Not only rain but also agriculture and human utilization of trees, bushes and land affect the plants recovering.

Photo credit: Science Daily

The Sahel is a semi-arid belt of land in Africa south of the Sahara and north of the wetter areas to the south. The Sahel extends east from the Atlantic Ocean through northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, southern Niger, northeastern Nigeria, Chad and the Sudan. Most of the Sahel region consists of savannah.

Credit: Hanna Sinare

Drought-tolerant species thrive despite returning rains in the Sahel

Date:

October 19, 2016

Source:

Stockholm University

Summary:

Following the devastating droughts in the 70s and 80s in the Sahel region south of the Sahara desert, vegetation has now recovered. What surprised the researchers is that although it is now raining more and has become greener, it is particularly the more drought resistant species that thrive instead of the tree and shrub vegetation that has long been characteristic of the area. The conclusion is that not only rain but also agriculture and human utilization of trees, bushes and land affect the plants recovering.

 

The expected pattern is that a drier climate favours drought resistant species, and that a wetter climate makes it possible for species that require more rainfall to thrive. A new study, however, shows the opposite effect; that a shift to more drought tolerant species is occurring, even though it’s raining more. This shows that the recent regreening of the Sahel region can not only be explained by the fact that it rains more, which until now has been the dominant explanation.

Read the full article: Science Daily

Rain, agriculture and human utilization of trees, bushes and land affect the plants recovering in the Sahel

 

Photo credit: Science Daily

The Sahel is a semi-arid belt of land in Africa south of the Sahara and north of the wetter areas to the south. The Sahel extends east from the Atlantic Ocean through northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, southern Niger, northeastern Nigeria, Chad and the Sudan. Most of the Sahel region consists of savannah.

Credit: Hanna Sinare

Drought-tolerant species thrive despite returning rains in the Sahel

Date:

October 19, 2016

Source:

Stockholm University

Summary:

Following the devastating droughts in the 70s and 80s in the Sahel region south of the Sahara desert, vegetation has now recovered. What surprised the researchers is that although it is now raining more and has become greener, it is particularly the more drought resistant species that thrive instead of the tree and shrub vegetation that has long been characteristic of the area. The conclusion is that not only rain but also agriculture and human utilization of trees, bushes and land affect the plants recovering.

Read the full article: Science Daily

Groundwater recharge occurs disproportionately from heavy rainfalls

Photo credit: Nature World News

Tropical groundwater resources may be more resilient to climate change than previously thought. Pictured here is an artesian well in central semi-arid Tanzania. (Photo : Jasechko, S & Taylor, R.G)

Tropical Groundwater Resources Benefit From Fewer, But More Intense Rainfall

By Samantha Mathewson

Tropical groundwater resources may be able to stand up to the challenges imposed by climate change, researchers from the University College London (UCL) and the University of Calgary report in a new study. Generally speaking, global warming leads to fewer but more intense rainfalls. However, this precipitation pattern seems to adequately recharge vital sources of freshwater.

Groundwater is an invaluable source of freshwater across the tropics, providing safe drinking water and a source of agricultural irrigation. It follows then, the replenishment of these sources is vital for sustaining the livelihoods and ecosystems that depend on the availability of freshwater.

For their study, researchers assessed the chemical signatures in precipitation and groundwater at 15 sites spread out across the tropics. This allowed them to compare the stable isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen found in these water molecules, from which they can interpret how heavy rainfalls impact groundwater recharge in surrounding areas. In terms of their study, heavy rainfall was defined as those exceeding the 50th percentile of local rainfall intensity. Therefore, their results suggest that groundwater recharge occurs disproportionately from heavy rainfalls, but the processes that carry intensive rainfall to groundwater systems and enhance the resilience of tropical groundwater storage as global temperatures rise remains unknown.

Read the full story: Nature World News

Increased Rainfall Reduces Tree Growth in the Savanna

Photo credit: Nature World News

Princeton University researchers found that the ability of grasses to more efficiently absorb and process water gives them an advantage over trees such as the acacia, one of which is pictured here. (Photo : Kev Moses)

Climate Change and Tree Growth: Increased Rainfall Can Actually Reduce Tree Growth In the African Savanna, Researchers Say

By Samantha Mathewson

Given heavier rainfalls regularly sweeping through the African savanna, you’d expect to see observe thriving tree populations. But these areas are actually home to significantly fewer trees. Why? Researchers from Princeton University recently set out to answer this question and found that it all has to do with putting down roots.

Trees equipped with tougher, deeper roots are better able to survive droughts but that leaves them ill equipped to drink in water during sudden and frequent intense rainfalls. That’s not the case with nearby grasses which can absorb water quickly and take advantage of their slower sipping arboreal neighbors, according to a news release.

“A simple way to view this is to think of rainfall as annual income,” Xiangtao Xu, first author of the study and a graduate student at Princeton University, said in the release. “Trees and grasses are competing over the amount of money the savanna gets every year and it matters how they use their funds.”

Read the full article: Nature World News

National flood and runoff assessment

 

 

A new analysis and approach to watershed management

Watershed scientists offer national flood and runoff assessment

Source: University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Summary: The first continent-wide, multi-factor analysis of climate and land cover effects on watersheds in the United States, published today, provides a broad new assessment of runoff, flooding and storm water management options for use by such professionals as land use and town planners and water quality managers.

The first continent-wide, multi-factor analysis of climate and land cover effects on watersheds in the United States, published today, provides a broad new assessment of runoff, flooding and storm water management options for use by such professionals as land use and town planners and water quality managers.

Watershed scientist Timothy Randhir and his doctoral student Paul Ekness in the department of environmental conservation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst hope their new multivariate simulation and statistical models at the watershed system level will give managers some practical ideas on new incentives to get developers to include water quality, green infrastructure and conservation plans in their projects. They also want to encourage a new awareness of the need for cities and towns to cooperate when considering new development.

The study quantifies the connections between land use and climate, that is temperature and precipitation, to the runoff process and flooding in a watershed system at a larger scale than was available before. Details appear today in an early online edition of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.

Read the full story: Science Daily

Fires, carbon sequestration and rainfall

 

The Atlantic Ocean holds the key to western Amazon rainfall

BY SAMUEL MCGLENNON

In 2010, catastrophic fires ravaged huge tracts of the western Amazon, a region of rainforest that until just a few years earlier was considered beyond the reach of serious drought.

Those flames followed the major fires of 2005, which were also caused by extreme drought.

Both of these conflagrations imperilled communities and livelihoods, sending massive pulses of carbon into the atmosphere.

With each destructive fire, the forests of the western Amazon become more susceptible to drying and further burning.

And that is a big problem according to Lou Verchot, one of the authors of a new study and Director, Forests and Environment Research at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

“Many climate mitigation initiatives involve removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it on land in trees and forests.  There are many initiatives to restore degraded forests or expand agroforestry as carbon sequestration measures, for example,” he says.

“Fire is a huge risk to these investments and one fire can undo a decade or more of work.  If we can predict fire risks, we can factor these elements into carbon sequestration schemes and improve their performance.”

PIECING TOGETHER THE PUZZLE

Verchot along with other scientists from CIFOR and the  International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) have found part of the solution may lie thousands of kilometers away from the Western Amazon – in the Atlantic Ocean.

Read thee full article: CIFOR

 

Precipitation in Chile to drop significantly in coming years

Photo credit: Reuters

A view of the Runge reservoir in the town of Runge, some 60 km (37 miles) north of Santiago February 3, 2012. CREDIT: REUTERS/IVAN ALVARADO

Chile says drought here to stay, lays out plan to ensure water

BY ANTHONY ESPOSITO

San Pedro de Atacama, Atacama Desert, New Content 2014 33, Desolate, Drought – http://footage.framepool.com/shotimg/qf/625540970-san-pedro-de-atacama-atacama-desert-desolate-drought.jpg

With no end in sight to a drought that has blighted Chile for the last several years, the government will invest in desalinization plants and reservoirs to ensure access to potable water, President Michelle Bachelet said on Tuesday.

The drought, which began in 2007, is hampering copper production in the world’s top exporter, exacerbating forest fires, driving energy prices higher and impacting agriculture.

In the usually lush and verdant south January was one of the driest since records began, with many places receiving zero rainfall. In the north of the country, home to the Atacama Desert, already the driest in the world, climatologists fear the spread of desertification.

Scientists say there is a long-term trend of increasingly dry conditions, linked to climate change.

“Faced with this critical situation, there is no choice but to assume that the lack of water resources is a reality that is here to stay and that puts at risk the development of important regions of our country,” Bachelet said in a televised speech.

Some $170 million will be invested in 2015 to access underground water sources, build and upgrade canals and improve irrigation systems, she said.

Read the full article: Reuters

Drought and thirst in Brazil

Photo credit: IPS

A puddle is all that is left in one of the reservoirs of the Cantareira System, which normally supplies nearly half of the São Paulo metropolitan region. Courtesy of Ninja/ContaDagua.org

Brazil – from the Droughts of the Northeast to São Paulo’s Thirst

By Mario Osava

“Life in the Northeast has gotten easier. With the government’s social benefits, people aren’t suffering the same deprivations as before, even during the current drought, one of the worst in history.” — Luciano de Almeida

A rural settlement in the northeast Brazilian state of Pernambuco, where water tanks have been installed to collect and store rainwater and make it fit for drinking. Initiatives like this one have modified the local population’s relationship with the recurrent drought in the semi-arid region. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS – http://cdn.ipsnews.net/Library/2015/03/Brazil-2.jpg

EXCERPT

Six million people in Brazil’s biggest city, São Paulo, may at some point find themselves without water. The February rains did not ward off the risk and could even aggravate it by postponing rationing measures which hydrologists have been demanding for the last six months.

The threat is especially frightening for millions of people who have flocked here from Brazil’s poorest region, the semi-arid Northeast, many of whom fled the droughts that are so frequent there.

The Nordestinos did not imagine that they would face a scarcity of water in this land of abundance, where most of them have prospered. The most famous of them, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, became a trade union leader and eventually president of the country from 2003 to 2011.

Many people in this city of 22 million people share his concern about storing more water, especially in the Zona Norte or northern zone of Greater São Paulo, which will be the first area affected by rationing if the state government decides to take measures aimed at guaranteeing water supplies year-round.

The Zona Norte is supplied by the Cantareira system of interconnecting reservoirs which, on the verge of collapse, is still providing water for six million people. It supplied nine million people up to mid-2014, when one-third of the demand was transferred to the other eight systems that provide water in the city.

It is precisely the Zona Norte that is home to many of the Nordestino migrants and their descendants, as reflected by the numerous restaurants that offer typical food from the Northeast, such as carne-de-sol (heavily salted beef cured in the sun), cassava flour and different kinds of beans.

Read the full article: IPS

Groundwater management is key in Sri Lanka

Photo credit: IWMI

Small-scale carrot farming in Jaffna (photo: cc: Johanan Ottensooser on Flickr).

Good groundwater management is key to Jaffna’s social and economic revival

Sri Lanka News

Jaffna’s wells may not provide a year-round supply of clean water, but a mix of short and long-term options could provide communities with all the clean water they need,

says Dharshani Weerasekera

President in Jaffna: Farmers in Jaffna to fetch reasonable prices to their agricultural produces – http://www.asiantribune.com/sites/asiantribune.com/files/images/2012/Chunnakam_People_1.jpg

Has water replaced peace as the key to Jaffna’s progress? In the Jaffna Peninsula, in the northernmost part of Sri Lanka, the only source of fresh water for most of the year is that drawn from underground reservoirs. However, human activities are threatening these fragile and precious aquifers with contamination. Damage to this limited and irreplaceable resource would be extremely difficult or impossible to reverse. How can we ensure this does not happen?

http://g9jzk5cmc71uxhvd44wsj7zyx.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/LL-pumping-groundwater-for-irrigation-in-Jaffna.jpg

The answer lies in how stakeholders address two major concerns. The first is groundwater contamination from the dumping of oil, sewage, agrochemicals and garbage into the ground. The second is the seawater intrusion of Jaffna’s limestone aquifers due to over-extraction of groundwater for domestic, agricultural and industrial purposes.

The rain falls mainly in the plain

 

Read the full article : IWMI

Groundwater depletion in California

Photo credit: Scientific American

In California, groundwater deposits are getting saltier as cities and farms extract more water than is replenished naturally, allowing ocean water into the porous aquifers.
Credit: Wonderlane/Flickr

California Farmers Confront Ominous Groundwater Shortage

Drought and saltier aquifers pose threats to the biggest farming state in the U.S.

By Debra Kahn and ClimateWire

California’s perpetual problem of groundwater depletion has gotten so dire that people are actually working to solve it.

In California, groundwater deposits are getting saltier as cities and farms extract more water than is replenished naturally, allowing ocean water into the porous aquifers. One of the worst areas for it is the Pajaro Valley, a small farming community near Santa Cruz. In a state that has long touted itself as the nation’s No. 1 agricultural producer, the seawater has worked its way into groundwater deposits roughly 3 miles inland from the coast.

Water experts and state officials were in a conference room at the corporate headquarters of massive berry grower Driscoll’s in Watsonville last week to discuss the issue and try to amplify it.

“The state of California has to deal with groundwater, or we’re going to ruin this state,” said Miles Reiter, CEO of Driscoll’s, which has operations in six states as well as Argentina, Canada, Chile and Mexico.

Driscoll’s executives are uncommonly frank about the hard realities California is faced with because they are unavoidable in the Pajaro Valley, which gets more than 90 percent of its water from groundwater.

Some farmers in the valley are already at the point where their groundwater water is too saline to use.

Read the full article: Scientific American

Floodwater used to grow herbs in Dakar (Senegal)

Photo credit: TRUST

Emilie Faye stands near a floodwater retention basin in Pikine, a suburb of the Senegalese capital Dakar. THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION

Dakar women grow herb business from floodwater

Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation

Author: Kathryn M. Werntz

VIDEO: http://youtu.be/uoGxrDeyT_g

Though the coastal cities of Senegal are situated on the fierce Atlantic Ocean, it is floods from heavy rains they struggle with, rather than rising tides.

Inondation à Pikine – http://www.noorinfo.com/photo/art/default/4613661-6906052.jpg?v=1344867640

A common solution is to pump floodwaters into the ocean. But one innovative project is trying to capture the water instead, for use in gardening during water-short periods of the year.

Pikine, les Parcelles assainies et Guédiawaye, les trois villes de la banlieue dakaroise, bénéficieront, très prochainement, d’un programme spécial de lutte contre la pauvreté. – http://www.seneweb.com/news/artimages/news/pikine.jpg

In Pikine, a suburb of Senegal’s capital Dakar, the “Live with Water” project captures floodwater in large sandy basins, around which cash crop gardens of mint and basil provide an income for local residents.

Using the basins, floods that once wiped out houses, strained the local economy and heightened the risk of disease have been converted into a new stock of fresh water for a West African community that is dusty and dry much of the year.

“Before, one had to accept that houses here flood. But this project opened our eyes to see there is a solution,” said Emilie Faye, a local leader who has been instrumental in the project.

Faye points to the seat of her couch, indicating the flood level in years past. The wall and ceiling of her home are discoloured and peeling due to secondary damage from humidity.

CATCHING RAINWATER

The redirected floodwaters serve a multitude of purposes. The surface drainage system leads water into an underground canal which empties into a natural filtration system. Water then flows through a series of basins, creating a reservoir and a green space in the middle of a crowded, dusty suburb.

The basins, a burgeoning ecosystem of their own, are now populated with medicinal plants, fish and herons.

 

Read the full article: TRUST

Details of precipitation across the planet

Photo credit: Scientific American

The new mix of satellites and sensors aboard the International Space Station provide a flurry of information.
Credit: NASA/Flickr

Rain Revealed in Unprecedented Detail by Satellites

A constellation of new satellites are showing details of precipitation across the planet like never before

By Brian Kahn and Climate Confidential

Few things on our planet connect us like precipitation. The storm that drops snow in the mountains of Tennessee one day can bring rain to the plains of Spain a week later.

Yet there hasn’t been a way to effectively monitor all the precipitation across the globe at once, let alone create a vertical profile from the clouds to the ground. All that changed last year, though, when NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched the last piece of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, a constellation of at least 12 satellites that give an unprecedented view of global precipitation available in near real time. And on Thursday, NASA released its first map produced by those satellites.

Read the full article: Scientific American

VIDEO: http://youtu.be/ILNC7IdyWVU