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In Great Lakes, ‘the sky really IS falling’

By Paul Stewart in September 13th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under biodiversity, conservation, fish, flora and fauna, fresh water, habitat, health, invasive species, lake, world water     Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,      

Greenbang

How should we react to news that the world’s fourth largest lake is rapidly dying before our eyes and that practically nothing is being done to stop it?

Horror and outrage seem appropriate. However, the lead researcher tracking this particular slow-motion death says the response he’s gotten is more of a shrug because “people are getting tired of hearing that the sky is falling.”

The lake in question is Lake Michigan, the second-largest (by volume) of the US-Canadian Great Lakes. (It’s actually the second-largest lake in the world, after the Caspian Sea, if you consider that it and Lake Huron are physically a single body of water.) It also appears to be in its biological death throes, just 12 short years after scientists first discovered the presence of a unique large-scale “river of phytoplankton” that forms the foundation of the lake’s food chain.

In 1998, W. Charles Kerfoot, a biologist at Michigan Technological University, and his research team used NASA’s then-new, satellite-based Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) to identify the circular “river” flowing counter-clockwise in the southern end of Lake Michigan. They determined that the roughly doughnut-shaped current of phytoplankton was created when large winter storms kicked up nutrient-rich sediment carried into the lake from the region’s cities and farms. As that sediment floated through the water column along a large circular path, it created a “Thanksgiving feast” for the lake’s phytoplankton, algae and other microscopic plants.

“We saw that with each storm, you get a ring, and it can persist for weeks or even months,” Kerfoot said. “We were floating in the clouds, saying, ‘Hey, we discovered a new phenomenon.’ ”

During the region’s cold winters, that seasonal phenomenon of circulating phytoplankton apparently was enough to feed the lake’s tiny zooplankton, which in turn provided a food source to small fish, which then fed the lake’s larger fish. Ultimately, that doughnut of tiny marine plants has likely been one of the reasons Lake Michigan has long been such a fisherman’s paradise.

However, almost as soon as Kerfoot and his team discovered it, that phytoplankton river has begun to shrivel. The apparent reason? An invasive species from Europe known as the quagga mussel. Now found in all the Great Lakes after arriving in untreated ballast water dumped there by ocean-going ships, the quagga are hungry mollusks who love phytoplankton … and are apparently devouring the marine plant life faster than it can reproduce — up to seven times faster in some parts of the lake.

In fact, between 2001 and 2008, graduate student Foad Yousef has calculated, chlorophyll — a measure reflecting phytoplankton abundance — has declined by a full 75 per cent.

But the voracious quagga are doing more than depriving other creatures up the food chain of their meals. The waste they excrete at the lake’s bottom can stimulate growth of Cladaphora algae. When those algae die and decompose, life-critical oxygen gets sucked out of the water.

“When things go anaerobic, that kills off everything, including the quaggas, and creates conditions for botulism,” Kerfoot said. “We’ve had massive kills of fish-eating birds — loons, mergansers. Isn’t that bizarre? Who would have predicted that?”

A few more years of such conditions, and Lake Michigan’s storied catches of alewives, chubs, Atlantic salmon, muskies, smelt, walleyes, perch and more could soon be history.

“A high percent of the fish biomass could be lost in the next couple years,” Kerfoot said. “We have a system that’s crashing.”

He added that the message he’s heard from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is in charge of protecting the Great Lakes from invasive species, is anything but encouraging.

“I asked why they weren’t swimming in money to do something about this,” he said. “They say people are getting tired of hearing that the sky is falling. Now, when the sky really is falling, they aren’t paying attention.”

In fact, Kerfoot believes, the impact of the tiny quagga — which is no larger than a fat Lima bean — could soon render moot the more headline-grabbing concerns about the invasive zebra mussel and Asian carp.

“By the time the carp get here, there won’t be anything left for them to eat,” Kerfoot predicts.

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Water researcher ‘protects millions’

By Paul Stewart in September 13th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under climate change, communications, drinking water, habitat, health, sanitation, technology, waterborne diseases, world water     Tags: , , , , , , ,      

Greenbang

Before Rita Colwell’s groundbreaking research in the 1960s, doctors and scientists believed the deadly disease cholera spread via water contaminated by human sewage. However, she discovered something other researchers until then had missed: that the Vibrio cholera bacterium could latch onto zooplankton — microscopic organisms — in water and survive, essentially dormant, until conditions became right for it to once again become infectious.

That discovery not only helped to change our understanding of how cholera is transmitted, but helped efforts to combat and prevent the disease’s spread.

For that and other scientific advances she’s contributed to, Colwell today was awarded the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize. Colwell was presented with the award — which includes $150,000 and a crystal sculpture — during a ceremony in Stockholm’s City Hall as part of the World Water Week event.

Colwell, 76, is a professor at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. In awarding her the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize, the Stockholm International Water Institute, which administers the prize, credited Colwell for research that has “helped protect the health and lives of millions.”

Throughout her career, Colwell has worked extensively to spread community-based water safety education and viable, low-cost technological innovations in communities throughout South Asia and in Africa. Access to safe, clean drinking water, she says, is the key to improving the lives of people across the developing world.

“Clearly, the relationship of water and development is very dramatic,” she said, adding that, when safe drinking water supplies are assured, “the economy improves, the national social ability is enhanced and even national security (benefits).”

Colwell’s work has also demonstrated how changes in climate, adverse weather events, shifts in ocean circulation and other ecological processes can create conditions that allow infectious diseases to spread. Her efforts in that area have helped to create preemptive strategies for minimising outbreaks of disease. For example, she showed how warmer surface temperatures in the Bay of Bengal have stimulated the growth of cholera-hosting zooplankton and caused the number of cholera cases in the region to rise.

Colwell was also one of the first researchers to study how El Niño affected the aquatic environment and human health, and to conduct research into how climate change affects the spread of infectious diseases.

In 1984, Colwell was also appointed by then-President Bill Clinton as the first woman to lead the National Science Foundation.

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Mapping the Resilience of International River Basins to Future Climate Change-Induced Water Variability

By Paul Stewart in September 11th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under climate change, communications, habitat, health, mapping, rivers, social structures, water security, watershed, world water     Tags: , , , , , , , ,      

World Bank

Transboundary watercourses pose a variety of challenges to the management of water resources. Activities of water resources use or protection by one actor necessarily affect the opportunities of other actors and basin-wide management approaches tend to clash with state sovereignty perceptions. Cooperative river basin management across state boundaries is therefore of great importance. Climate change, however, adds new challenges to the management of water resources. Increased water variability will significantly influence water use and water management, introducing a greater uncertainty, accompanied by an increasing severity of extreme events such as floods and droughts, threatening socioeconomic development of basin populations.

The World Bank has therefore commissioned a report that investigates the interactions between climate change and related water variability and the capacity of transboundary water resources management to cope with such problems. This aims at increasing our knowledge of exposure to climate change-induced water variability and of the respective resilience of river basin management mechanisms. This is a prerequisite for the design of future adaptation measures.

The results of the report reveal significant differences in both vulnerability to climate change-induced water variability and adaptation capacity across river basins, with some basins being fairly resilient to climate change, while others, especially in EAP and LCR, face severe challenges. Based on these insights, the World Bank will continue its contribution to the study of transboundary water resources management and climate change adaptation and work on improving resilience in these basins.

Download the report from this page

Please be ready for a glossary of abbreviations and acronyms…but there’s some valuable risk assessments in it. I sure some editorial will come from this.

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Gulf oil disaster: BP admits missing warning signs hours before blast

By Paul Stewart in September 8th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under communications, disaster, finance, habitat, livelihoods, oceans, pollution, seawater, world water     Tags: , , , , , , , , ,      

Suzanne Goldenberg for The Guardian

We are to blame – but so are Transocean and Halliburton, concludes oil firm’s report on Deepwater Horizon rig explosion

BP admitted today its managers on the Deepwater Horizon missed key warning signs in the hours before the explosion aboard the oil rig, but an internal investigation put much of the blame on other companies involved in the well.

A 234-page report described eight main causes for the blast, which killed 11 men and created an environmental disaster. But BP was accused of attempting to pass on the blame for its conclusion that Transocean, the rig owner, and Halliburton, which carried out cement work, shared much of the responsibility.

Mark Bly, the oil company’s head of safety and the leader of the investigation, admitted that BP onsite managers could have prevented the catastrophe had they picked up warning signs of a breach of the cement seal at the bottom of the well, as well as unusual pressure test readings, only moments before the explosion.

He told reporters in Washington: “Given everything that came before, there probably should have been more risk assessment. They probably should have been more careful.”

The report was widely seen as a possible preview of BP’s legal strategy. The oil company was accused of trying to reduce the chances of being charged with gross negligence, which would expose it to possible criminal proceedings and billions of dollars in damage.

Within hours of its release, Transocean and Halliburton accused BP of attempting to shift attention from its own mistakes of bad well design and disregard of safety procedures. Members of Congress and environmentalists also dismissed it.

Transocean said: “This is a self-serving report that attempts to conceal the critical factor that set the stage for the Macondo incident: BP’s fatally flawed well design.”

Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who has been investigating the spill in Congress, said the report was more about protecting BP’s interests than getting to the cause of the disaster. “BP is happy to slice up blame, as long as they get the smallest piece,” he said.

Environmental organisations were more scathing. “BPs investigation doesn’t pass the smell test ,” said Kieran Suckling, the director of the Centre for Biological Diversity. “This report is more concerned with calming BP shareholders than taking responsibility for its actions.”

There were similar sentiments in the Gulf. Alfred Sunseri, whose family-owned oyster company faces ruin after the spill, said: “When BP shows me a report of how exactly they will deal with those people most impacted by this tragedy – ie those in the fisheries-related businesses – I’ll believe they are not just using their talents in public relations to dispel their liability.”

Bly acknowledged the report fails to address the key charges raised in Congress and elsewhere against the oil company: that it allowed a culture of recklessness to flourish, and that it was so anxious to finish work on a project that was 43 days over time and $20m (£13m) over budget that it omitted standard industry safeguards.

The report does recognise there were gaping lapses in oversight on the Deepwater Horizon, going on to make 25 recommendations for tighter scrutiny by well owners – such as BP –of rig operations.

But Bly rejected the idea that cost-cutting had dictated BP’s decisions on the rig, saying: “What we see instead is, where there were errors made they were based on poor decision-making process or using wrong information.”

Oil companies could be facing tougher regulation anyway: the White House said it was asking for more funds from Congress to step up oil rig inspections.

The report is narrowly focused on the final days before the explosion rather than on earlier decisions about well design and safety procedures. It is also closely focused on the rig itself. No BP officials have been sacked for their role in the explosion, and Bly said there was no indication of any blame beyond the well-site managers.

The investigation identifies eight main causes of the explosion, putting particular blame on well integrity. It says Halliburton’s choice of foam cement for the area around the well casing failed to produce a strong enough seal.

Tony Hayward, who was BP’s chief executive at the time of the explosion, said in a statement: “To put it simply, there was a bad cement job.”

Halliburton said it had carried out its work to BP specifications.

The report also said the blowout preventer, the last line of defence once there is a breach, had failed. There, BP pointed at Transocean noting that the battery pack on the blowout preventer had been allowed to run low.

But Bly said the disaster may have been prevented had work crews – BP’s as well as Transocean’s – spotted the crucial warning signs in a series of anomalous pressure test readings in the run-up to the explosion. “A fundamental to well control is early detection,” he said. The pressure test readings should have alerted crews to the escape of oil and gas from the well reservoir, he said.

The report is far from the final word on the explosion and the subsequent oil spill, with Transocean, Congress and the federal government carrying out investigations.

But Robert Gordon, a lawyer for businesses affected by the spill, said it was unlikely to carry much weight in the months ahead. “BP blaming others for the Gulf oil disaster is like Bernie Madoff blaming his accountant,” he said.

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Interview: Climate Change, Rivers and Dams – We’re in Hot Water

By Paul Stewart in September 8th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under biodiversity, climate change, community rights, dams, deforestation, delta, flora and fauna, forestry, habitat, health, heritage, irrigation, livelihoods, rivers, watershed, wetland, world water     Tags: , , , , , , ,      

by Katy Yan for International Rivers

Rivers are the planet’s lifelines, but the double threat of human interventions combined with climate change is already seriously compromising their health – and, by extension, ours. A major study last year found an overall decline in total discharge of most of the world’s major rivers – changes that could affect up to a billion people. Here we interview Dr. Margaret Palmer, director of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the University of Maryland and a leading expert on how climate change impacts rivers.

What are your biggest concerns for the world’s major rivers?

MP: Over the past 50 years, the amount of runoff has changed substantially for many rivers due to the combined effects of withdrawals, dams, and climate change. The impacts of human alteration of the land around rivers are harming rivers at a far higher rate now and over the next 50 years than is climate change. But if climate change is added as an additional stressor on top of immediate anthropogenic impacts, rivers may not be able to supply the ecosystem services - like clean drinking water - that people depend on.

The effects of climate change on rivers are manifest through increases in temperature and changes in river discharge. Some parts of the world will experience higher flows and others lower flows, but all will experience warming. The impacts will be dramatically worse in basins that are otherwise impacted either by flow modification (e.g., by excessive water withdrawals) or development. In particular, urbanized watersheds in regions that are expected to experience less precipitation may have more severe and longer droughts. Urban areas that have substantially higher rainfall or that will have more intense storms may have more flooding. The reason is that urban areas typically have less riparian wetland and in general less wildland along rivers, which act to store water that can be released later.

Your research shows that areas impacted by dams would require more management interventions to mitigate the impacts of climate change than free-flowing rivers. Why are free-flowing rivers more resilient to climate change? What kinds of interventions will be needed?

MP: Free-flowing streams in wild areas have tremendous capacity to adjust to changes in discharge and sediment inputs (both of which are expected to change in many areas under future climate scenarios). But they need room to do this. When a channel changes shape or migrates across the landscape, it’s because the river is adjusting to a new flow or sediment regime. When you try to lock it in place or cut off its supply of sediment (due to dams), the ability of the stream to adjust and reach a new equilibrium is lost. We need to “free” rivers so they can move across the landscape and have some degree of buffering capacity which intact riparian corridors and wetlands (and floodplains) provide.

On the other hand, streams can do little about an increase in air temperature. If river water warms too quickly - say 3-4 degrees C in the next 25 years - then the organisms living in the stream are unlikely to be able to adapt fast enough to cope with this. At first, we will see declines in reproductive output or survival of young and over time, populations of some species will decline, while those species able to withstand warmer water (often nonnative species) will increase. However, keep in mind that if deforestation has occurred in a watershed, temperature increases (above historic levels) will be far greater and more harmful ecologically

To sum up, to manage for global change, we need to manage in a way that makes streams more resilient. It will be far cheaper and save more lives if we act now to protect rivers and the people they support.

Your study looked at both dam-impacted and non-dam impacted basins. Which basins are key hotspots that will require extensive management? How many people do these basins approximately impact?

MP: Basins that require major management decisions include for example the Nile in Africa which is already experiencing significant reductions in flow by the time the river reaches Egypt. The Nile Basin supports more than 180 million people and poverty is high. Its water is critical to irrigation in Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, and Ethiopia, yet given growth in water extractions and hydropower needs in the upper portions of the basin, climate change poses a major concern for the river and the people it supports.

The water that feeds the Indus River is from glaciers in the Himalayas and with increasing temperatures, glacial melting with significant increases in river discharge will occur. But a rapid reduction in glaciers could mean future water supplies may become increasingly limited, yet millions of people in northwestern India and Pakistan depend on the river.

How should river basin management change to reflect a changing climate?

MP: Current practices in river basin management should move aggressively toward restoring or preserving those natural features that contribute to a river ecosystems resilience. Most of these also benefit humans. For example, riparian wetlands and floodplains help store water so they reduce flooding and also help recharge the groundwater, which means more water will be available in the river (and for people) during dry periods. To accomplish this, river management will have to include moving people and infrastructure out of floodplains, removing levees, and allowing vegetation to grow back.

This interview was published in: World Rivers Review: Focus on Rivers, Water and Climate - September 2010

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Teens’ styrofoam study wins water prize

By Paul Stewart in September 8th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under communications, conservation, greenhouse gas, pollution, sanitation, seawater, world water     Tags: , , , , , , , , ,      

CBC

A new way to clean up polystyrene waste and stop it from fouling waterways has won two Canadian teens the 2010 Stockholm Junior Water Prize.

Alexandre Allard and Danny Luong of Quebec City, who are both 19, received their $5,000 US award and prize sculptures from Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden at a ceremony Tuesday evening in Stockholm as part of World Water Week.

The two developed a technique that uses bacteria to break down the foam plastic used in many disposable cups, fast-food containers and packing materials.

Allard, who has just started his first year at McGill University, said he and Luong were inspired after reading a report about how polystyrene breaking down in the ocean can release toxic molecules.

“This gave us the idea that maybe polystyrene biodegraded,” Allard told CBC News in a phone interview from Stockholm.

The two longtime friends, who went to high school together at Séminaire des Pères Maristes in Quebec City, decided to look for bacteria that might be able to break down expanded polystyrene.

They went to the Cap-Rouge dump and collected soil in areas where there was a lot of polystyrene in order to find bacteria that could survive in the presence of the plastic foam.

Those bacteria — two kinds of pseudomonas and one kind of streptomycin — were placed in flasks with sterile water, no food and about a gram of polystyrene, which is about two-thirds the mass of a small polystyrene coffee cup. The experiment showed the bacteria could break the plastic down into carbon dioxide.

3 kinds of bacteria work together

Under optimal conditions, the bacteria could degrade 70 per cent of the polystyrene into carbon dioxide within two weeks and all of it within three weeks.

While most of the degradation was done by one kind of pseudomonas, having the other two kinds of bacteria present resulted in more degradation than the sum of the degradation from each kind of bacteria individually.

“This leads us to believe there’s one bacteria that does most of degrading, but the other bacteria actually help it,” Allard said, adding that each kind of bacteria may produce different degradation enzymes.

The pair started the research in August 2009 and finished it in February 2010, when Allard was studying at Collège regional Champlain campus St-Lawrence and Luong was at Cégep Sainte-Foy, where he is still studying.

They used the equipment in the labs at their respective colleges, and also borrowed equipment from the University of Laval.

They hope their research will be used to clean up styrofoam waste, although Allard said a lot more testing needs to be done, especially tests in the field rather than just in the lab. For now the bacteria remain stored in a freezer at one of the colleges.

‘Honoured to be here’

Allard suggested some of the enzymes produced by the bacteria, which initially break styrofoam down into styrene and bisphenol A, can also be used to recycle styrofoam.

In the meantime, Allard and Luong were having a great time in Stockholm and were scheduled to give flowers to the queen of Sweden on Friday.

“It’s been absolutely incredible,” Allard said. “We’re very honoured to be here.”

Allard and Luong were among thousands of students aged 15 to 20 who competed in national competitions around the world to represent their country at an international competition held during the annual World Water Week meeting in Stockholm, which runs Sept. 3-11.

They beat out water-related projects on topics of environmental, social or technological importance from more than 30 countries. The conference is hosted by the Stockholm International Water Institute.

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IBM’S World Community Grid Unveils Research Projects on Three Continents to Improve Water Quality

By Paul Stewart in September 7th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under collaboration, communications, desalination, drinking water, fresh water, health, pollution, salinity, technology, waterborne diseases, world water     Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,      

Will tap surplus power of volunteers’ 1.5 million PCs to perform computations

ARMONK, N.Y., - 07 Sep 2010: World Community Grid, a worldwide network of PC owners helping scientists solve humanitarian challenges, today announced several computing projects aimed at developing techniques to produce cleaner and safer water, an increasingly scarce commodity eluding at least 1.2 billion people worldwide.

One initiative will simulate how human behaviors and ecosystem processes relate to one another in watersheds such as the Chesapeake Bay. Other projects will explore advanced water filtering techniques and seek cures for a water-borne disease.

To accelerate the pace, lower the expense, and increase the precision of these projects, scientists will harness the IBM-supported World Community Grid to perform online simulations, crunch numbers, and pose hypothetical scenarios. The processing power is provided by a grid of 1.5 million PCs from 600,000 volunteers around the world. These PCs perform computations for scientists when the machines would otherwise be underutilized. Scientists also use World Community Grid — equivalent to one of the world’s fastest supercomputers — to engineer cleaner energy, cure disease and produce healthier food staples.

The University of Virginia Watershed Sustainability Project will use World Community Grid to power its “UVa Bay Game/Analytics” project, which models the effects of agricultural, commercial and industrial decisions on the Chesapeake Bay. This waterway is a vital estuary on the East Coast of the United States stretching 64,000 square miles with 11,600 miles of tidal shoreline, and home to nearly 17 million people. It will simulate and analyze the results of choices made by the sometimes-competing interests of fishermen, farmers, real estate developers, power plant designers, conservationists, forestry experts and urban planners. Better understanding the potential outcomes of complex, intersecting decisions can help society manage the watershed more effectively.

“Through this collaboration, the University of Virginia and World Community Grid are bringing new resources to bear to improve the future of the Chesapeake Bay,” said Philippe Cousteau, co-founder of Azure Worldwide, which helped develop the UVa Bay Game. “Responsible and effective stewardship of complex watersheds is a huge undertaking that must balance the needs of each unique environment with the needs of the communities that depend on them for survival. I’m confident that this partnership will help provide the tools we need to meet this challenge head- on.”

Another new water-related project, called “Computing For Clean Water,” is looking to produce more efficient and effective water filtering, and is now getting underway at Tsinghua University’s newly launched Centre for Novel Multidisciplinary Mechanics in China. The idea is to develop ways to filter and scrub polluted water, as well as convert saltwater into drinkable freshwater, with less expense, complexity, and energy than current techniques.

The effort will seek to reduce the pressure and energy required to force water through microscopic, nanometer-sized pores in tubes made of carbon, whose tiny holes prevent harmful organic material from being transmitted. Scientists need to produce millions of computer simulations to model how water molecules interact with one another and against the walls of these carbon nanotubes.

Although led by China’s Tsignhua University, researchers are participating from all over the world, including Australia’s University of Sydney and Monash University; as well as the Citizen Cyberscience Centre, based in Geneva, Switzerland. The project is the result of an initiative launched by the Chinese Academy of Sciences to promote volunteer participation in science. It is called CAS@home, and is hosted by the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing.

A third initiative, to be run on World Community Grid out of Brazil’s Inforium Bioinformatics, in collaboration with FIOCRUZ-Minas, is seeking to cure schistosomiasis, a significant, parasite-based disease prevalent in tropical regions that is incubated and transmitted via foul water. The World Health Organization lists this disease as highly necessary to control. It kills from 11,000 to 200,000 people every year and infects about 210 million individuals in 76 countries. It takes a severe toll on undeveloped countries, causing about 1.7 million disability-adjusted life-years of burden annually. While the drug Praziquantel has been largely effective in treating the disease for more than 25 years, drug-resistant strains are of concern.

Researchers will now seek to identify human protein targets for possible new drug treatments. They will use the World Community Grid to screen up to 13 million compounds found in the zinc.docking.org database against 180 protein structures involved with the parasite. While this may not lead to new drugs immediately, it will greatly augment the study of this disease by scientists around the world.

IBM donated the server hardware, software, technical services and expertise to build the infrastructure for World Community Grid and provides free hosting, maintenance and support.

“I can think of few endeavors more important than making sure people across the globe have ready access to clean water,” said Stanley S. Litow, IBM Vice President of Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs, and President of IBM’s Foundation. “I would even suggest that it’s a basic human right, and a hallmark of sophisticated and compassionate societies everywhere. That’s why IBM is so incredibly proud to help scientists harness the resources of World Community Grid to make strides in this vital arena.”

In the last 100 years, global water usage has increased at twice the rate of population growth. The United Nations predicts that nearly half the world’s population will experience critical water shortages by the year 2025.

Individuals can donate time on their computers for these and many other humanitarian projects by registering on www.worldcommunitygrid.org, and installing a free, unobtrusive and secure software program on their personal computers running either Linux, Microsoft Windows or Mac OS. When idle or between keystrokes on a lightweight task, the PCs request data from World Community Grid’s server, which runs Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) software, maintained at Berkeley University and supported by the National Science Foundation.

World Community Grid is also part of People for a Smarter Planet — a dynamic and intelligent network of activities, conversations and discussions in which anyone can participate to help build a sustainable and smarter world. At People for a Smarter Planet, people can share ideas, engage and discuss, or participate in one of the growing list of projects like World Community Grid.

Journalists and bloggers can also visit www.ibm.com/press/worldcommunitygrid for additional background information and supporting multimedia related to IBM’s role in World Community Grid. Or they may visit http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/

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Amazon may be headed for another bad drought

By Paul Stewart in September 4th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under climate change, drought, evaporation, forestry, habitat, health, lake, livelihoods, monsoon, navigation, rivers, watershed, world water     Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,      

Patricia Velez and Alfredo Loayza for Reuters

Drought has cut Peru’s Amazon River to its lowest level in 40 years and it is already below the minimum set in 2005, when a devastating dry spell damaged vast swaths of South American rainforest in the worst drought in decades.

Scientists in Peru and Brazil say the lack of rainfall, which is typical for this time of year, should continue for a few more weeks until the start of the rainy season.

But there is some concern that the dryness could persist as what is shaping up to be an intense hurricane season in the Atlantic sucks humidity away from the Amazon.

“The formation of hurricanes is very much related, more hurricanes means less rain for us,” said Marco Paredes, head of Peru’s meteorological service in Iquitos, some 500 miles from the capital of Lima. “It’s an inverse relationship.”

The headwaters of the river start in Peru and its meteorological service said on Friday the height of the river in the Amazon city of Iquitos has fallen to 347 feet above sea level, 19.6 inches less than where it was in the previous severe drought.

Officials worry the intensity and frequency of droughts could become more severe.

“This situation is critical,” Robert Falcon of Peru’s civil defense agency said of expected food shortages and outbreaks of illness. “The scientists are already saying that because of climate change these events will become more frequent.”

Falcon is bracing for a drought like the one that hit five years ago, when sinking water levels severed connections in the lattice of creeks, lakes and rivers that make up the Amazon’s motorboat transportation network.

Thousands of people, fish and boats were stranded as rivers ran dry to expose cracked dirt on their banks.

At the time of 2005 drought, scientists said it stemmed in part from a hurricane season that broke numerous records and caused the catastrophic Katrina storm that devastated New Orleans.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has forecast 14 to 23 named storms this year, with 8 to 14 developing into hurricanes, nearly matching 2005′s record of 15. It expects the lack of rainfall to persist.

“Forecasts are indicating that this situation (of little rainfall) will continue for the next two or three weeks, so that the level of water will drop by about 20 to 30 centimeters (8-12 inches) from where it is now,” Paredes said.

Editing by Terry Wade and Sandra Maler

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Brazil’s President signs ‘death sentence’ for Amazonian river

By Paul Stewart in August 28th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under community rights, conflict, disaster, finance, flooding, flora and fauna, forestry, habitat, health, heritage, hunger, hydropower, livelihoods, resettlement, rivers, social structures, watershed, world water     Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,      

Survival International

Brazil’s President Lula has signed a contract allowing the construction of the hugely controversial Belo Monte mega-dam on the Amazonian Xingu River to go ahead.

Lula said, ‘I think this is a victory for Brazil’s energy sector’.

Belo Monte, if built, will be the third largest dam in the world. It will devastate the local environment and threaten the lives of the thousands of indigenous people living in the area, whose land and food sources will be seriously damaged.

Experts have warned that the project has serious design flaws. It was described by Walter Coronado Antunes, former Environment Secretary of São Paulo state, as ‘the worst engineering project in the history of hydroelectric dams in Brazil, and perhaps of any engineering project in the world’.

Indians, together with human rights and environmental organizations have traveled to Brazil’s capital, Brasília, to protest against Lula’s signing of the contract. They said, ‘The government has signed a death warrant for the Xingu river and condemned thousands of residents to expulsion’.

Brazilian and international organizations have published a Declaration against the Belo Monte dam, describing the signing of the contract as a ‘death sentence for the Xingu River’, and a ‘scandalous affront to international human rights conventions, Brazilian law and the Brazilian constitution’.

Marcos Apurinã of the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), said, ‘Our government is presenting itself as an example to the world. But here in Brazil, at least for indigenous peoples, it is not exemplary at all!’.

The Indians have warned that if the dam is constructed, a ‘war’ could start and the Xingu could become a ‘river of blood’.

They have organized several protests against the project. Hundreds of Indians are currently participating in a protest, alongside experts, human rights and environmental organizations, and Brazil’s Public Ministry, against the Belo Monte dam, as well as the dams on the Madeira, Teles Pires and Tapajós rivers.

Survival International recently published a report highlighting the devastating impacts that dams are bringing to tribal peoples worldwide.

Source…and many links

Visit Survival International

Survival Internationals - ‘Serious Damage’, can be download from this page…

Interactive map of Dams in Amazonia here…

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China to lift installed hydropower capacity by 50% on emissions concerns: energy chief

By Paul Stewart in August 26th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under China, climate change, finance, hydropower, infrastructure, pollution, rivers, solar, technology, world water     Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,      

Xinhua

BEIJING, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) — China will expand its installed hydropower capacity to 300 million kilowatts by 2015 from the current 200 million in an effort to cut carbon dioxide emissions, the country’s top energy official said here Wednesday.

Zhang Guobao, director of the National Energy Administration (NEA), told the popular web port Sina.com in an on-line interview that such an expansion is needed for China’s goal to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 40 to 45 percent by 2020.

China promised at the Copenhagen Conference on global climate change last year that it would generate 15 percent of its power from non-fossil sources by 2020, up from the current 7.8 percent.

“We will take the initiative to deliver that promise even though the task is not easy at all,” Zhang said. “But we still have a lot of basic work to do.”

China has long relied on coal to fuel its economic growth as about 83 percent of its electricity output is produced by coal-fired power stations.

China’s non-fossil sources-generated energy include hydropower projects, nuclear power stations, wind power and solar plants, with hydropower accounting for about three fifths of the total.

Zhang said China would step up its efforts to develop hydropower projects across the country under stricter approval procedures, which focus on the protection of the environment, rights of relocated immigrants and land resources.

Of China’s 542 million kilowatts of exploitable hydroelectric potential, only 400 million kWh is suitable for hydropower construction, Zhang said.

“So China can only develop a maximum of 400 million kWh of installed hydropower capacity,” Zhang said. “The final hydropower generation would likely be between 300 million and 350 million kWh.”

Zhang said the NEA is still studying the feasibility of raising the on-grid price for hydropower to the same rate as electricity produced by thermal power plants.

Such proposal, if adopted, would benefit hydropower operators but increase costs for grid operators and the public.

“Views on raising the on-grid price for hydropower vary among different government departments, and the public at large,” Zhang said. “We should take into account what society can afford.”

China’s feed-in tariff for hydropower projects is mostly between 0.2 yuan and 0.3 yuan per kWh, but the rate for coal-fired power plants ranges higher between 0.3 and 0.4 yuan per kWh. Feed-in rates for wind and solar power are even higher.

China maintains rigid price controls on energy resources including power, gas and oil. On-grid power prices often vary by plant and retail rates differ between region, industry and even users.

Any electricity rate hike must be approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planner. Zhang himself is also deputy director of the commission.

Source

Visit Sina

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