[Resource Depletion]: from Texas Tribune, Sat Jun 26 2010:
How Bad Is the Ogallala Aquifer's Decline in Texas? -- Stretching across eight states, the amount of water is so vast that, according to one writer, it could fill Lake Erie nine times over. Within Texas, the Ogallala accounts for about 40 percent of all water use. But the aquifer's levels are declining sharply here. In a dry growing season last year, the High Plains Water District, which includes all or part of 15 Panhandle counties, recorded an average drop of 1.5 feet, the most since 1997. The rains have returned, but the 2007 state water plan projects that the Ogallala's volume will fall a staggering 52 percent between 2010 and 2060, as corn and cotton growers continue to draw from its depths.... In general, he says, Texans are probably pumping the Ogallala at about six times the rate of recharge.... Edwards Aquifer Authority v. Day has the potential to gut the state's ability to regulate groundwater through local districts, by making them more vulnerable to court challenge. If it goes the other way -- and the court decides landowners do not have an ownership right in groundwater -- then Johnson says that districts would have few limits on their ability to restrict groundwater use.
[Biology Breach]: from BBC, Fri Jun 25 2010:
Africa 'witnessing birth of a new ocean' -- Africa is witnessing the birth of a new ocean, according to scientists at the Royal Society. Geologists working in the remote Afar region of Ethiopia say the ocean will ...
[Species Collapse]: from New York Times, Thu Jun 24 2010:
Asian Carp gets to threshold of Great Lakes -- After months of worrying over hints and signs and DNA traces suggesting that Asian carp, a voracious, nonnative fish, might be moving perilously close to the Great Lakes, ...
[Species Collapse]: from PhysOrg, Wed Jun 23 2010:
Humans will be extinct in 100 years says eminent scientist -- Eminent Australian scientist Professor Frank Fenner, who helped to wipe out smallpox, predicts humans will probably be extinct within 100 years, because of overpopulation, ...
