Rivers
pgleick | June 20, 2013With Matthew Heberger. This is a version of a post from the blog "Pacific Institute Insights"
How much water is there in America’s rivers, and where is it? Perhaps unsurprisingly, people have little sense of how their local water resources compare in size to other water resources. “Is that a big river? A little river?”
One of us [Gleick] grew up along the Hudson River on the East Coast, and encountered rivers that seemed to be about the same size: the Susquehanna, the Delaware, the Potomac. Anyone living in the West working on water issues becomes more familiar with the Colorado, the…
milhayser | April 15, 2013I have been remiss in not posting articles from the homepage here on Page 3.14...so to catch up, here's four at once.
No Beauty Without Water
On World Water Day, think of the water cycle that defines this planet. On The Pump Handle, Liz Borkowski writes "rivers often flow through multiple countries, and actions by one country or community can affect their neighbors’ ability to meet their water needs. Consuming too much water, or polluting a shared body of water, can make it hard for others to have enough for drinking, hygiene, agriculture, ecosystem health, and other needs." Rivers and…
cevans | September 28, 2012The space-heads among you have undoubtedly heard about the Curiosity rover's first significant discovery: the remnants of an ancient streambed on Mars, which would seem to indicate the presence of water in the planet's history. This jagged pile of alluvial rock and dust may not look like much, but it brings to mind one of my favorite pieces of Martian historical arcana.
For a time in the late 19th century, it was believed that there were canals on Mars.
The Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who observed Mars in 1877, was the first to describe, name, and lovingly illustrate mysterious…