Science

The effort to save South Florida’s largest coral colonies will soon extend beyond the intensive care unit and into the maternity ward. The colonies are being killed by a disease of unknown origin — sometimes called white plague or white blotch — first identified off Virginia Key in 2014.

The question arose, as it often does, at Monday’s news meeting: How much should be made of President Trump’s latest provocative tweet? This one was a doozy, oozing with ignorance, suggesting that the wildfires ravaging California were being “made so much worse” because “readily available water” is being “diverted into the Pacific Ocean.”

Using an unprecedented number of satellite radar images, geophysicists at Caltech have tracked how the ground in Southern California rises and falls as groundwater is pumped in and out of aquifers beneath the surface.

Today [August 9], the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced grants to three organizations in California: Tejon Ranch Conservancy in Kern County, Save The Bay in Oakland, and Trust for Public Land in Los Angeles. The funding will help restore wetlands, provide environmental stewardship and science education, and improve stormwater management. … The grants were among 59 Five Star and Urban Waters Restoration Program grants awarded, totaling $2.2 million, to restore wildlife habitat and urban waters in 30 states and the District of Columbia.

In 1908, biologist Joseph Grinnell began leading hundreds of research expeditions throughout California to collect animals as museum specimens and catalog the wildlife in the forests, mountains and deserts. The meticulous notes he and his colleague took over four decades captured scientific snapshots of the wildlife in the first half of the 20th century, including surveys of birds in many areas of the Mojave Desert. 

In February, 2018, the USGS began the first phase of airborne geophysical surveys in a series of high-resolution flights near Greenwood, Mississippi, to acquire large-scale airborne geophysical data in support of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain (MAP) Regional Water Availability Study. The contract was awarded to CGG, and the USGS is working in partnership with multiple state agencies to conduct the research. The geophysical instruments used in this study are able to map aquifer properties below ground, to depths of up to about 1,000 feet.

Adam Feinberg had no sooner made a bright yellow thin sheet of plastic than he had to shred it into little pieces. He chose an “I”-shaped mold for the logo of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he is a chemist. Then, he filled it with the plastic bits and stuck it in a hot oven.

From the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS):

The U.S. Geological Survey joins its many partners in other federal agencies, at universities, and in state and local governments in recognizing the importance of the Water Resources Research Act (WRRA) of 1964.

Signed into law 50 years ago by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 17, 1964, the WRRA established a Water Resources Research Institute in each state and Puerto Rico.

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