Streamflow data gathered by thousands of U.S. Geological Survey gauges helps track the country’s floods and droughts. But it may be lost if the Trump administration follows up on a decision not to renew leases of USGS water science centers that read the gauges and disseminate the measurements. Reporter’s Toolbox on the value of this database and the risk of its loss.
"Not so long ago, developers of the massive server farms talked about powering them with wind and solar power. But now, with the coming of power-hungry AI platforms, they’re bypassing the grid, building their own gas-fired power plants on site."
"Fossil fuel revenues bankroll education spending in this state, but schools exposed to industry pollution face environmental risks that can affect children’s health and performance."
"Against the black night, the darker-than-night silhouettes of Monument Valley buttes graced the horizon. Overhead, stars were scattered across the sky—a prank by Coyote, according to Navajo legend—and the stripe of Milky Way stars arced brilliantly across the sky from the southwest to the northeast horizon."
"A federal appeals court has sided with Native American tribes in their fight against the federal government over a $10 billion energy transmission line designed to carry wind-generated electricity from New Mexico to customers as far away as California."
"The dwindling flow of the Colorado River has alarmed the American West for years, but the water losses happening underground are even worse, according to a new study that uses satellite data to measure groundwater supplies across the Colorado River Basin."
"The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request from some members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe to block a massive proposed copper mine that they say will destroy a holy site in Arizona known as Oak Flat."
"A planned fish farm off Florida’s Gulf Coast has received an environmental permit allowing operators to discharge nutrient-laden water from what could be the first commercial-scale saltwater aquaculture operation in the Gulf of Mexico."
"Multiple efforts are underway to stop a parasitic fly from swarming Texas and the rest of the U.S. and wreaking havoc on the nation’s multi-billion-dollar cattle industry."
"The company at the center of a controversial green energy project connecting New Mexico and Arizona has changed plans for a key component: A much-debated pipeline that would have carried climate-friendly hydrogen will instead carry natural gas, and possibly a natural gas-hydrogen blend at a future date. Unlike hydrogen, natural gas, blended or not, contributes to climate warming both in its production and when it is burned for energy."
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