For the past decade Lake Mead has been battling the worst 10-year drought in recorded history along the Colorado River, which feeds the 110-mile-long reservoir. Since 1999, Lake Mead has dropped about 1 percent a year. It is estimated that by 2012, the lake’s surface could fall below the existing pipe that delivers 40 percent of Las Vegas’s water.
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Because of an insufficient and cheaper alternative to charcoal and a large former refugee population, tree felling and a great dependence on charcoal in the self-declared republic of Somaliland are adversely affecting the environment. In the 1920s, farmers succeeded in conquering The Great Prairie Plains of the Midwest. The plains were then transformed into the “amber waves of grain” we know today. However, this transformation came with a heavy price. In fact, the agricultural triumph over The Plains was the tipping point that changed a typical La Nina-type drought [...] The Tigris-Euphrates alluvial salt marsh has been home to the Marsh Arabs for thousands of years. Their homes are shown in Sumerian art from five thousand years ago. The Aral Sea is in the Republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It is largely shallow with many lagoons and islands and was once the world’s fourth largest body of inland water. Today, it is the eighth largest, and one of our greatest ecological disasters. |
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