March 10, 2023
View this email in your browser
Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.

The Blue Planet Turns Green: Algae Fouls Waters as the World Struggles to Grow More Food in a Changing Climate

Mar. 13, 2023 9:00am – 10:30am ET

As the world struggles to feed itself – using more land and more water – nutrient runoff from agricultural production has triggered a systemic ecological threat. Toxic algae erupt annually around the globe, fouling public drinking water systems and affecting the health of millions of people. While warmer temperatures are exacerbating the blooms, recent reporting reveals little regulation or effective responses to solving this growing threat.

Speakers at this panel will discuss the causes, consequences, and solutions to this escalating challenge in the United States and China.

Dust and cows in the fall in the San Luis Valley. Photo courtesy of Flickr/Creative Commons user Michael Rael

Tax Incentives Find New Purpose for Conserving Water in American West

Conservation easements protect the region’s depleted groundwater.

The San Luis Valley, a high desert farming region in southern Colorado, is a land of daunting natural constraints, especially its scarce water reserves. Pragmatic ingenuity is being applied here to overcome them, including a new easement program that uses federal and state tax benefits to conserve groundwater.

Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue

What’s Up With Water – March 7, 2023

Tune into What's Up With Water for your need to know news of the world's water on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and SoundCloud.

Featured coverage from this week's episode of What's Up With Water looks at:

Refugee camps in eastern Kenya are straining to accommodate huge numbers of people from neighboring Somalia who are fleeing the worst drought in more than a generation. According to the UN Refugee Agency, over a hundred thousand Somalis have entered (duh-DAHB) Dadaab refugee camps in the last two years.

Countries in Europe have had a shockingly dry winter and are now preparing for yet another hot, dry summer. Reuters reports that snowfall in the Alps is half of normal.

In the American Southwest, water shortages are a perpetual fear. Nevada legislators have introduced a bill to give the arid state’s largest city more control of residential water use, giving officials another way to respond to the region's drying climate.

From the Archives:

Rows of almond trees extend to the horizon in Kern County, California. Orchards like this one have sprouted in the last decade in areas of California’s Central Valley that are already water stressed. Photo © Brett Walton/Circle of Blue

U.S. Food Trade Increasingly Leans On Unsustainable Groundwater

Biggest reliance on unsustainable groundwater is in the western states, study finds.

American agriculture is a behemoth, a world-leading industry that, while meeting extensive domestic demands, still exports around $140 billion in farm products each year. Soybeans go to China. Cherries to Japan. Baskets of goods to Canada.

Some of that production rests on a risky and unstable foundation, a new study finds. It takes water to grow those crops, and an increasing portion of the country’s irrigation water is unsustainably mined from groundwater sources that are being depleted.

Groundwater use is unsustainable in the long term when the amount of water that is extracted from an aquifer is greater than the amount that enters, via rainfall or artificial means.

Circle of Blue brings our readers to the front lines of the biggest stories around the most important issue on the planet: The world’s water.

Just as water is central to life, your support is vital to what we do.

Please support our nonprofit journalism today.

Support Circle of Blue

We want to hear from you! Please email thoughts and suggestions to info@circleofblue.org.

This email was sent to newsletter@newslettercollector.com
why did I get this? unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences
Circle of Blue · 1615 Randolph Street · Traverse City, MI 49684-2172 · USA