For those planning a trip to Mars…. Evidence shows that more than 3 billion years ago Mars was wet and habitable. However, this latest research reaffirms just how dry the environment is today. For life to exist in the areas we investigated, it would need to find pockets far beneath the surface, located away from …
Continue reading ‘Not a lot of good reservoir sites on Mars’ »
Every fall semester, I have our UNM Water Resources Program students read Kelly Redmond’s 2002 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society paper on the definitions of drought. It’s a classic in a very particular and important way. Based at the Desert Research Center in Reno, Kelly carried the title of “Regional Climatologist” for the western …
Scientists have dubbed decades-long periods of aridity in southwestern North America “megadroughts“. We’ve had them in the past, and research has long pointed toward an increasing risk of them as the climate warms. New research published last week by Cornell’s Toby Ault and colleagues has generated a wave of scary headlines – A Mega-Drought Is Coming to …
Continue reading ‘Greenhouse gases and southwest “megadrought”’ »
I think we often think the worst of people, and despair of certain political mechanisms, when they don’t deliver what we want. We fear the consequences of political outcomes that don’t reflect our values or interests and – particularly during a heated referendum in which so many people are involved – get a bit of …
I’m working on a couple of projects right now in which I’m trying to help policymakers effectively communicate complex science (involving drought, climate change, and water availability, but that goes without saying, right?) in political and policy processes. Paul Cairney suggests the constraints: In debate, evidence is mentioned a lot, but only to praise the …
Continue reading ‘the role of science and evidence in decision-making processes’ »
The BBC reports on the oldest working door in Britain: Archaeologists discovered the oak door in Westminster Abbey was put in place in the 1050s, during the reign of the Abbey’s founder, Edward the Confessor. It makes it the only surviving Anglo Saxon door in Britain. We most often think about the use of tree …
Continue reading ‘The oldest working door in Britain. We know because tree rings!’ »
In contrast to common assumptions of positive feedbacks, we find that insects generally reduce the severity of subsequent wildfires. Specific effects vary with insect type and timing, but both insects decrease the abundance of live vegetation susceptible to wildfire at multiple time lags. By dampening subsequent burn severity, native insects could buffer rather than exacerbate …
Continue reading ‘The relationship between beetle kills and forest fire’ »
In a neat new paper looking at sediment layers near Blythe, California, Jordan Bright of the University of California and colleagues (paper here, $ gated) argue that they’ve found evidence of the moment (in geological time, the “moment” is really hundreds of years) when the Colorado River made its first dash to the sea. The …
Continue reading ‘5 million years ago, when the Colorado River made its first dash to the sea’ »
This is fascinating:
Mount Holyoke’s “Academic Minute” has a nice interview with Park Williams, who’s been using tree rings to flesh out the story of the current drought in the context of historic droughts, as it pertains to forests in the Southwest: I study the year-by-year records left by these rings, and they tell a fascinating story more …