Recognizing Water for What It's Worth

Steve Solomon's new book "Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization" is an exhaustively researched and well written contribution to the world's increasing awareness of water issues. It traces the overriding importance of water in the world's economic and political history, accurately identifying water as the world's most precious resource. It provides strong support for the statement that "Water is fundamental to life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a healthy life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite to the realization of all other human rights." (UN, 2002).

Is water in short supply? The reality is that the earth is a water-rich planet on which less than one percent of its water inventory is used for human purposes. What is in short supply is inexpensive fresh water that people can afford to buy.

How much water is there in the world and how is it used? The best current estimate is that the earth has 329 million cubic miles of water, with each cubic mile containing more than one trillion gallons. But the vast majority, 99.7 percent, is found in the oceans with an average salt content of 35,000 parts per million. This level of salinity (fresh water is usually 500 parts per million or less) means that humankind cannot use this water without doing something to it, such as desalination, which is not easy or cheap.

The majority of global freshwater (75 percent) is used for agriculture, 39 percent in the U.S. and Europe, and more than 80 percent in parts of Africa and Asia. World water demand more than tripled over the past half century, and today more than a billion people lack access to clean drinking water and more than two billion to water for proper sanitation.

Solomon's book lays out this reality in considerable detail as well as the implications. These include health effects (80 percent of infections in the developing world are due to water-borne diseases), the inability to adequately feed a growing world population, and the potential for conflict as water supplies are contested by neighboring peoples. Another implication derives from the inseparability of water and energy issues. Both water and energy are essential to the reduction of poverty, and the linkage between them has not always been recognized. This has begun to change in recent years, with growing sensitivity to the fact that energy is needed to provide water services (pumping water from underground aquifers, moving water to where it is used, treating impaired water for reuse, and desalinating brackish and sea water) and that many forms of energy production depend on the availability of water (hydropower, cooling of thermal power plants, fossil fuel production and processing, biofuels, carbon capture and sequestration, hydrogen economy). As a result a new term has appeared in the water lexicon, the water-energy nexus.

This is not to say that some people haven't spoken out on water issues in the past. A number of voices have sought to sound the alarm for several decades, including the United Nations which declared an International Decade of Water in the 1980s and a new one in 2005. The UN Millenium Summit in 2000 identified fresh water availability as a major global crisis, as did the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. World Water Forums have also been held every three years since 1997.

What is complicating the world's ability to address water security issues is the linkage between water and global climate change. In its 2008 Technical Paper on Climate Change and Water the International Panel on Climate Change stated that "Observational records and climate projections provide abundant evidence that freshwater resources are vulnerable and have the potential to be strongly impacted by climate change...." Climate change will disrupt the hydrological cycle and impact global water resources long before other impacts are felt. Precipitation patterns can change, leading to a greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (flooding, drought, hurricanes), and by altering the timing of winter snows, snowmelt, and spring rains, climate change could overload reservoirs early in the season, forcing releases of water and leaving areas like California high and dry in late summer. Coastal areas and island nations also face a serious threat. Rising water levels, before they destroy property and flood low-lying areas, will cause saltwater intrusion of freshwater supplies, putting the drinking water of millions of people at risk.

As Solomon's book effectively documents, "Just as oil conflicts were central to twentieth-century history, the struggle over freshwater is set to shape a new turning point in the world order and the destiny of civilization." This is not hyperbole but fact. Just as the struggle to control water resources has shaped human political and economic history to this point, so will the struggle in future years be central to the world we will live in and leave to our children and grandchildren. This book helps us immeasurably to understand this reality.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-hoffman-md/recognizing-water-for-wha_b_399955.html

Invasive freshwater snail spreading in California

SANTA CRUZ, Calif.—Researchers say a tiny, invasive freshwater snail has spread faster in California waterways than previously thought.

The New Zealand mudsnail has now been found in the higher elevations of the Santa Cruz Mountains by local researchers. The snail had been found previously in a dozen or so inland California rivers.

The snail reproduces quickly and can even survive in the stomachs of predators.

Researchers fear the snail will crowd out the insects that the threatened steelhead feeds on. They say it also could push out other aquatic life important to the food web.

Officials are asking all fishermen who wade into area rivers to freeze all of their gear for eight hours, which is the only way to decontaminate.

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_13900552?nclick_check=1

Water Is The New Oil

(The Huffington Post) That's the question I first asked myself which led me to write "Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization" (Harper Collins January 2010). I had read Dan Yergin's wonderful history of oil, "The Prize", and began contemplating what other natural resource might be shaping our destiny as profoundly. The obvious answer arrived like a slap in the forehead, a Bill Clinton "It's the economy, stupid!" moment--WATER.

Water is visibly showing through as a root cause of nearly every headline issue transforming the world order and planetary environment: Freshwater scarcity is a key reason why 3.5 billion people are projected to live in countries that cannot feed themselves by 2025. Earth's freshwater ecosystems are critically depleted and being used unsustainably, reported the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, for today's 6.5 billion population much less for the 9 billion we'll be by 2050. Extreme droughts, floods, melting glaciers and other water cycle-related effects of global warming are why there'll likely be 150 million global climate refugees within a decade. Diplomats warn that 21st century conflicts will be fought over water as they were for oil in the 20th.

While many scholars highlighted the central importance of water in relation to their own main fields of study, no one had ever pulled it all together into a comprehensive narrative of water's role in world history. I thus set out to discover water's main history lessons, then apply them to help illuminate the stakes and challenges of our new era of scarcity.

The water-centric lens made it dramatically clear that in every era control and manipulation of water has been a central fulcrum of power and wealth and a precondition of prosperous civilization. Time and again water breakthroughs -- the irrigated Agricultural Revolution in ancient Mesopotamia, China's unifying Grand Canal, Rome's aqueducts, Europe's transoceanic Voyages of Discovery, the waterwheel and then steam engine-powered Industrial Revolution, the 19th century Sanitary Awakening, and American-pioneered giant dams for hydroelectricity, irrigation and flood control -- were associated with epic turning points of civilization and a recalibrating world order among great powers.

These and other skeletal remains of water history are readily visible to anyone who looks for them. I visited many in person, some through museum exhibitions, and others virtually through the marvel of the worldwide web and the multimedia postings of its myriad fellow travelers.

Easily my most memorable visit was in 2004 to the dusty, reddish hills of southeastern Kenya on the edge of Africa's Rift Valley where I helped lay two miles of pipes that connected waterless, literally dirt-poor villages to a borehole pump. My wife, a high school teacher, organized the trip for students, and my three teenage daughters joined what became a life perception-altering experience for all. When the water tap flowed for the first time, the villagers expressed unforgettable joy at their liberation from having to march two to four hours each day to fetch 200 pounds of clean freshwater in plastic 'jerry' cans -- hours sacrificed from education and productive work. We also worked alongside a small group toiling for weeks with hand tools and sisal sacks to dig and carry soil to reinforce an earthen dam -- precisely like those built since antiquity -- that trapped vital monsoon water for the dry season, all along knowing that the task could be completed in a single day with a bulldozer. I raised muddy creek water 20 feet to irrigate cropland by stepping up and down on a treadle pump -- much as Chinese rice farmers did using bamboo tubes centuries ago and Americans today do on their Stairmasters.

These experiences highlighted how unevenly layered water's role is, with co-existing ancient, medieval, and modern methods imparting enormous advantages for water Haves and crippling disadvantages for water Have-Nots. They drove home that, like the planet, we ourselves are 70% water, and that unique among oil, iron, and all substances, water is irreplaceable in its uses by mankind. And somehow they revealed water's special, ineffable bond to our essential humanity -- to each other and to Nature.

"When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water," Benjamin Franklin quipped long ago. With the impending freshwater scarcity crisis, world politics and human civilization is undergoing another turbulent sea change. Alarmingly societies are bifurcating into those with enough water and those without. Two in five people lack adequate sanitation, and over 1 billion don't have access to safe drinking water.

Scarcity of unpolluted, freshwater is menacing the future of China and India, which have only one-fifth and one-sixth as much water per person as America. Our energy, food, and climate change challenges are integrally tied to water.

Yet our water crisis is manageable using today's technologies. But it will require an heroic transformation in the political organization of existing water resources. The paradox of water is that, despite its scarcity, almost everywhere it remains the most misgoverned, economically undervalued, inefficiently allocated, and egregiously wasted critical natural resource. Nature won't permit us to continue using water at the profligate 20th century rate of two times population growth. Although no Al Gore of water has yet arisen to sound the political clarion, radically improved efficiency -- which the combination of free market forces and water ecosystem regulations have begun modestly to produce -- is the best solution. Amply endowed America has a golden opportunity to become a global water superpower and growth leader of the new order. Yet in our interconnected global society we ignore at our peril the desperate thirst around the planet. As a Turkish proverb warns: "When one man drinks while another can only watch, Doomsday follows."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-solomon/water-is-the-new-oil_b_380803.html

How To Invest In Water

A global water crisis is looming, but the path to profits is a muddy mess of regulated industries, giant companies with small water operations, and start-up technologies.

For Alex Miles, who once ran a water hedge fund and now manages $350 million at Kingfisher Capital, successful investing in water means going beyond it -- commodities, power and efficiency technology are all ways to make a portfolio splash.

Water scarcity has become a global issue as climate change alters water availability, population growth raises demand, and contamination threatens clean supplies. But what seems to be an obvious investment opportunity has challenges -- in particular, the belief that water is a public good, not a profit source.

"If water were not viewed as a human right, it would be a great investment," said Miles, who compares water shortages to gravity -- inescapable.

Miles ran Aqueduct, one of the first hedge funds in water from 2006 to 2009. His Kingfisher's Value Opportunity flagship fund, which has water as one focus, has outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 index by 3.65 percentage points annually between its inception at the end of 2004 and the end of June 2009, he said.

In an interview at a recent Green Power conference in San Francisco, he explained how to invest in ways that could help alleviate crisis as well as profit from its effects, such as higher grain prices.

"The fault of the investment community is that they have looked at water too narrowly," he said.

PLUG INTO THE SMART GRID

Water investment can be made in primary industries, like utilities that produce, treat and transport water. But it should also include related industries, such as smart grid and pollution management that could increase efficiency of water use, and products tied to water -- like food.

Heavy regulation limits returns at publicly traded water utilities, while the biggest players in water technology, such as General Electric Co and Siemens AG, are even bigger in other areas, diluting their value for someone wanting a targeted water investment.

One pure play would be small-cap Energy Recovery Inc, which makes equipment that cuts energy use at desalination plants and other enterprises that clean water.

Secondary industries that are closely related to water offer other opportunities. Moving and heating water is a major energy draw, while water is crucial to producing energy, from mining to natural gas extraction to cooling power plants.

Bets on water include meter companies focused on water and building an electricity smart grid, Miles said. He cited companies such as Badger Meter, Itron Inc, and EnerNOC, a demand response company that sells 'negawatts' -- contracts to cut demand when needed by power companies.

Miles declined to recommend any specific investment, but argued that many of the water companies had been chewed up by credit fears that had nothing to do with the underlying demand for their wares and services.

"Investors in water have to take a long-term view," he said. "A lot of these stocks have struggled because of the global credit crisis rather than because of their business models."

FOLLOW THE CARBON FOOTPRINT

Water use is often energy-intensive, and thus carbon-intensive, while much industry endangers water. So increased focus on carbon and water go hand in hand, he said.

"Carbon prices should go up, reflective of (the) water crisis," he said.

Investing in the Climate Exchange Plc, the publicly traded company which itself runs exchanges for greenhouse gases, could be seen as water investment, he said.

Miles expects the crisis to intensify, despite technology improvements, and the best strategy for "water crisis" investors is grain and other soft commodities, he said.

Water prices will rise because needs will be so dire and governments such as the United States will have more pressing priorities. But regulation and fragment markets mean the water price rise will lag price increases in products that use water -- like food -- which trade in global markets.

"I want to be long agricultural commodities," he said.

The market already expects higher prices of grains from economic recovery, but it does not price in additional impacts of water crisis, he said. Wheat could get a risk premium related to water in the same way that gold currently enjoys a premium because of currency risk in an unstable world economy.

Aside from trading directly in agricultural futures, investors could get exposure with exchange-traded funds such as the PowerShares DB Commodity Index Tracking Fund or the PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund.

http://planetark.org/wen/55824

Invasive carp threatens Great Lakes

Fish and wildlife officials will poison a 6-mile stretch of water near Chicago on Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to keep one of the most dangerous invasive species of fish, the Asian carp, out of the Great Lakes.

The Asian carp, a voracious eater that has no predators and negligible worth as a commercial or sport fish, now dominates the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and their tributaries.

The fish has entered the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal — a man-made link between the Mississippi River system and the Great Lakes — and is knocking on the door of Lake Michigan. Once inside a Great Lake, the carp would have free rein in the world's largest freshwater ecosystem, imperiling the native fish of the lakes and a $7 billion fishing and recreation industry.

"We've got a chance to beat this thing, but we've got to do everything right," says Joel Brammeier, acting president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, a conservation group.

The poisoning will kill an estimated 100 tons of fish, which will be removed by crane and hauled to a landfill. The five-day fish kill will provide time for the Army Corps of Engineers to perform routine maintenance on an electrical barrier that has been placed in the canal to block Asian carp from entering Lake Michigan.

No Asian carp have been found on the Great Lakes' side of the electrical barrier. However, recent DNA samples taken from water indicate the carp may have gotten past the barrier.

"We feel confident that our barriers repel the fish," says Chuck Shea, the Army Corps of Engineers' project manager. The barrier consists of low voltage sent through steel cables, electrifying the water enough to stop the fish but not enough to kill them or humans.

The Great Lakes have struggled for decades from more than 150 invasive species brought in by ocean-going vessels dumping water from around the world. The Asian carp is the first major threat to come from the other direction, upstream from the Mississippi River.

The results are potentially devastating for the Great Lakes and the rivers that flow into it.

Good intentions gone bad

Asian carp were first brought to Arkansas in 1963 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which wanted a natural way to control aquatic weeds, reducing the need for chemicals. Fish farms brought more carp to function as pond cleaners.

The fish started to escape as early as 1966, according to a Fish and Wildlife Service history. The Asian carp were spread by Mississippi River floods in the 1990s.

Once released, the insatiable fish quickly conquered local rivers and headed north to spawn and eat. Asian carp now dominate many parts of major rivers, including the Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Ohio, Columbia and Platte rivers. A survey in an offshoot of the Mississippi River near St. Louis found 97% of the fish were Asian carp.

Asian carp consist of four species — bighead, black, grass and silver — native to the rivers of China, Russia and Vietnam. They can consume 40% of their body weight every day and steal the food supply from other species. With no natural predators or disease found in their native waters, Asian carp quickly become the bulk of the biomass — the size and weight of fish — in American rivers.

The big problems are:

Bighead carp. The fish doesn't have a stomach, so it eats constantly. By vacuuming plankton, algae and everything else in its way, the fish can grow to more than 4 feet and 85 pounds. The older and bigger it gets, the more it reproduces.

Silver carp. The 50-pound flying fish is a YouTube sensation. It leaps high from the water when disturbed by a passing boat or water-skier. Boaters and jet-skiers have been seriously injured by the airborne fish.

"You don't see people water-skiing or flying down the Illinois River in boats anymore," says Chris McCloud of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Asian carp are still used on some fish farms to keep ponds clean. Some carp are sold, often live, at specialty Asian markets. But the fish have little commercial value.

"It's full of bones — floating bones in its flesh — that make it objectionable to Americans who want their fish as a filet," says Barry Costa-Pierce, director of the Rhode Island Sea Grant program.

Carp isn't a popular sport fish. But bow hunting for carp is gaining fans. The ultimate bow fishing prize: nailing a silver carp midair.

Perhaps an impossible task

Keeping Asian carp out of the Great Lakes may be impossible because the fish is so common in U.S. rivers, says Ron Kinnunen, a Michigan Sea Grant biologist who works on Lake Superior. "It's hard to stop an invasive species once the genie is out of the bottle. You can only hold them in check," he says.

The Great Lakes' last line of defense is the world's largest electrical fish barrier, constructed in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The Army Corps of Engineers has a $40,000-a-month electricity bill for the barriers.

A demonstration barrier went up in 2002. A second, more powerful barrier was finished in 2006, but the voltage wasn't cranked up until last February. The economic stimulus bill provides money for a third electrical barrier, which should be ready next year.

The barriers need to be turned off every six months or so for maintenance. When the power is off this week, the Illinois Department of Natural Resource will drop 2,300 gallons of rotenone, a fish poison, into the canal.

The fish kill is so large that rotenone's manufacturer couldn't supply enough of the poison. Illinois officials had to get donations from fish and wildlife officials in other states. Rotenone turns off the oxygen function in fish. A crew of 200 will work five days to execute the fish kill.

The fish kill has broad support from fish and wildlife officials, environmental groups and the fishing industry. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, an industrial waterway, is 70% wastewater from local sewer systems. Fishing is prohibited.

The original barrier will keep working during the fish kill, but it delivers only half the voltage of the newer one and isn't as effective. The new stimulus-funded electrical barrier will let the Army engineers keep one powerful barrier going while the other is repaired.

No long-term answer

The electrical barriers and mass poisoning may not be enough to protect the Great Lakes forever. Several groups are calling for the government to "disconnect" the Chicago Sanitary Canal from the Great Lakes.

The man-made canal is the only link between the basins of the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. The canal was opened in 1900 for environmental reasons — to stop the dumping of Chicago's raw sewage into Lake Michigan.

The canal reversed the flow of the Chicago River, directing it south to the Des Plaines River rather than north to Lake Michigan. The American Society of Civil Engineers named the canal one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century. The canal remains important for wastewater, flood control and barge traffic.

A century later, the Chicago Sanitary Canal has created another environmental problem. The 200-foot-wide waterway is the sole link between the nation's two most important watersheds and now serves as a pipeline — in both directions — for invasive species.

"We have to take care of this problem permanently," says Marc Gaden of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, a joint U.S.-Canadian commission that coordinates fisheries management. "We need pure biological separation between the Mississippi River basin and the Great Lakes basin." Congress has ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to study the issue.

Gaden says the Army Corps needs to quickly design a solution to restore the natural separation between the Mississippi River and Great Lakes. "We don't have time to wait," he says. "The electrical barriers are the be-all, end-all. This is an emergency."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-11-30-asian-carp_N.htm

Wasted Food Uses 25% of Freshwater Supply

When Americans throw out food, they’re wasting more than just groceries. Research funded by the National Institutes of Health has found that 40% of all food produced in the United States is discarded, and with it goes a lot of wasted resources. One quarter of all freshwater consumed in the nation is wasted when this volume of food is tossed out. Also, about 300 million barrels of oil used to either produce or transport food is gone for naught when so much food is thrown away.

Wasted food has increased in volume by 50% since 1974. Today, 1,400 calories worth of food is discarded per person each day, adding up to 150 trillion calories a year—all in a country where 6.7 million people didn’t have enough to eat in 2008.

- Noel Brinkerhoff

2030 Water Resources Group Report

There’s a new report out documenting global water scarcity and outlining strategies for meeting future water demand.

The report was issued by the 2030 Water Resources Group, of which Syngenta CEO Michael Mack is a member. He says agriculture accounts for approximately 71 percent of global water withdrawals today. Although agriculture has improved its water use efficiency, Mack says more can—and must—be done.

“Getting more productive in agriculture on the existing farmland is the highest priority. We have the means to do this, and it is just a question now of how to bring that together in a very sensible and focused way,” Mack says. “Making water more efficient—more crop per drop, which is a phrase that’s used increasingly so—is the key.”

The group’s report says that, unless steps are taken to address water issues, the gap between global water supply and demand will reach 40 percent by 2030. The report points out that solutions will vary by country, and even by watershed.

http://brownfieldagnews.com/2009/11/23/group-release-global-water-report/

What is Freshwater?

Freshwater is chemically defined as containing a concentration of less than two parts per thousand (<0.2%) of dissolved salts.

Freshwater can occur in many parts of the environment. Surface freshwaters occur in lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams. Subsurface freshwater occurs in pores in soil and in subterranean aquifers in deep geological formations. Freshwater also occurs in snow and glacial ice, and in atmospheric vapors, clouds, and precipitation.

Most of the dissolved, inorganic chemicals in freshwater occur as ions. The most important of the positively charged ions (or cations) in typical freshwaters are calcium (Ca2+), magnesium (Mg2+), sodium (Na+), ammonium (NH4+), and hydrogen ion (H+). This hydrogen ion is only present if the solution is acidic; otherwise a hydroxy ion (OH−) occurs. The most important of the negatively charged ions (or anions) are sulfate (SO42−), chloride (Cl−), and nitrate (NO3−). Other ions are also present, but in relatively small concentrations. Some freshwaters can have large concentrations of dissolved organic compounds, known as humic substances. These can stain the water a deep-brown, in contrast to the transparent color of most freshwaters.

At the dilute end of the chemical spectrum of surface waters are lakes in watersheds with hard, slowly weathering bedrock and soils. Such lakes can have a total concentration of salts of less than 0.002% (equivalent to 20 mg/L, or parts per million, ppm). For example, Beaverskin Lake in Nova Scotia has very clear, dilute water, with the most important dissolved chemicals being: chloride (4.4 mg/L), sodium (2.9 mg/L), sulfate (2.8 mg/L), calcium (0.41 mg/L), magnesium (0.39 mg/L), and potassium (0.30 mg/L). A nearby body of water, Big Red Lake, has similar concentrations of these inorganic ions. However, this lake also receives drainage from a nearby bog, and its chemistry includes a large concentration of dissolved organic compounds (23 mg/L), which stain the water the color of dark tea.

More typical concentrations of major inorganic ions in freshwater are somewhat larger: calcium 15 mg/L; sulfate 11 mg/L; chloride 7 mg/L; silica 7 mg/L; sodium 6 mg/L; magnesium 4 mg/L; and potassium 3 mg/L.

The freshwater of precipitation is considerably more dilute than that of surface waters. For example, precipitation falling on the Nova Scotia lakes is dominated by sulfate (1.6 mg/L), chloride (1.3 mg/L), sodium (0.8 mg/L), nitrate (0.7 mg/L), calcium (0.13 mg/L), ammonium (0.08 mg/L), magnesium (0.08 mg/L), and potassium (0.08 mg/L). Because the sampling site is within 31 mi (50 km) of the Atlantic Ocean, its precipitation is significantly influenced by sodium and chloride originating with sea sprays. More continental locations have much smaller concentrations of these ions in their precipitation water. For example, precipitation at a remote place in northern Ontario has a sodium concentration of 0.09 mg/L and chloride 0.15 mg/L, compared with 0.75 mg/L and 1.3 mg/L, respectively, at the maritime Nova Scotia site.

http://www.bookrags.com/research/freshwater-woes-01/

Experts convene to save freshwater fish

A plan to save Australia's freshwater fish from becoming extinct is being worked out at a meeting of experts from around the world at the Adelaide Zoo which begins today.

The 25 delegates will discuss a series of freshwater fish management strategies to tackle the issue.

The head of Zoos SA, Chris West, says the drought, over-extraction and the drainage of wetlands have all led to diminished native fish numbers in Australia.

"In Australia, about 95 per cent of our wetlands have either been destroyed or very severely compromised by urban and rural developments," he said.

"So the freshwater fish, which in a way are canaries in the coalmine for a lot of our ecology, our natural health, are really under a great deal of pressure."

He says public awareness about the threatened state of Australia's freshwater fish numbers is far too low.

"These small and sometimes not terribly glamorous fish are disappearing as well as things like the Murray Cod, and our wellbeing, as humans, is bound up with the natural health and ecology, and that has to do with the wetlands," he said.

"So it's so important that the public realise that it's part of their health to make sure that we have good fresh water."

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/australian-news/6501062/experts-convene-to-save-freshwater-fish/

Freshwater Inflow Needs of the Matagorda Bay System

The Matagorda Bay system is the second largest estuary on the Texas Gulf Coast covering approximately 352 square miles. The abundant production of finfish and shellfish make this environmentally sensitive area important not only as a ecological resource, but also as a source of economically significant commercial and sports fisheries. Many factors contribute to this high natural productivity, but the most significant is an ample source of freshwater. Freshwater inflows are vital to the continued health of the natural ecosystems in and around the Matagorda Bay system.

To determine the freshwater inflow needs of the Matagorda Bay system, the LCRA entered into a cooperative agreement with TPWD, TWDB and TNRCC in 1993. The LCRA agreed to adapt or modify existing methods for estimating freshwater inflow needs used by the TPWD and TWDB and apply those methods to compute alternative freshwater inflow needs for the estuary. The participating state agencies provided technical assistance and advice to the LCRA.

Methodology for Estimating Freshwater Inflow Needs

This method involved the synthesis of three components: (1) development of statistical relationships between freshwater inflows and key indicators of estuarine conditions, (2) computation of monthly and seasonal freshwater inflows to optimize estuarine conditions subject to specific constraints at key estuarine locations and (3) evaluation of estuarine-wide salinity conditions to ensure conditions remain within desired limits.

The first major component is the development of statistical relationships for the varied and complex interactions between freshwater inflows and important indicators of estuarine ecosystem conditions. The key estuarine indicators considered are: salinity, species productivity, and nutrient inflows.

Statistical relationships were developed between seasonal freshwater inflows and biomass for nine finfish and shellfish species that are ecologically and economically important to the estuary. In general, most species demonstrated negative responses to freshwater inflows during winter months (November through February), and positive responses to freshwater inflows occurring from March through October.

The salinity conditions in upper Lavaca Bay and the eastern end of Matagorda Bay were found to be largely dependent on the freshwater inflows from the Lavaca and Colorado Rivers, respectively. These relationships were quantified into statistical relationships.

Similarly the nutrient inflows were related to total inflow to the estuary. A nutrient budget was prepared for the estuary which indicated that a minimum annual freshwater inflow of 1.7 million acre-feet was needed to replenish the estimated nutrient losses from the estuary.

The second essential process involves using the statistical functions noted above to compute optimal monthly and seasonal freshwater inflow needs. This is accomplished using the TWDB's Texas Estuarine Mathematical Programming (TXEMP) Model. TXEMP determines mathematically the best set of freshwater inflows needed to maximize specific conditions within the estuary while meeting a variety of limits on salinity, species productivity and nutrient inflows.

The third major component of the process of developing inflow needs is the simulation of the salinity conditions throughout the estuary using the TXBLEND estuarine hydrodynamic and salinity transport model developed by TWDB and modified by the LCRA. The simulated salinity is then compared to desired salinity ranges over broad areas of the estuary. If salinity is not within those ranges then constraints in TXEMP are modified to achieve the desired salinity.

Freshwater Inflow Needs

The freshwater inflow needs for the estuarine ecosystem associated with Matagorda Bay System were estimated for two levels of inflow needs: Target and Critical.

The Target inflows needs are the monthly and seasonal inflows that produced 98% of the maximum total normalized biomass for nine key estuarine finfish and shellfish species while maintaining certain salinity, population density and nutrient inflow conditions. The salinity condition requires that estimated salinity fall within predetermined monthly ranges preferred by most species. The productivity of any species must not be less than 80% of its historical average. Finally, the total inflow of nutrients are at least equal to the natural nutrient losses from the ecosystem. The 98 percent level of maximum biomass was selected for the target needs based on achieving the best tradeoff between productivity and freshwater inflows.

The Critical inflow needs were determined by finding the minimum the total annual inflow needed to keep salinity near the mouths of the Colorado and Lavaca Rivers at no more than 25 parts per thousand. These inflows needs are termed critical since they provide a fishery sanctuary habitat during droughts. From this sanctuary, the finfish and shellfish species, particularly oysters, could be expected to recover and repopulate the bay when more normal weather conditions returned.

The Target inflow need from all sources was calculated to be 2.0 million acre-feet per year (Table 1). Inflow needs from the Lavaca and Colorado Rivers were estimated at 346,200 and 1,033,100 acre-feet annually, respectively. The remaining contributing areas are estimated to provide an additional 620,700 acre-feet yearly.

The TXBLEND hydrodynamic and salinity transport model was used to simulate salinity conditions in the Matagorda Bay system with the Target inflow needs indicated in Table 1. The resulting simulated salinity regime was found to give acceptable salinity conditions throughout the estuary, thus the Target needs are anticipated to provide adequate salinity within the Matagorda Bay system.

A total annual freshwater inflow of about 287,400 thousand acre-feet was found to meet the Critical inflow needs (Table 2). Approximately 27,100 and 171,000 acre-feet yearly would be provided from the Lavaca and Colorado River basins, respectively, with the remaining annual inflow of 89,200 acre-feet coming from the other contributing from the other contributing drainage basins.

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/landwater/water/conservation/freshwater_inflow/matagorda/index.phtml
 

The effects of Lake Michigan

SOUTH BEND -- Lake Michigan is the sixth-largest freshwater body in the world. It has a wide-ranging impact on our area -- from lake-effect snow and thunderstorms, to our economy and our history.

With its more than 1,600 miles of shoreline, Lake Michigan holds nearly 1,200 cubic miles of water. Anything that big is going to have a huge effect on everything around it.

"I think the biggest thing is it tends to be a moderating influence," said Mike Lewis, a National Weather Service meteorologist in northern Indiana.

That means it keeps our temperatures from becoming extremely hot or extremely cold. So how did the lake get here?

"The best understanding that we have is that it was a glacial push," Lewis said.Millions of years ago, our entire area was covered in ice. When temperatures began to rise, the glaciers started to melt.

"As they retreated, you started seeing the melt of the ice collecting in those water basins," Lewis said.

The Great Lakes were formed, and ever since they have changed the climate of our area -- depending on your point of view, for better or for worse.

How does it work?

Our cities, our culture and our weather all have been influenced by Lake Michigan. And as all continue to change, so does Lake Michigan. But how is still a huge question."There's so much more to learn, but we're just now starting to fully grasp the influence of that, of Lake Michigan," Lewis said.

But will Lake Michigan always be here? Are water levels rising or falling?

"Can we understand how these lakes actually work together and is there a normal level? So, they're going to go up and down -- sort of like our temperatures. They're going to go up and down, or (like) our weather, we're going to see extremes. What is that normal, and what is that definition of normal? And that has to be yet to be determined."

One thing is clear: "If we were to lose the water, that warming influence or that cooling influence, we would end up with an entirely different climate around here."

Grape growing wouldn't be possible in southwest Michigan if it wasn't for the lake. Mike Merchant, winemaker at Tabor Hill, has been in the wine business for 30 years."In the fall, what it does most of the time is it extends the growing season," he said. "It modifies things to keep things warmer, longer."

The opposite is true in the spring.

"In the spring it keeps things cooler, the area or the climate cooler," Merchant said. "That would delay bud break, which is very important to avoid spring frosts."

Lake Michigan allows wineries in the area to thrive, but that's not all. Grant Black, a professor of economics at Indiana University South Bend, says the lake has always had an effect here.

"It has had, historically, a substantial impact," he said. "Obviously the area that we're in really developed because of access to the waterways."It has had a huge effect on our local economy.

"Well, certainly a lot of things in the broader sort of recreation and tourism industries," Black said. "It could be things like wineries. It could be things like casinos, just the natural resources of the dunes and things like that."

The development of our cities has depended on Lake Michigan. Cities near the western coast see nearly 35 inches of snow per year. Cities near the eastern coast see nearly twice that with about 70 inches per year.

"Obviously weather patterns and those kinds of things would have affected where people located," Black said. "Obviously lots of other things would have come into play as well. So it certainly is a component of how cities developed and population growth occurs."

How cold is it?The biggest thing Lake Michigan tends to affect is our temperature.

"It tends to keep temperatures from dropping as rapidly as if there wasn't a body of water," Lewis said.

This happens because water changes temperature more slowly than air. That is why the lake keeps us cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

Those relatively warmer lake temperatures in the winter lead to something we are all very familiar with: lake-effect snow.

Areas closer to the Great Lakes see significantly higher snowfall totals each year compared to areas farther from the lake. The entire Midwest is susceptible to synoptic, or system snow events. After the initial storms pass, if you live near Lake Michigan, more snow can develop."All of a sudden you end up with these relatively strong bands of snow that will set up," said Lewis

They can add several inches or several feet of additional snow. If the conditions are right, lake-effect rain is even possible.

But Lake Michigan affects more than just our rain and snow. It also can mean increased clouds playing a role in severe weather.

"You can actually see that as a band of clouds that pushes in, and sometimes it can be a focus for actual thunderstorm development, or we can look for it enhancing some of our severe potential," Lewis said.

Thunderstorms need rising air to grow, and another key ingredient."With thunderstorm development, you need moisture. If it's warm enough over the lake, and a cool enough air mass comes in, you can end up with a great source of water for that storm."

There also is very little friction over the lake. That means winds can become incredibly strong.

"The storms can hit that and accelerate and rush through."

In many ways, Lake Michigan can increase our potential for severe weather, but cooler temperatures over the lake can sometimes decrease our severe weather potential as well.

http://www.southbendtribune.com/article/20091114/News01/911140406/-1/XML
 

Restoring China's disappearing wetlands

China has been making great efforts to re-draw the disappearing Sanjiang Plain Wetlands on its maps. The country's largest freshwater wetlands have changed dramatically in the face of the country's rapid agricultural development in recent decades.

Located in the eastern region of Heilongjiang province, huge sections of the Sanjiang Plain Wetlands were converted by local farmers, soldiers and Zhiqing, or urban educated youth, between the early 1950s and the 1970s, responding to the central government's call to develop the Great Northern Wilderness or "Beidahuang".

The Sanjiang Plain area, a low plain that borders the Heilongjiang, Ussuri and Songhuajiang rivers, has gone through extensive agricultural development.

Today, a broad sweep of rice paddies and farmlands stretch toward the horizon. Large wilderness areas became rich black farmlands. The Chinese people gave a new name to the region: "Beidacang" - the Great Northern Grain Barn.

According to statistics, annual grain production reached 42.3 billion kg in 2008 of the country's total 528.5 billion kg in grain production last year.

Beidahuang, which has 5.5 million hectares of fertile land, has become China's largest grain production base, growing more than 138 billion kg of grain for the country over the past six decades.

After half a century, the Sanjiang Plain Wetlands tell a very different story. Extensive agricultural development and population growth have resulted in a considerable loss of wetlands.

The Sanjiang Plain contains the largest area of wetlands in China. It contains six national wetland reserves and 10 provincial wetland reserves.

But they are disappearing at a frightening speed. After more than 50 years of economic development, the area of the Sanjiang Plain Wetlands decreased by 4.32 million hectares, or nearly 80 percent. As a result, only 1 million hectares of wetlands can now be seen on the map of the Sanjiang Plain.

The wetlands, often referred to as the earth's "kidneys", have played a significant role in water purification and conservation, as well as the prevention of erosion and flooding.

Worsening droughts

Since the 1990s, the Sanjiang Plain area, with a total arable land area of 3.5 million hectares, has suffered worsening droughts.

The worst drought struck as much as 40 percent of its farmlands, and there are now more than 808,000 hectares of farmland that are vulnerable to droughts.

Scientists said an increase in droughts, floods and sandstorms afflicting northern China in recent years are closely linked to the shrinking wetlands.

Related ecological damage has caused economic losses equal to 4 percent to 8 percent of the country's GNP, according to statistics.

"As the country's largest ecological province, environmental protection in Heilongjiang province has huge effects on northeastern and northern China," said Sun Yao, vice governor of Heilongjiang province.

Many rivers and water systems in Heilongjiang reach neighboring Russia, so the ecological effect stretches beyond China's borders, he said.

Sun said Heilongjiang, especially the Sanjiang Plain, also is important to China's food and energy security future.

Experts said the wetlands in Sanjiang Plain are considered globally important and represent one of the more important breeding sites and migratory routes for waterfowl in northeastern Asia.

The wetlands are also significant for the numbers and species of globally threatened waterfowl.

The Chinese government has realized that it must speed up its efforts to save its dwindling wetlands.

A pioneer of wetlands protection in China, the Heilongjiang provincial government has banned any cultivation and excavation of wetlands since 1999.

The 2003 Heilongjiang Wetlands Regulations gave official authority for wetlands management to the Heilongjiang Provincial Forest Department (HPFD).

Farmland-to-wetlands

With funding from the National Development and Reform Committee, HPFD is managing a project that will restore 150,000 hectares of farmland to wetlands and replant 68,500 hectares yearly by 2010.

To better protect the wetlands, the Sanjiang Plain Wetlands Protection Project has been under way since March 2007, co-financed by the Heilongjiang provincial government, Asian Development Bank and Global Environment Fund.

The project is expected to cost about $55 million, including $12.14 million in Global Environment Fund grants and $15 million in loans from the Asian Development Bank.

"The project is to promote sustainable use of natural resources through integrated conservation planning and to improve the well-being of local communities," said Robert Wihtol, China director of the Asian Development Bank.The project is targeting 13 counties, including six nature reserves within five contiguous watersheds.

Yoshiaki Kobayashi, a water resources management specialist for the Asian Development Bank, said the project will involve 11,900 hectares of new forest plantations.

Already, 8,457 hectares of new forests have been planted, he said. The project also involves maintenance of about 43,700 hectares of existing forest lands.

"Forests increase the water retention capacity of the lands and mitigate soil erosion, which is the first step of wetlands protection," Kobayashi said.

Kobayashi said the prospect of a net annual income of $210 to $256 per hectare from dry-land grain production (wheat-soy-corn) has served as a strong motivator for farmers to expand the farmlands in any way possible, including draining the wetlands.

Meanwhile, pesticide and fertilizer pollution, burning, grazing and other agricultural practices within or near the natural reserves have adversely affected the area's ecology, according to a recent Asian Development Bank report.

"Alternative livelihoods for these farmers who are affected by the farmland-to-wetlands plan must be provided to discourage such harmful natural resource exploitation in the wetlands," Kobayashi said.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2009-11/09/content_8933093.htm

Climate change threatens quarter of Swiss farmland

GENEVA (AFP) – Climate change is already threatening more than a quarter of Switzerland's farmland with frequent and lengthy water shortages, according to official research published Tuesday.

The Swiss federal agricultural research station Agroscope said about 10 times more land would need to be irrigated to avoid lost harvests, some 400,000 hectares (988,000 acres) instead of the 38,000 hectares that currently receive regular irrigation.

But researcher Jurg Fuhrer told AFP that such huge irrigation to cope with more frequent drought might not be economically viable or feasible.

Twenty-six percent of usable agricultural land and 41 percent of arable land is at risk due to the drier climate that has been emerging in recent years, the scientific study found.

The conclusions were based on a range of research including detailed observations of local climate, hydrological data and crop patterns between 1980 and 2006.

It showed that the Alpine country's prime arable land, spread across lower lying northern plains and valleys, had been the hardest hit by a growing frequency of summertime drought, including the Rhine valley.

"I was surprised to see the size of the area," said Fuhrer. "The area is expanding, that's the significant part."

Swiss farmers should expect a period of damaging drought at least once every three years, the researchers predicted.

The Rhine is one of Europe's biggest rivers, flowing northwards through Germany from its source in the Swiss Alps. The Rhone valley in southwestern Switzerland, which stretches into southern France, is also at risk.

"There are implications for anybody who lives along these rivers," Fuhrer pointed out.

Climate research cited by Agroscope has indicated that summer rainfall in Switzerland could be cut by up to a fifth by 2050.

Agroscope predicted that three months of sun without a drop of water would become a common feature for Swiss summers -- comparable to the severe European heatwave of 2003.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091027/sc_afp/switzerlandclimatewarmingfarm_20091027162315

Biodiversity: It's In The Water

Hydrology may be more important for predicting biodiversity than biology, say an international group of scientists whose study in the latest issue of Nature challenges current thinking about biodiversity and opens up new avenues for predicting how climate change or human activity may affect biodiversity patterns. Their new method for predicting biodiversity, described by them as "ridiculously simple," uses only the geomorphology of a river network and rainfall measurements to accurately predict the biodiversity of fish species in a river system.

For their study, the researchers examined the Mississippi-Missouri river basin, which covers all or part of 31 US states, spanning diverse habitat types and encompassing very different environmental conditions. Using geomorphological data from the US Geological Survey, the researchers identified 824 sub-basins in the network. In these, the simple presence (or not) of 433 species of fish was established from a database of US freshwater fish populations. Data on the average runoff production -the amount of rainfall that ends up in the river system and not evaporated back into the air - was then used to calculate the habitat capacity of each sub-basin.

With just four parameters, it's "an almost ridiculously simple model," explains researcher Andrea Rinaldo. The model results were compared to extensive data on actual fish species distributions. Various different measures of biodiversity were analyzed, and the researchers were surprised to find that the model captured these complex patterns quite accurately. The model is all the more remarkable for what it does not contain - any reference, anywhere, to the biological properties of individual fish species.

It is a formulation that could be applied to any river system, or in fact, any network at all. The model is general enough that it could be used to explore population migrations or epidemics of water-borne diseases in addition to biodiversity patterns. The researchers plan to extend their work to explore the extent to which simple hydrology can act as the determining factor in a wide range of biodiversity patterns.

"These results are a powerful reminder of the overarching importance of water, and the water-defined landscape, in determining patterns of life," said co-researcher Ignacio Rodriguez-Iturbe. "It provides a framework that could be used to connect large scale environmental changes to biodiversity. Changes in precipitation patterns, perhaps due to global climate change, could be mapped to changes in habitat capacities in the model, ultimately providing a way to estimate how climate change would alter large-scale patterns of biodiversity. It could also be used for an assessment of the impact of specific, local human activities, such as flow re-routing or damming, on the biodiversity patterns in a river network."

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20080407194721data_trunc_sys.shtml
 

"Catastrophic decline" in freshwater biodiversity

Mismanagement and growing needs for water are causing freshwater ecosystems to collapse, making freshwater species the most threatened on Earth with extinction rates 4 to 6 times higher than their terrestrial and marine cousins, say scientists at the DIVERSITAS 2nd Open Science Conference, in Cape Town, South Africa.

Klement Tockner, of the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, explains that while freshwater ecosystems cover only 0.8 percent of the Earth's surface, they contain roughly 10 percent of all animals, including an astonishing 35 percent of all vertebrates.

"There is clear and growing scientific evidence that we are on the verge of a major freshwater biodiversity crisis," warns Tockner. "However, few are aware of the catastrophic decline in freshwater biodiversity at both local and global scale. Threats to freshwater biodiversity have now grown to a global scale."

The human implications of this trend are "immense," he adds, because freshwater species in rivers, lakes, ground waters, and wetlands provide a diverse array of vital natural services - more than any other ecosystem type. The problem puts billions of people at risk as biodiversity loss affects water purification, disease regulation, subsistence agriculture and fishing.

Freshwater ecosystems and their species also absorb about 7 percent of the carbon humans add annually to the atmosphere. "Although small in area, these freshwater aquatic systems can affect regional carbon balances," Tockner says. "Freshwater ecosystems will be the first victims of both climate change and rising demands on water supplies. And the pace of extinctions is quickening - especially in hot spot areas around the Mediterranean, in Central America, China and throughout Southeast Asia."

To highlight the ecological and economic importance of freshwater ecosystems, Tockner and colleague Charles Vörösmarty, of the City University of New York, will present their research at the conference and encourage fellow scientists to help formulate clear government policy recommendations and future research priorities.

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20090911213748data_trunc_sys.shtml

Water scarcity will create global security concerns

Water scarcity as a result of climate change will create far-reaching global security concerns, says Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Pachauri spoke this morning at the 2009 Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN.

"At one level the world's water is like the world's wealth. Globally, there is more than enough to go round. The problem is that some countries get a lot more than others," he says. "With 31 percent of global freshwater resources, Latin America has 12 times more water per person than South Asia. Some places, such as Brazil and Canada, get far more water than they can use; others, such as countries in the Middle East, get much less than they need."

And the effects of a warmer world will likely include changes in water availability.

"Up to 1.2 billion people in Asia, 250 million Africans and 81 million Latin Americans will be exposed to increased water stress by 2020," Pachauri says. Water shortages have an enormous impact of human health, including malnutrition, pathogen or chemical loading, infectious disease from water contamination, and uncontrolled water reuse.

"Due to the very large number of people that may be affected, food and water scarcity may be the most important health consequences of climate change," Pachauri says.

When communities fight over water resources, there's a great danger for a disruption of peace and security. "That water scarcity plays a role in creating the preconditions of desperation and discontent is undeniable," he says. Competition for water from the river Jordan was a major cause of the 1967 war. India has been in dispute with Pakistan over the Indus and with Bangladesh over the Ganges.

"Over 260 river basins are shared by two or more countries," he says. "As the resource is becoming scarce, tensions among different users may intensify, both at the national and international level. In the absence of strong institutions and agreements, changes within a basin can lead to trans-boundary tensions."

"We live on a small planet where communication and influences go from one corner of the Earth to another," he says. "If there's a major disruption to peace in one part of the globe, no other part is insulated from it. We need to look at what happens to the rest of the world with some degree of alarm; these influences have very dangerous implications for the rest of the world."

Societies so far have been able to adapt to changes in weather and climate - via crop diversification, irrigation, disaster risk management, and insurance - but climate change might go beyond what our traditional coping mechanisms can handle, Pachauri suggests.

Even societies with "high adaptive capacity" are vulnerable to climate change, variability and extremes, he says, citing examples of the 2003 heat wave that took the lives of many elderly in European cities and 2005's Hurricane Katrina.

"A technological society has two choices," Pachauri says. "It can wait until catastrophic failures expose systemic deficiencies, distortion and self-deceptions, or the culture can provide social checks and balances to correct for systemic distortion prior to catastrophic failures."

"Global emissions of greenhouse gases will have to decline by 2015. If we can achieve that, we may be able to avoid the worst effects of climate change," he says. "The costs of this are not high. A major mitigation would only postpone growth domestic product growth by one year at most over the medium term. That's not a high price to pay for the world."

"There is no more crucial issue to human society than the future of water on this planet," he says. "We must work diligently to see that the worst effects don't come to pass. We have very little time. Unless we act with a sense of urgency, there will certainly be conflict and a disruption of peace."

http://www.physorg.com/news174063666.html

Traces of pharmaceuticals found in central Indiana waterways

(PhysOrg.com) -- Pharmaceuticals have been found in freshwater ecosystems in rural areas of central Indiana, says a new study from Ball State University.

Analysis of water collected in the last year from 10 streams in the upper White River watershed found trace amounts of acetaminophen, caffeine, dimethylxanthine, a byproduct of caffeine, and cotinine, a byproduct of nicotine.

"Like it or not, we may be unintentionally exposed to drugs from our drinking water if pharmaceuticals are in our freshwater sources," said Melody Bernot, a Ball State biology professor. "In some spots, we found traces of the mood-altering drug lithium. There are more than 300 pharmaceuticals that are being passed by human excretion into our sewer systems, and our current wastewater filtering systems are not eliminating them before the drugs enter our streams and rivers."

The presence of these compounds in freshwater ecosystems and drinking water supplies raises potential health issues, but little is known about the how these compounds could impact humans through chronic exposure, Bernot said.

"At this point, I can't say if it dangerous or not to consume trace amounts," she said. "The federal government only recently began funding this research."

Bernot plans to apply for funding to continue and expand her research, not only examining the impact on humans but also aquatic animals.

She said pharmaceutical compounds are designed to have a physiological effect on humans or animals, and it is likely that they may also alter function of aquatic organisms. Few studies have examined the influence of pharmaceutical compounds on freshwater organisms.

The report pointed out that sewage contamination is the main pathway for human pharmaceuticals to enter streams. This can be a result of many factors, including age and design of the sewer system. Less urbanized areas tend to use more septic tanks, as opposed to more advanced sewer systems, that can leak untreated sewage into streams.

"This study suggests these sources are contributing pharmaceuticals to streams," Bernot said. "Urbanized areas tend to have updated sewage systems that carry waste to treatment facilities making contamination in streams not receiving wastewater treatment more apparent, especially during conditions when combined sewer overflows are not contributing to water flow."

"We also have many animal feeding operations in central Indiana. Whatever drugs veterinarians put into the animals are eventually excreted into the fields and potentially exported to freshwater."

Bernot initiated the study to better understand the distribution of pharmaceuticals and their potential effect on stream processes. Prescription and nonprescription pharmaceutical concentrations were measured in headwater streams not directly receiving wastewater treatment water in the upper White River watershed.

The area has the one of the most urbanized watersheds in Indiana, encompassing three metropolitan areas including Indianapolis, Anderson and Muncie. The watershed includes 16 counties and supplies 85 percent of the surface water needed for human use in Indianapolis and central Indiana.

http://www.physorg.com/news175280924.html

Massive mismanagement leads to catastrophic decline in freshwater biodiversity

The world will miss its agreed target to stem biodiversity loss by next year, according to experts convening in Cape Town for a landmark conference devoted to biodiversity science.

The goal was agreed at the 6th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in April 2003. Some 123 world ministers committed to "achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the local, national and regional levels, as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth."

"We will certainly miss the target for reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 and therefore also miss the 2015 environmental targets within the U.N. Millennium Development Goals to improve health and livelihoods for the world's poorest and most vulnerable people," says Georgina Mace of Imperial College, London, and Vice-Chair of the international DIVERSITAS program, which is convening its 2nd Open Science Conference Oct. 13-16 with 600 experts from around the world.

"It is hard to image a more important priority than protecting the ecosystem services underpinned by biodiversity," says Prof. Mace. "Biodiversity is fundamental to humans having food, fuel, clean water and a habitable climate."

"Yet changes to ecosystems and losses of biodiversity have continued to accelerate. Since 1992, even the most conservative estimates agree that an area of tropical rainforest greater than the size of California has been converted mostly for food and fuel. Species extinction rates are at least 100 times those in pre-human times and are expected to continue to increase."

However, she adds, "the situation is not hopeless. There are many steps available that would help but we cannot dawdle. Meaningful action should have started years ago. The next best time is now."

The DIVERSITAS conference, to be opened by UN Under-Secretary-General Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP, will call for new more science-based targets.

"A great deal of awareness-raising is still much needed with respect to the planetary threat posed by the loss of so many species. The focus of biodiversity science today, though, is evolving from describing problems to policy relevant problem solving," says Stanford University Prof. Hal Mooney, DIVERSITAS Chair.

"Experts are rising to the immense challenge, developing interdisciplinary, science-based solutions to the crisis while building new mechanisms to accelerate progress. Biodiversity scientists are becoming more engaged in policy debates."

Five roundtables between top science and policy specialists are scheduled on key issues such as efforts to create a science-based global biodiversity observing system (GEO-BON) to improve both coverage and consistency in observations at ground level and via remote sensing.

Says DIVERSITAS vice-chair Prof. Robert Scholes, who heads both GEO-BON and the local organization of the Cape Town conference: "GEO-BON will help give us a comprehensive baseline against which scientists can track biodiversity trends and evaluate the status of everything from genes to ecosystem services. The lack of such information became acutely apparent during preparation of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and in formulating the CBD's 2010 targets."

Others, meanwhile, are creating an international mechanism to unify the voice of the biodiversity science community to better inform policy making, its function akin to that of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In Nairobi Oct. 5-9, environment ministers from countries the world over will consider the creation of such a body, called IPBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), which would require UN General Assembly approval.Interdisciplinary work underway to address key issue areas also include:

How to demonstrate and quantify the economic costs and impacts on human welfare globally and locally due to biodiversity loss and ecosystems degradation (being conducted under the TEEB Initiative);

How to understand, manage and conserve ecosystem services including, for example, the creation of economic incentives to prevent habitat destruction;

How to share the benefits from the use of genetic resources fairly and equitably; and

How to improve research institutions and the international stewardship of biodiversity.

Silent crisis: freshwater species "the most threatened on Earth"

Massive mismanagement and growing human needs for water are causing freshwater ecosystems to collapse, making freshwater species the most threatened on Earth with extinction rates 4 to 6 times higher than their terrestrial and marine cousins, according to conference experts.

Klement Tockner of the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Berlin, says that while freshwater ecosystems cover only 0.8% of the earth's surface, they contain roughly 10% of all animals, including more than 35% of all vertebrates.

"There is clear and growing scientific evidence that we are on the verge of a major freshwater biodiversity crisis," says Prof. Tockner. "However, few are aware of the catastrophic decline in freshwater biodiversity at both local and global scale. Threats to freshwater biodiversity have now grown to a global scale."

The human implications of this trend are "immense," he adds, because freshwater species in rivers, lakes, ground waters, and wetlands provide a diverse array of vital natural services - more than any other ecosystem type.

The problem puts billions of people at risk as biodiversity loss affects water purification, disease regulation, subsistence agriculture and fishing. Some experts predict that by 2025 not a single Chinese river will reach the sea except during floods with tremendous effects for coastal fisheries in China.

Prof. Tockner says freshwater ecosystems and their species also absorb and bury about 7% of the carbon humans add annually to the atmosphere.

"Although small in area, these freshwater aquatic systems can affect regional carbon balances," he says.

"Freshwater ecosystems will be the first victims of both climate change and rising demands on water supplies. And the pace of extinctions is quickening - especially in hot spot areas around the Mediterranean, in Central America, China and throughout Southeast Asia."

"Despite their pivotal ecological and economic importance, freshwater ecosystems have not been of primary concern in policy making," adds Prof. Tockner. "Only recently did the European Union take the initiative to improve this situation through the EC Biodiversity Strategy. And in the U.S., recent Supreme Court decisions have made wetlands and small streams more vulnerable to loss."

Prof. Tockner, with colleague Charles V-r-smarty of the City University of New York, will present research at one of 25 conference symposia and invite fellow scientists to help formulate clear government policy recommendations and future research priorities.

Other conference presentations will cover issues ranging from biology to economics and international law, with emphasis on the positive benefits of conservation.

Showcased topics include:

Assessments of the ecological and economic risks of the rising global trade in wildlife, many of which carry potentially harmful diseases. The USA alone imported almost 1.5 billion live animals between 2000 and 2006, experts say, with inadequate regard to the risks involved;

The release next year of a report by the UN Convention on Biodiversity called the Global Biodiversity Outlook, to include a major focus on catastrophic biodiversity "tipping points," which complicate predictions. Such thresholds, if breached, will make global change impacts difficult to control, and slow and expensive to reverse.

Biodiversity and carbon: How biodiversity loss impacts rates of natural carbon sequestration and carbon cycling on land and in the ocean. Efforts are underway to understand how levels of biodiversity correspond to atmospheric carbon levels throughout Earth's history in order to better predict the impact of biodiversity on today's rising carbon dioxide concentrations. Other scientists will warn that bioenergy and artificial carbon sequestration projects should be preceded by greater understanding of the environmental pressures these will create.

With respect to biodiversity and human health, scientist Peter Daszak of the US-based Wildlife Trust, says the emergence of new human diseases from wildlife such as HIV/AIDS, SARS, Ebola, and H5N1 avian influenza is a significant threat not just to public health and conservation but also the global economy.

Such deadly diseases impede wildlife conservation as pressure builds to eradicate reservoir populations and cause disruption to agriculture and trade, tourism and other key economies.

"The single outbreak of SARS cost US $30-50 billion and a truly pandemic H5N1 avian flu outbreak would cost an estimated US$300-800 billion," says Dr. Daszak.

He argues that disease emergence and spread can be predicted based on human environmental and demographic changes that underlie the emergence of these diseases.

"Such studies may ultimately allow us to identify the likely region of origin of the next zoonosis and provide strategies to prevent disease emergence and spread."

The conference will conclude with a major plenary, chaired by leading expert Lijbert Brussaard, of Wageningen University, The Netherlands, on ways to reconcile the competing Millennium Development Goals of protecting biodiversity, reducing world hunger and alleviating poverty.

"Ecosystem services are difficult to value, which has led to policy neglect and the irreversible loss of species vital to a well-functioning environment," says Anne Larigauderie, Executive Director of DIVERSITAS.

"It's important for experts to simply exchange the results of their latest research, but the goal of this conference is to collect insights of practical use to policy makers, and to demonstrate the social benefits of investment in species conservation," she says.

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20091013/Massive-mismanagement-leads-to-catastrophic-decline-in-freshwater-biodiversity.aspx#

Freshwater species suffer most as extinctions rise

* Freshwater habitats collapsing - experts

* World to miss 2010 goal of slowing species losses

* New panel urged to assess extinctions

OSLO, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Creatures and plants living in rivers and lakes are the most threatened on Earth because their ecosystems are collapsing, scientists said on Sunday.

They urged the creation of a new partnership between governments and scientists to help stem extinctions caused by humans via pollution, a spread of cities and expanding farms to feed a rising population, climate change and invasive species.

Governments globally had aimed to slow the losses of all species by 2010.

"Massive mismanagement and growing human needs for water are causing freshwater ecosystems to collapse, making freshwater species the most threatened on Earth," according to Diversitas, an international grouping of biodiversity experts.

Extinction rates for species living in freshwater were "four to six times higher than their terrestrial and marine cousins". Fish, frogs, crocodiles or turtles are among freshwater species.

"The 2010 target isn't going to be met," Hal Mooney, a professor at Stanford University, who is chair of Diversitas, told Reuters. Diversitas will hold talks among more than 600 experts in Cape Town, South Africa, from Oct. 13-16 to discuss ways to protect life on the planet.

World leaders agreed at a 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg to achieve by 2010 a "significant reduction in the current rate of loss of biological diversity".

"Changes to ecosystems and losses of biodiversity have continued to accelerate ... Species extinction rates are at least 100 times those in pre-human times and are expected to continue to increase," Georgina Mace of Imperial College in London, vice-chair of Diversitas, said in a statement.

Dams, irrigation and climate change that is set to disrupt rainfall are all putting stresses on freshwater habitats. Canals allow plants, fish and other species and diseases to reach new regions.

FRANCE TO RUSSIA

"You can travel from France to Russia without going to the sea any more," Klement Tockner of the Leibnitz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, told Reuters. "Mixing is much faster and more severe than in marine and terrestrial habitats."

By 2025, some experts predict that not a single Chinese river will reach the sea except during floods, with tremendous effects for coastal fisheries in China, Diversitas said.

Tockner said freshwater ecosystems covered 0.8 percent of the Earth's surface but accounted for about 10 percent of all animals.

The United Nations has also turned sceptical about achieving the 2010 goal after long saying that it was too early to judge.

Ahmed Dhjoghlaf, head of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said in February that: "On 1 January 2010, we will not be able to say that we significantly reduced the rate of biodiversity loss."

In Cape Town, experts will try to work out better goals for slowing extinctions, by 2020 and beyond.

Anne Larigauderie, executive director of Diversitas, urged creation of a new panel for monitoring extinctions modelled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose findings are approved both by scientists and governments.

"There should be a new IPCC for biodiversity and ecosystem services," she told Reuters.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LB153609.htm

Sensitivity of Freshwater Habitats

Oil spills occurring in freshwater bodies are less publicized than spills into the ocean even though freshwater oil spills are more frequent and often more destructive to the environment. Freshwater bodies are highly sensitive to oil spills and are important to human health and the environment. They are often used for drinking water and frequently serve as nesting grounds and food sources for various freshwater organisms. All types of freshwater organisms are susceptible to the deadly effects of spilled oil, including mammals, aquatic bifds, fish, insects, microorganisms, and vegetation. In addition, the effects of spilled oil on freshwater microorganisms, invertebrates, and algae tend to move up the food chain and affect other species.

Freshwater is divided into two types: standing water (lakes, marshes, and swamps) and flowing water (rivers and streams). The effects of an oil spill on freshwater habitats varies according to the rate of water flow and the habitat's specific characteristics.

Standing water such as marshes or swamps with little water movement are likely to incur more severe impacts than flowing water because spilled oil tends to "pool" in the water and can remain there for long periods of time. In calm water conditions, the affected habitat may take years to restore. The variety of life in and around lakes has different sensitivities to oil spills.

The bottoms of standing water bodies, which are often muddy, serve as homes to many worms, insects, and shellfish. Lake bottoms also serve has a breeding ground and food source for these organisms and higher animals. Oil in sediments may be very harmful because sediment traps the oil and affects the organisms that live in or feed off the sediments.

In the open water, oil can be toxic to the frogs, reptiles, fish, waterfowl, and other animals that make the water their home. "Oiling" of plants and grasses that are rooted or float in the water also can occur, harming both the plants and the animals that depend on them for food and shelter. Fisheries located in freshwater also are subject to the toxic effects of oil.

On the surface of the water, water bugs that skim the water surface and floating plants such as water lilies are threatened by oil slicks that spread across the surface.

In the shoreline habitats of lakes and other bodies of standing water, cattails and other weeds and grasses provide many important functions for life in and around the water. They serve as food sources, nesting grounds for many types of animals, and shelter for small animals. Oil spills can coat these areas, affecting the plants and the organisms that depend on them.

Marsh environments are among the most sensitive freshwater habitat to oil spills due to the minimal water flow. Oil spills have a widespread impact on a host of interconnected species. For example, lush marsh vegetation is used as nurseries for shellfish and fish, as a food source for many organisms, and a home for fish, birds, and mammals.

Oil spills impact flowing water less severely than standing water because the currents provide a natural cleaning mechanism. Although the effects of oil spills on river habitats may be less severe or last for a shorter amount of time than standing waters, the sensitivity of river and stream habitats is similar to that of standing water, with a few special features:

Oil spilled into most rivers often collects along the banks, where the oil clings to plants and grasses. The animals that ingest these contaminated plants may also be affected.

Rocks found in and around flowing water serve as homes for mosses, which are an important basic element in a freshwater habitat's food chain. Spilled oil can cover these rocks, killing the mosses and disrupting the local ecology.

http://www.epa.gov/emergencies/content/learning/freshwat.htm