck the blood, grow and breed, multiplying by the hundreds. Affected body parts -- buttocks, lips, even eyelids -- rot away...The insects breed in dirty, dusty places. The medical name for the parasitic disease is tungiasis, which is caused by the female sand fly burrowing into the skin. It exists in parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, besides sub-Saharan Africa...health workers are telling residents of the 12 affected districts in Uganda that jiggers thrive amid poor hygienic conditions. ...


Praise the Lord and pass the hand sanitizer.

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Fri, Oct 22, 2010
from BBC:
Warming destabilises freshwater aquatic ecosystems
Future warming could have "profound implications" for the stability of freshwater ecosystems, a study warns. Researchers said warmer water affected the distribution and size of plankton - tiny organisms that form the basis of food chains in aquatic systems. The team warmed plankton-containing vessels by 4C (7F) - the temperature by which some of the world's rivers and lakes could warm over the next century.... "Essentially, what we observed within the phytoplankton (microscopic plants) community was that it switched from a system that was dominated by larger autotrophs (plants that photosynthesise) to a system that was dominated by smaller autotrophs with a lower standing biomass." Dr Yvon-Durocher added that a greater abundance, but lower overall biomass, of smaller phytoplankton had "very important implications for the stability of plankton food webs".... "This meant that the distribution of biomass between plants and animals changed from a... situation where you had a large amount of plants and a smaller amount of animal consumers to an 'inverted pyramid' where you have a smaller quantity of plant biomass and a larger amount of animal biomass," he told BBC News. ...


I eat the food pyramid upside down. Why not the rivers?

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Tue, Oct 19, 2010
from NSF/NCAR, via EurekAlert:
Drought may threaten much of globe within decades
The United States and many other heavily populated countries face a growing threat of severe and prolonged drought in coming decades, according to results of a new study by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Aiguo Dai. The detailed analysis concludes that warming temperatures associated with climate change will likely create increasingly dry conditions across much of the globe in the next 30 years. The drought may reach a scale in some regions by the end of the century that has rarely, if ever, been observed in modern times.... While regional climate projections are less certain than those for the globe as a whole, Dai's study indicates that most of the western two-thirds of the United States will be significantly drier by the 2030s.... "We are facing the possibility of widespread drought in the coming decades, but this has yet to be fully recognized by both the public and the climate change research community," Dai says. "If the projections in this study come even close to being realized, the consequences for society worldwide will be enormous." ...


Only this time, the great clouds of the dustbowl will be laced with unknown toxins from corporate farms.

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Mon, Oct 18, 2010
from New York Times:
Lake Mead Hits Record Low Level
Sometime between 11 and noon on Sunday, the water level in Lake Mead, the massive reservoir whose water fills the taps of millions of people across the Southwest, fell lower than it ever has since it was filled 75 years ago. Even as a flurry of thunderstorms dropped rain on the Las Vegas area, with as much as an inch falling in the mountains to the north, Lake Mead's level dropped to 1,083.18 feet above sea level just before noon, and fell further, to 1,083.09, by 9 local time Monday morning.... Lake Mead's levels are still eight feet above the level at which a shortage is officially declared and limited rationing could go into effect.... But Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said: "This strikes me as such an amazing moment. It's three-quarters of a century since they filled it. And at the three-quarter-century mark, the world has changed."... Mr. Nelson said that the 11-year drought, which has caused the Colorado River to deliver considerably less water than its users have been promised, "reflects weather patterns that are what climate models predict for an era of climate change." "Either these are early indicators of climate change or conditions we should expect more of in the future," he concludes. ...


2010 just keeps rackin' up the records!

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