By Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Researc

Image of polar ice wall (Image from Human Progress)

The alga Melosira arctica, which grows under Arctic sea ice, contains ten times as many microplastic particles as the surrounding seawater. This concentration at the base of the food web poses a threat to creatures that feed on the algae at the sea surface. Clumps of dead algae also transport the plastic with its pollutants particularly quickly into the deep sea — and can thus explain the high microplastic concentrations in the sediment there. Researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute have now reported this in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

It is a food lift for bottom-dwelling animals in the deep sea: the alga Melosira arctica grows at a rapid pace under the sea ice during spring and summer months and forms metre-long cell chains there. When the cells die and the ice to whose underside they adhere melts, they stick together to form clumps that can sink several thousand metres to the bottom of the deep sea within a single day. There they form an important food source for bottom-dwelling animals and bacteria. In addition to food, however, these aggregates also transport a dubious cargo into the Arctic deep sea: microplastics. A research team led by biologist Dr Melanie Bergmann from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) has now published this in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

“We have finally found a plausible explanation for why we always measure the largest amounts of microplastics in the area of the ice edge, even in deep-sea sediment,” Melanie Bergmann reports. Until now, the researchers only knew from earlier measurements that microplastics concentrate in the ice during sea ice formation and are released into the surrounding water when it melts. “The speed at which the Alga descends means that it falls almost in a straight line below the edge of the ice. Marine snow, on the other hand, is slower and gets pushed sideways by currents so sinks further away. With the Melosira taking microplastics directly to the bottom, it helps explain why we measure higher microplastic numbers under the ice edge,” explains the AWI biologist.

On an expedition with the research vessel Polarstern in summer 2021, she and a research team collected samples of Melosira algae and the surrounding water from ice floes. The partners from Ocean Frontier Institute (OFI), Dalhousie University and the University of Canterbury then analysed these in the laboratory for microplastic content. The surprising result: the clumps of algae contained an average of 31,000 ± 19,000 microplastic particles per cubic metre, about ten times the concentration of the surrounding water. “The filamentous algae have a slimy, sticky texture, so it potentially collects microplastic from the atmospheric deposition on the sea, the sea water itself, from the surrounding ice and any other source that it passes. Once entrapped in the algal slime they travel as if in an elevator to the seafloor, or are eaten by marine animals,” explains Deonie Allen of the University of Canterbury and Birmingham University who is part of the research team.

Since the ice algae are an important food source for many deep-sea dwellers, the microplastic could thus enter the food web there. But it is also an important food source at the sea surface and could explain why microplastics were particularly widespread among ice-associated zooplankton organisms, as an earlier study with AWI participation shows. In this way, it can also enter the food chain here when the zooplankton is eaten by fish such as polar cod and these are eaten by seabirds and seals and these in turn by polar bears.

The detailed analysis of plastic composition showed that a variety of different plastics are found in the Arctic, including polyethylene, polyester, polypropylene, nylon, acrylic and many more. In addition to various chemicals and dyes, this creates a mix of substances whose impact on the environment and living creatures is difficult to assess. “People in the Arctic are particularly dependent on the marine food web for their protein supply, for example through hunting or fishing. This means that they are also exposed to the microplastics and chemicals contained in it. Microplastics have already been detected in human intestines, blood, veins, lungs, placenta and breast milk and can cause inflammatory reactions, but the overall consequences have hardly been researched so far,” reports Melanie Bergmann. “Micro and nano plastics have basically been detected in every place scientists have looked in the human body and within a plethora of other species. It is known to change behaviours, growth, fecundity and mortality rates in organisms and many plastic chemicals are known toxins to humans,” says Steve Allen, OFI Dalhousie University, a research team member.

Moreover, the Arctic ecosystem is already threatened by the profound environmental upheavals caused by the climate crisis. If the organisms are now additionally exposed to microplastics and the chemicals they contain, it can weaken them further. “So, we have a combination of planetary crises that we urgently need to address effectively. Scientific calculations have shown that the most effective way to reduce plastic pollution is to reduce the production of new plastic,” says the AWI biologist and adds: “This should therefore definitely be prioritised in the global plastics agreement that is currently being negotiated.” That is why Melanie Bergmann is also accompanying the next round of negotiations, which will begin in Paris at the end of May.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230421092152.htm

By Guardian staff and agencies

Water from the Colorado River fills an irrigation canal in Arizona

The federal government on Tuesday laid out options for saving the Colorado River in an effort to prevent it from falling to critically low levels and put an end to months-long negotiations between the seven western states and Indigenous nations that rely on it as a dwindling resource.

As less and less water has been flowing through the river and its reservoirs fell to historic lows, the US Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water resources, called on the basin’s seven states – California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming – to find ways to cut as much as 30% of their river water allocation.

But despite numerous deadlines, the states have been unable to agree on how to reduce their usage to prevent deadpool – the point at which the waterline sits beneath intake pipes at the Hoover Dam and the river effectively ceases to flow. Last year, the Lake Mead reservoir sank to its lowest level since the 1930s.

On Tuesday, the Department of the Interior said it would either impose cuts to water allotments according to the water-rights priority system or evenly across the board.

The interior department did not say how states should reduce water usage, but defended its authority to make sure basic needs such as drinking water and hydropower generated from the river are met – even if it means setting aside the priority system. The more than a century old method of dividing up the water is based on a senior priority system among the states – basically, whichever one was there first – that puts California at the front of the line.

The 1,450-mile (2,334km) Colorado River serves 40 million people and generates hydroelectric power for regional markets, and irrigates nearly 6m acres (2.4m hectares) of farmland.

California receives the largest share of water from the Colorado River and would be most affected by an overall cut, particularly its agricultural regions, which help feed the country.

If allotments are changed based on the seniority of water rights, California, as the oldest user of the river’s water, would mostly be spared, but it could be disastrous for Arizona, causing the aqueduct that carries drinking water to Phoenix and Tucson to be reduced to nearly nothing and hurting the Native American tribes that rely on that water, and whose rights to it are guaranteed by treaty.

Among the main differences between the two plans is whether states should account for the vast amount of water lost along the Colorado River basin to evaporation and leaky infrastructure as it flows through the region’s behemoth dams and waterways.

Federal officials say more than 10% of river water evaporates, leaks and spills – yet Arizona, California and Nevada have never accounted for that loss.

California disagreed with that approach on grounds that the state would lose a significant amount of water if such losses were counted. The further south the river travels, more water evaporates – meaning that if evaporation losses were counted, California and Arizona would stand to lose more than states further north.

Tommy Beaudreau, the interior deputy secretary, told the New York Times he would rather see the states that rely on the Colorado River reach an agreement among themselves, so that the federal government doesn’t have to impose reductions.

The lengthy environmental analysis released by the Biden administration on Tuesday explores both options, as well as a third option that includes taking no action. States, tribes and other water users now have until 30 May to comment before federal officials announce their formal decision.

Beaudreau gave no indication of whether the department prefers one approach over the other.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/11/colorado-river-proposed-water-cuts

By Helena Horton

A Surfers Against Sewage protest in Cornwall in 2022. The sewage scandal has become a hot topic at the local elections

More than 7,500 days’ worth of raw sewage was dumped in the constituencies of cabinet ministers last year, an analysis has found.

The Yorkshire seat of the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, was third on the leaderboard, with 3,455 dumping events, lasting 20,615 hours, Labour party analysis has found.

The Central Devon seat of Mel Stride, the secretary of state for work and pensions, topped the list with 4,054 sewage dumping events lasting 33,921 hours, while the Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire constituency of the chief whip, Simon Hart, was second, with 3,783 dumping events lasting 29,415 hours.

Labour analysis of Environment Agency data, ranked by constituency by website Top of the Poops, shows that in 2022 raw sewage was discharged into cabinet ministers’ constituencies for 180,759 hours. This equates to an average of 64 sewage dumps a day, or a new sewage dump taking place every 22 minutes.

The sewage scandal has become a hot topic at the local elections, and the government recently released a plan to tackle the issue of raw waste being dumped into waterways. However, the environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has said she believes the infrastructure needed to stop the spills is too expensive.

She also wrote this week in the online magazine ConservativeHome that she believes Labour and the Liberal Democrats have been “scamming” the public by drawing attention to the issue.

The shadow environment secretary, Jim McMahon, said: “The first duty of any member of parliament is to the people that send them to Westminster. That Tory cabinet ministers allow the areas that they represent to be sullied in tonnes of filthy raw sewage shows they have no respect for the places where their constituents live and work.

“The next Labour government will build a better Britain, ending the Tory sewage scandal by delivering mandatory monitoring on all sewage outlets, introducing automatic fines for discharges, setting ambitious targets for stopping systematic sewage dumping and ensuring that water bosses are held to account for negligence.”

McMahon recently introduced the water quality (sewage discharge) bill, which proposes four measures: setting a legal requirement for the monitoring of all sewage outlets and penalties for failures in adhering to monitoring requirements; imposing automatic fines for sewage dumping; implementing a legally binding target to reduce sewage dumping events; and a requirement for the secretary of state to publish a strategy for the reduction of sewage discharges and regular economic impact assessments.

A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson said: “By bringing in proper monitoring of storm overflows – up from 7% in 2010 to 91% now – this government has enabled the extent of sewage discharges to be revealed so that we are better equipped to tackle it.

“Our new Plan for Water sets out the increased investment, tougher enforcement and tighter regulation to tackle the issue. We have recently confirmed £1.1bn in new, accelerated investment to tackle storm overflows, delivering a reduction of 10,000 discharges per year.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/13/more-than-7500-days-worth-of-raw-sewage-dumped-in-ministers-constituencies

By Keith Schneider

Record federal investment in “climate-smart” farm practices are meant to reduce environmental consequences of producing more ethanol from corn, the most heavily fertilized crop.

For decades, leading US farm leaders likened efforts to rein in harmful climate change as attacks on agriculture itself, aligning with oil and gas industry groups to block policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

That stance has slowly shifted in recent years, and now, fueled by $3.1 billion in federal grants, farm country is poised to shape a new era of “climate-smart” agricultural practices and take a significant role in addressing the dire consequences of a warming planet.

The actions can’t come fast enough. A panel of international scientists warned in March that the world faces a “rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future,” and that the actions implemented over the next few years will have consequences “now and for thousands of years.”

The Biden Administration’s focus on agriculture is just one part of a larger effort to address climate change, but it is a key element. By funding 141 experimental projects, the administration is hoping to push an industry currently responsible for generating 10% of U.S. greenhouse gases, to the front of the nation’s work to reduce carbon emissions.

The first grants from the US Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) for 70 large projects, were awarded in September.  A second round of funding, for 71 smaller projects, was awarded in December.   

The scope of the climate-smart program is expansive. Grants range from $271,200 to teach climate-friendly practices to immigrant farmers in Iowa to $95 million to encourage grain farmers in 12 Midwest states to use cultivation methods that build soil fertility. In between are projects to expand organic and sustainable agriculture, sequester carbon on pastures where livestock graze, and develop carbon-reducing cultivation methods on farms operated by African Americans and Native Americans.

In all, more than 60,000 farms and 25 million acres of crop and rangeland are involved, with spending reaching all 50 states and Puerto Rico, according to the U.S.D.A. Considerable sums are also earmarked for development of scientific methods to effectively measure whether these climate-smart practices actually meet a program goal of sequestering 60 million metric tons of carbon.

When making the rounds at annual farm conferences across the country over the winter, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack repeatedly declared that a “transformational” new era had opened for U.S. agriculture. 

Grant recipients such as Marbleseed, a Wisconsin nonprofit that trains farmers in organic agriculture, say the government support is long overdue. Marbleseed is part of a partnership receiving a $4.5 million, five-year grant to train farmer in 14 Midwest and southern states on how to improve soil fertility. “We’ve been a tiny voice shouting into the storm for a very long time,” said Tom Manley, Marbleseed program director. “They finally are starting to hear us.”

Questions and controversy

But amid the optimism, fears and criticism about many elements of the program persist. While the pool of grantees include 11 historically Black universities and 36 public agricultural land grant universities, many others receiving funds are large corporate agriculture players, including companies that have played a role in creating air and water pollution and other environmental woes. They include Tyson Foods, Archer Daniels Midland, John Deere, Cargill, and Exxon Mobil. The influential American Farm Bureau Federation, which recently opposed requirements for reporting greenhouse gas emissions, helped shape the program’s design and counts several state affiliates as grantees.

Given the players involved, skeptics assert that “climate-smart” could be an empty catchphrase to divert attention away from agriculture’s documented record of extensive air and water pollution. Critics fear the projects may actually expand existing, ecologically insensitive methods of farming and say there has been a lack of transparency regarding details for some of the projects.

“The department hasn’t released much information, like a paragraph on each project,” said Ben Lilliston, director of rural strategies and climate change for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a research group in Minneapolis. “There are 141 projects, all with different definitions, all defining climate-smart in their own way. It really opens it up to greenwashing.”

Silvia Secchi, professor in the department of geographical and sustainability sciences at the University of Iowa, said the U.S.D.A. has declined to turn over requested documents about the projects. “They said the reason was to protect confidential business information,” Secchi said. “They’re spending billions of public dollars. What about this program is so sensitive?”

The skeptics also point out that previous transformations in agriculture have come with painful and counter-productive consequences. Widespread adoption of pesticides, nitrogen fertilizers, and concentrated livestock feeding operations, for instance, led to extensive pollution of waterways, decimated soil health, killed off important pollinator species, and exposed people to toxins known to cause cancer and other diseases.

Evolution of “Climate-Smart”

The notion that modifying agricultural approaches could reduce carbon emissions took root over a decade ago. In 2010, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations introduced the concept of “climate-smart agriculture” and its carbon-reducing objectives in an influential report that was widely read in Washington and other world capitals.

The Obama administration got interested. Vilsack, who was serving his first stint as agriculture secretary, collaborated with John Kerry, then secretary of state and now President Biden’s special envoy for climate, to establish the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture. It was introduced as an FAO project at the UN in 2014.

After four years of being ignored by the Trump administration, climate-smart farming became relevant again to the Biden Administration. A week after his inauguration, President Biden issued an executive order “to implement a Government-wide approach that reduces climate pollution in every sector of the economy.”

Recipients are thrilled to see funding coming their way. More than $300 million is directed to sustainable and organic farm projects, by far the most money the U.S.D.A has ever spent to bring environmentally sensitive farming into the mainstream.

But many millions more are earmarked for projects that support conventional farmers and related businesses. Among the large grants was $30 million awarded to Gevo, a Colorado renewable energy developer that is building a $875 million ethanol plant in South Dakota to produce fuel for airlines. The grant provides a 25 cents to 50 cents per bushel bonus to corn growers to supply 35 million bushels needed to produce 65 million gallons of what the U.S.D.A. calls “low-carbon intensity sustainable aviation fuel.” Gevo’s contracts require farmers to grow corn using “carbon-reducing practices.”

Those practices include time-honored approaches such as planting cover crops to build soil fertility, not plowing to keep carbon bound up in soil, and applying less fertilizer. They come with the extra benefits of controlling soil erosion, and in some limited cases, helping keep farm nutrients from running off into waterways.

An even larger grant of $80 million was awarded to Roeslein Alternative Energy, a Missouri company collaborating with Iowa State University, the Nature Conservancy, and 12 other groups to grow corn and soybeans, raise cattle and hogs, and produce methane from manure. The project’s innovative feature is to pay producers to plant grasses to restore prairies, and then harvest them to feed into biodigesters to produce a methane-rich biogas that can be converted to renewable natural gas. Remaining solids can be spread as fertilizer on farm fields, according to the company.

“There is so much opportunity right now in agriculture for energy,” said Roeslein spokesman Brandon Butler. “It’s figuring out how it’s sustainable. We’re at the forefront. Being able to digest biomass into clean, renewable energy coming from the Heartland.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.circleofblue.org/2023/world/u-s-counts-on-climate-smart-farms-to-slow-global-warming/

By Brett Walton

Side canyons and sand bars emerge in a shrinking Lake Powell. Photo © J. Carl Ganter/Circle of Blue

Following a brief but intense period of consultation and analysis, the Biden administration unveiled a pair of short-term options to sustain water levels in key Colorado River reservoirs in the next three years.

Framed by the salt-encrusted canyon walls above Lake Mead, officials from the Interior Department joined colleagues from state and tribal agencies to release a draft supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) that describes how operating procedures at lakes Powell and Mead might be altered to preserve water. The alterations could reduce water deliveries to the lower basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada by as much as a quarter combined next year and even more in 2025 and 2026.

The big question: how will those cuts be distributed among the states? One option is based on historical priority. The other gives each state the same percentage of the cuts.

Managed by the federal Bureau of Reclamation, the two massive reservoirs are the largest water-storage facilities on a river that provides up to 40 million people with a portion of their drinking water and 5.5 million acres of farmland with irrigation. Yet after more than two decades of below-average precipitation they are closer to empty than full. Combined, water fills just a quarter of their storage space.

The draft SEIS is a stop-gap response. Tommy Beaudreau, the Interior deputy secretary, said that the options in the draft document allow the Bureau of Reclamation to respond to declining river flows. The hope, he said, is for ample precipitation so that drastic cuts are not immediately necessary. But the agency is willing to take action to keep the reservoirs from falling below critical levels — 950 feet at Mead, 3,500 feet at Powell — that would endanger power generation and the ability to release water downstream.

“We’re going to protect those minimum critical levels at both Powell and Mead in order to accomplish that,” Beaudreau said.

To that end, the draft SEIS provides two “bookend” options, in which the burden of supply cuts falls on different users.

One option is to apply cuts according to “priority.” This is the water rights system that privileges those who claimed water first. California, with its senior rights, is largely spared in this scenario.

The second option would distribute the cuts proportionally to all users in the three lower basin states. In this scenario if water use must be cut by 10 percent in the lower basin, each state — Arizona, California, and Nevada — would see its allocation reduced by 10 percent. California, in this case, takes a bigger share of cuts than in the first option.

A third option required of all such analyses is “no action,” meaning keeping the status quo.

The volume of cuts would be the same in the two options. For 2024, that means a maximum of just over 2 million acre-feet. About half of these cuts — 1.1 million acre-feet — are part of existing conservation agreements and would happen regardless. The draft SEIS envisions an additional 983,000 acre-feet of cuts next year if reservoirs are low. But that high-end number only applies if Mead is below 1,040 feet. Cuts are smaller at higher reservoir levels.

In the first option — the one guided by the priority system — all of the additional cuts beyond 1.1 million acre-feet are borne by Arizona and Nevada. In the second option, with shared pain, each state takes the same percent cut. How does that look in practice? In 2024 under the first option, Arizona would take 83 percent of the total shortage cuts. Under the second option, just over half.

In 2025 and 2026, cuts would get progressively more severe as reservoirs drop, topping out at a 4 million acre-foot cut if Mead is below 950 feet. Again, 1.1 million acre-feet of cuts are part of existing agreements and will happen regardless.

The seven basin states could not agree to a unified plan before the draft SEIS was published. Six states submitted a plan and California, the lone holdout, submitted its own. Farmers in California’s Imperial Irrigation District have some of the most secure rights on the river and would be protected under a plan that applies cuts according to priority.

Arizona has junior priority for its Central Arizona Project canal, which delivers Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson. Arizona officials have said they will not accept a solution that dries up the canal in favor of senior users. The state is “seeking an equitable outcome,” said Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

The seven states remain in negotiations, officials said. What they want is agreement, not litigation. Lawsuits could mire the basin in court while reservoirs drop.

The draft SEIS is just a precursor to longer-term changes. Current rules for operating the reservoirs expire at the end of 2026. A new set of rules is being negotiated in parallel with the interim, three-year changes proposed in the draft SEIS.

A number of other options were considered for the draft SEIS — filling Lake Mead first, decommissioning Glen Canyon Dam, accounting for evaporation and seepage, importing water — but they were deemed insufficient for detailed analysis. That’s because they either did not meet the objective of continuing to operate both dams or they lacked enough data. The draft also does not consider additional cuts for Mexico, which also uses Colorado River water.

Once the draft SEIS is published in the Federal Register on Friday, a 45-day public comment period begins. Federal officials will refine their options and then select their preferred one. They expect a final SEIS this summer and a record of decision before August so that the document can inform management decisions next year.

Turn of Fortune

The draft SEIS is being published amid a remarkable winter. The Colorado River basin — and the western states as a whole — are benefitting from a notable turn of hydrologic fortune. As SEIS consultations began last fall, the mood was grim. Reservoirs were on a downward plunge and the odds favored another subpar winter.

Federal officials were set to release 7 million acre-feet from Lake Powell this year and were prepared to throttle back releases if conditions warranted. There were fears of a “doomsday scenario” in which as little as 5 million acre-feet would be released. But then winter hit. And it snowed, and snowed, and rained, and snowed.

Today, the year’s outlook is much improved. Spring and summer runoff into Lake Powell is projected to be three times higher than last year and the highest since 2011. The reservoir could rise more than 20 feet in the next 12 months, and releases will be at least 7.8 million acre-feet, which will help Lake Mead.

Water managers view the turn of fortune with cautious appreciation. They know that one above average year does not markedly alter the basin’s path toward a drier future.

“We’ve had other good precipitation years during this 23-year drought,” Beaudreau said. “And yet the downward trajectory of the system has worsened. We cannot kick the can on finding solutions.”

The proposed changes to reservoir operations in the draft SEIS are one of many actions federal, state, and tribal officials have taken in recent years to prevent Mead and Powell from falling unacceptably low. They have released water from reservoirs higher in the watershed, redoubled conservation efforts, paid water users not to take water, and reduced releases from Powell.

Buschatzke of the Arizona Department of Water Resources said that those measures have prevented the reservoirs from crashing. But the approach was too piecemeal. The draft SEIS is an opportunity for substantial change.

“We need to have an outcome in which the cuts are big enough that we don’t have to do these emergency operations every few months,” Buschatzke said. “Because it’s an impossibility to keep that up from a staffing perspective. And I think we lose the confidence of the public, if they don’t see us taking major steps, creating an outcome in which we are stabilizing the system for a long time out into the future.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.circleofblue.org/2023/world/biden-administration-outlines-options-for-colorado-river-emergency-plan/

By Johns Hopkins University

Image of bottled water lined up (Image from Time)

An extreme closeup of feathers from a bird with an uncanny ability to hold water while it flies could inspire the next generation of absorbent materials.

With high resolution microscopes and 3D technology, researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology captured an unprecedented view of feathers from the desert-dwelling sandgrouse, showcasing the singular architecture of their feathers and revealing for the first time how they can hold so much water.

“It’s super fascinating to see how nature managed to create structures so perfectly efficient to take in and hold water,” said co-author Jochen Mueller, an assistant professor in Johns Hopkins’ Department of Civil and Systems Engineering, who specializes in smart materials and design. “From an engineering perspective, we think the findings could lead to new bio-inspired creations.”

The work is published today in The Royal Society Interface.

Sandgrouse found in African deserts typically nest about 20 miles from watering holes to stay safe from predators. To get water home to thirsty chicks, the adult males perform one of nature’s best examples of carry out, gathering water and flying home with it, a feat made even more extraordinary considering the sandgrouse is holding about 15% of his body weight in water, and keeping most of it safe during a roughly 40 mph flight home that takes about a half hour.

The male sandgrouse are the only birds known to hold water like this — their specially adapted belly feathers are the key.

Other researchers first documented these extraordinary belly feathers more than 50 years ago. But only here with modern technology the team can finally demonstrate how the feathers work.

Mueller and MIT engineer Lorna J. Gibson zeroed in on the microstructure of the belly feathers using scanning electron microscopy, microcomputed tomography, light microscopy and 3D videography, looking closely at the shafts, each just a fraction of the width of a human hair, and the even tinier individual barbules.

The team greatly magnified the feathers, observing them both dry and wet. Then, in a move as delicate as it was crucial, while magnified the dry feathers were dunked in water, pulled out, then re-submerged, just like a sandgrouse at a watering hole.

“When you do that type of work, you can’t even breathe or else you blow it away,” Mueller said.

Mueller described the individual feather structure as “magnificent,” with components optimized in several ways to hold and retain water, including the way they bend, how the barbules form protective tentlike clusters when wet, and how tubular structures within each barbule capture water.

Individual feathers held the water through a forest of barbules near the shaft, working together with the curled barbules near the tip acting almost like caps.

“That’s what excited us, to see that level of detail,” Mueller said. “This is what we need to understand in order to use those principles to create new materials.”

The team also computationally modeled the water intake of the feathers.

Mueller and Gibson expect their findings will underpin future engineering designs requiring controlled absorption, secure retention, and easy release of liquids.

Possible applications include the design of netting for collecting and retaining water from fog and dew in desert regions; and a water bottle designed to prevent annoying swinging and sloshing.

For the water bottle or sports backpack, he’s thinking about a design that safely holds a lot of liquid, but includes an inner feather-like system that keeps the water from swinging around while someone moves with it. He thinks a hydration pack or water bladder that could do this would be particularly appreciated by runners.

He also imagines next-level medical swabs that are easier to use, “where you can efficiently soak up liquid, but it’s much easier to release it,” he says, adding that the release feature was an issue for collecting COVID-19 nasal test samples during the pandemic.

Next the team plans to print similar structures in 3D and pursue commercial applications.

Belly feathers used in this work were obtained from a single male adult Namaqua sandgrouse (Pterocles namaqua) in the collection of the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology. The work was also supported by National Science Foundation grant (DMR-1922321)

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230411195920.htm

By University of Colorado at Boulder

Image from Outside

Streamflow is increasing in Alaskan rivers during both spring and fall seasons, primarily due to increasing air temperatures over the past 60 years, according to new University of Colorado Boulder-led research.

This increased volume of free-flowing water during the shoulder seasons is compounded by earlier snowmelt and thawing permafrost, also driven by increasing temperatures; all of which are affecting the formation and safety of Alaska river ice in winter, and the timing of when rivers “break up” in response to seasonal warming each spring.

The findings are the result of a collaboration between researchers at CU Boulder, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Park Service, who analyzed data from 1960 to 2019 for nine major river basins in Alaska. Their results, published in February in Environmental Research Letters, show how rivers can serve as a measurable quantity for understanding the cumulative impacts of climate change in Arctic regions.

“Measuring rivers is useful because it integrates all these other changes in temperature, precipitation, permafrost and snow cover. All the dynamics that feed the hydrologic cycle eventually get filtered into the amount of water in a river,” said Dylan Blaskey, lead author on the study and doctoral student in civil engineering.

This scientific work quantifies the consequences already observed and experienced for generations by local Indigenous communities who rely on these rivers for their livelihoods. They face not only cultural and financial losses from less dependable winter river ice but heightened danger when using these rivers for transportation and fishing.

Ahead of the study’s publication, the CU-led research group hosted the Arctic Rivers Summit in Anchorage late last year. The gathering of Indigenous leaders and community representatives, government officials and scientists met to discuss these and other pressing issues facing Alaska and other Arctic communities. At the Summit, the team learned more about regional and local concerns and observations. The outcome is intended to help the researchers tailor and improve the delivery of scientific data to create information and products that are usable for Indigenous communities faced with planning for an uncertain future.

“We’re using these river gages to monitor these remote areas, but there are many people who have a much more intimate and holistic knowledge of the landscape and how it’s changing,” said Blaskey. “At the Summit, it became clear that we were converging on an understanding of how climate change is affecting Indigenous communities and Arctic ecosystems.”

Strides in streamflow

In comparison to the Lower 48, there are very few river gages in Alaska, said CU Boulder co-author Keith Musselman, assistant professor at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at CU Boulder.

The researchers analyzed six decades’ worth of monthly data from river gages in nine Alaskan rivers, comparing streamflow to air temperature, soil temperature, soil moisture and precipitation across the basins. They also accounted for large scale climate anomalies, such as El Niño and La Niña.

Streamflow in Alaskan rivers typically peaks in summer, and remains quite low in winter, with stark transitions between the two seasons. The study found that while the amount of water flowing through these rivers on a yearly basis is not changing, when it flows through them is shifting, with more water freely flowing from October through April — creating more gradual seasonal transitions.

Changes in air temperature have had the biggest impact on streamflow in these Alaskan rivers. The average days above freezing in April and October have increased by about a day every decade, according to Blaskey. These months are also when average monthly streamflow has increased the most: by 15% per decade in April and 7% per decade in October.

They also found that the correlation of increased streamflow with temperature is only getting stronger over time when data from the first 30 years (1960-1989) are compared to the most recent 30-year period (1990-2019).

Since the 1960s, winter air temperatures have increased by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) on average across the global Arctic. The findings from Alaskan river gages help quantify the disproportionate impacts that climate change is having on the planet’s northernmost ecosystems.

“One of the opportunities and challenges of researching in Alaska is that signals of climate change have already begun to appear,” said Blaskey.

Ripple effects in community

Indigenous communities use rivers for vital transportation and sustenance, whether frozen in ice or as free-flowing water. Many rivers are part of traditional hunting and fishing routes, which can be traveled over when they are frozen. Rivers also serve as essential thoroughfares to connect communities and to bring in seasonal supplies, such as fuel and food, because road networks are limited in Alaska.

As the seasons shift, ice freezes later and breaks up earlier, undermining the stability and safety of river ice.

“The shrinking of the fall and spring seasons affects how long river ice persists and is safe to travel over. Indigenous communities have suffered an increasing number of fatalities over the last few decades,” said Musselman. “It seemed that everyone at the workshop had stories of someone who had fallen in the ice and lost their life.”

These and other timely concerns were shared at the Arctic Rivers Summit in December. Hosting this meeting was also another chance for Blaskey and his fellow researchers to listen to the communities most affected by the changes they’re studying, in addition to regularly working with an Indigenous advisory council who has helped guide their work since the inception of the project.

“Documenting the long-term changes in streamflow is a way for us to quantify and share what’s happening in the rivers,” said Blaskey. “Indigenous communities already know what’s happening to the rivers.”

Together, Indigenous knowledge and long-term monitoring can help to develop narratives of change across the Arctic landscape to support planning and community adaptation, said Musselman.

Additional authors on this publication include: Joshua Koch, United States Geological Survey; Michael Gooseff, University of Colorado Boulder; Andrew Newman and Yifan Cheng, National Center for Atmospheric Research; and Jonathan O’Donnell, National Park Service, Arctic Network. This study is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation’s Navigating the New Arctic program.

FOR MORE INFORMAYION: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230411195937.htm

By Reuters

A Great Egret looks for fish2 as it hunts in the waters of the Bolsa Chica wetlands in Huntington Beach, California

A federal judge in North Dakota on Wednesday temporarily blocked implementation of a Biden administration rule establishing protections for seasonal streams and wetlands in 24 states, according to court documents.

U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Hovland granted the states’ request for a preliminary injunction prohibiting enforcement of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Waters of the United States rule, which was finalized in December.

In the order, Hovland said the states would “expend unrecoverable resources complying with a rule unlikely to withstand judicial scrutiny.”

The rule protects waterways that have a “significant nexus” to navigable U.S. waters – a standard that ranchers, developers and other industry groups have said is overly broad and creates burdensome permitting and regulatory hurdles.

West Virginia and 23 other Republican-led states sued the EPA and other federal agencies in February, alleging the rule violates the U.S. Constitution and sows confusion for landowners.

An EPA spokesperson said the agency is reviewing Wednesday’s ruling and called the Biden administration rule “the best interpretation” of the Clean Water Act.

Representatives for West Virginia and North Dakota issued statements praising the injunction, saying the rule would hurt industry and jobs without achieving environmental protection goals.

The case is part of a protracted battle over the scope of the Clean Water Act and what waterways the federal government has the authority to regulate.

Texas and industry groups led by the American Farm Bureau Federation separately won a limited injunction last month halting implementation of the rule in Texas and Idaho. Previous efforts by the Obama and Trump administrations to define the law’s scope also faced numerous legal challenges.

In Congress, Republicans led an effort to repeal the water rule last month, with limited support from across the aisle including four Senate Democrats and independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, vetoed that measure earlier this month.

The U.S. Supreme Court is also considering the scope of the law, and heard oral arguments in a case challenging an earlier interpretation of its reach in October.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2023-04-12/federal-judge-blocks-biden-clean-water-rule-in-24-states

By Uzmi Athar

A man travels to help people get clean water in Kochi, Kerala state, India, on March 1, 2023. Saltwater’s intrusion into freshwater means residents can no longer depend on ponds and wells for the water they need to drink, cook and wash.

Changing sea levels are affecting freshwater in places like Chellanam, India.

In Chellanam, saltwater is moving inland into small bodies of fresh water, like ponds and wells, which the village’s 600 families use for drinking, bathing and daily jobs. Chellanam is near the city of Kochi on the Arabian Sea on India’s southwestern coast.

The water around Chellanam became too salty to drink 60 years ago. It is now unusable even for cleaning clothes. Anthony Kuttappassera’s family has lived in the same house near the coast for over 100 years. He grew up drinking water from a pond and a well outside of his home. Now the pond is almost dry, just like all of the other ones in Chellanam.

Mustapas’re is now 73 years. He said when the pond was usable, there was no problem. They had everything they needed, but now they, “are using packed water for everything…We are surrounded by water, but we do not have any consumable water.”

There are water pipes that bring fresh water, but they leak or break a lot. That means trucks must carry water to the village. Each truck load of water must be poured into containers and then carried by hand into the village. The most recent water outage lasted about a month.

Saltwater invasion of groundwater is a problem around the world. Wealthy countries can deal with the problem more easily, but developing nations, like India, have problems.

Scientists say that ocean levels around the world are rising. They say changing ocean patterns, extreme storms, and too much water use, add to the salinity problem in the Kochi area. This combines with limited freshwater in Indian to create a bigger problem. The United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, said less than half of India’s population has clean drinking water.

S. Sreekesh is a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He studied sea level rise in the Kochi area using measurements of tides, satellite data and other information. He said the sea level is rising at a rate of 1.8 millimeters a year.

Bijoy Nandan is the dean of marine sciences at Cochin University of Science and Technology. He said that salinity has increased by over 30 percent since the first water studies of the area in 1971.

“People are suffering because the aquifers are getting salinized,” he said.

Maryamma Pillai is 82 years old. Sometimes she needs to buy water. It costs her almost $0.50 for five liters. She has no water at home, and it is hard for her to carry back from the government trucks.

Pillai said that every year gets worse as the summers become hotter.

“This was not the case earlier when we used to know how to plan for (each) season with more water availability but now everything is unknown, unpredictable and unreliable,” she said.

Other people travel by boat to other neighborhoods to get water because they live too far from the main road. Karni Kumar used a wooden boat to go to Alappuzha, a neighboring city, to get fresh water. But many other Chellanam villagers also go there causing high demand for water supplies, long waits and even conflicts with people in Alappuzha.

The Reverend John Kalathil is a leader of the St. George Church in South Chellanam. He said that residents have to pay $1.21 to $2.42, per day for their water. This is around 15 percent of their daily income.

Most income-earners at his church are fisherman. They love the sea and have a deep connection with it.

“They call it ‘Kadalamma,’ which means they look at (the) sea as their mother,” Reverend Kalathil said, “But the situation is very terrible for them because of climate change, weather, change in sea and water sources.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/rising-sea-levels-mean-daily-water-struggle-on-india-shore/7039525.html

By Associated Press

Left: A car crosses Enterprise Bridge over Lake Oroville’s dry banks on 23 May 2021, in Oroville, California. Right: A vehicle crosses Enterprise Bridge on 26 March 2023.

Reservoirs whose water levels had plummeted during punishing drought have recovered – but officials warn of ‘weather whiplash’

Water levels fell so low in key reservoirs during the depth of California’s drought that boat docks sat on dry, cracked land and cars drove into the center of what should have been Folsom Lake.

Those scenes are no more after a series of powerful storms dumped record amounts of rain and snow across California, replenishing reservoirs and bringing an end – mostly – to the state’s three-year drought.

Now, 12 of California’s 17 major reservoirs are filled above their historical averages for the start of spring. That includes Folsom Lake, which controls water flows along the American River, as well as Lake Oroville, the state’s second largest reservoir and home to the nation’s tallest dam.

It’s a stunning turnaround of water availability in the nation’s most populous state. Late last year nearly all of California was in drought, including at extreme and exceptional levels. Wells ran dry, farmers fallowed fields and cities restricted watering lawns.

The water picture changed dramatically starting in December, when the first of a dozen “atmospheric rivers” hit, causing widespread flooding and damaging homes and infrastructure, and dumping as many as 700in (17.8m) of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

“California went from the three driest years on record to the three wettest weeks on record when we were catapulted into our rainy season in January,” said Karla Nemeth, director of the California department of water resources.

“So, hydrologically, California is no longer in a drought except for very small portions of the state.”

All the rain and snow, while drought-busting, may bring new challenges. Some reservoirs are so full that water is being released to make room for storm runoff and snowmelt that could cause flooding this spring and summer, a new problem for weary water managers and emergency responders.

The storms have created one of the biggest snowpacks on record in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The snowpack’s water content is 239% of its normal average and nearly triple in the southern Sierra, according to state data. Now, as the weather warms up, water managers are preparing for all that snow to melt, unleashing a torrent of water that’s expected to cause flooding in the Sierra foothills and the Central Valley.

“We know there will be flooding as a result of the snowmelt,” Nemeth said. “There’s just too much snowmelt to be accommodated in our rivers and channels and keeping things between levees.”

Managers are now releasing water from the Oroville dam spillway, which was rebuilt after it broke apart during heavy rains in February 2017 and forced the evacuation of more than 180,000 people downstream along the Feather River.

The reservoir is 16% above its historic average. That’s compared with 2021, when water levels dropped so low that its hydroelectric dams stopped generating power.

That year, the Bidwell Canyon and Lime Saddle marinas had to pull most recreational boats out of Lake Oroville and shut down their boat rental business because water levels were too low and it was too hard to get to the marinas, said Jared Rael, who manages the marinas.

In late March, the water at Lake Oroville rose to 859ft (262 meters) above sea level, about 230ft (70 meters) higher than its low point in 2021, according to state data.

“The public is going to benefit with the water being higher. Everything is easier to get to. They can just jump on the lake and have fun,” Rael said. “Right now we have tons of water. We have a high lake with a bunch of snowpack. We’re going to have a great year.”

Newsom has not declared the drought over because there are still water shortages along the California-Oregon border and parts of southern California that rely on the struggling Colorado River.

Cities and irrigation districts that provide water to farms will receive a big boost in water supplies from the state water project and Central Valley project, networks of reservoirs and canals that supply water across California. Some farmers are using the stormwater to replenish underground aquifers that had become depleted after years of pumping and drought left wells dry.

State officials are warning residents not to let the current abundance let them revert to wasting water. In the era of climate change, one extremely wet year could be followed by several dry years, returning the state to drought.

“Given weather whiplash, we know the return of dry conditions and the intensity of the dry conditions that are likely to return means we have to be using water more efficiently,” Nemeth said. “We have to be adopting conservation as a way of life.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/06/california-reservoirs-drought-storms-water-replenished