Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Levee blast means lost year for Missouri farmers

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© The Associated Press / Jeff RobersonIn this photo made May 3, 2011, a farm is seen surrounded by floodwater near New Madrid, Mo. When the Army Corps of Engineers intentionally broke a clay levee holding back the rising Mississippi River, muddy water came pouring over Missouri farmland and raised fears that the fertile soil would be rendered unusable for months if not years. But soil experts say the long-term damage may not be so bad for farming and some land could even get planted with soybeans later this summer.
Blasting open a levee and submerging more than 200 square miles of Missouri farmland has likely gouged away fertile topsoil, deposited mountains of debris to clear and may even hamper farming in some places for years, experts say.

The planned explosions this week to ease the Mississippi River flooding threatening the town of Cairo, Ill., appear to have succeeded - but their effect on the farmland, where wheat, corn and soybeans are grown, could take months or even years to become clear. The Missouri Farm Bureau said the damage will likely exceed $100 million for this year alone.

"Where the breach is, water just roars through and scours the ground. It's like pouring water in a sand pile. There is that deep crevice that's created," said John Hawkins, a spokesman for the Illinois Farm Bureau. "For some farmers, it could take a generation to recoup that area."

The issue is vital to farmers and the state of Missouri, whose attorney general repeatedly tried to block the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' plan to break the levee. Opponents of the move argued it would leave the farmland buried under feet of sand and silt, rendering it useless for years.

It's still not clear how much damage the intentional flooding will cause and how farmers will be compensated for losses to the land and roughly 100 houses scattered through the area. Experts said the extent of the damage can't be accurately assessed until the floodwaters recede, and that likely will take months.

Phoenix

US: Volcano Watch: Kilauea activity update

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© USGS/HVOThe floor of Pu`u `Ō `ō crater continues its slow rise as lava pours out of a new vent at the base of the east wall. The height of the floor has risen 20 m (66 ft) over the past two weeks.
Lava erupted continuously within Pu'u 'O'o over the past week, feeding a small lava lake in the center of the crater. Changes in eruptive output commonly resulted in overflows from the lake that slowly built up the crater floor, which is about 70 m (230 ft) below the east rim of Pu'u 'O'o. No lava is erupting outside the crater.

A small, stable lava lake was also present deep within the Halema'uma'u Overlook vent during the past week. Volcanic gas emissions remain elevated, resulting in relatively high concentrations of sulfur dioxide downwind.

Bizarro Earth

U.S.: Corps keeps fighting flood waters

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Sinkeston, Missouri, - The floodway is open, but the fight isn't over for the Corps of Engineers.

Following the completion of the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway at 2:35 p.m. May 5, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials said they will continue to monitor the floodway and fight rising waters along the Mississippi River watershed.

"This floodfight is not over," Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh, Mississippi River Commission President, said. "We have hundreds of engineers working right now in the field fighting floods. Our goal is to reduce risk to people living behind our levees."

Cloud Lightning

US: Mississippi floods force evacuations near Memphis

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© Reuters/Mark Wilson/U.S. Navy/HandoutAn aerial photograph shows flooding at Naval Support Activity Mid-South in Millington, Tennessee, in this photograph taken May 2 and released May 3, 2010.
The rising Mississippi river lapped over downtown Memphis streets on Thursday as a massive wall of water threatened to unleash near record flooding all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Water lapped over Riverside Drive and onto Beale Street in Memphis, and threatened some homes on Mud Island, a community of about 5,000 residents with a river theme park. The island connects to downtown Memphis by a bridge and causeway.

Emergency officials in Millington near Memphis were "going door-to-door, asking people to leave," according to the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.

Cloud Lightning

US: Tennessee mayor tries to avoid panic in flood zone

Residents from Illinois to Louisiana are bracing for flooding as high water keeps rolling down the Mississippi River, threatening to swamp communities and farmland.

Among the places already affected by the rising flood waters is Dyersburg, Tenn.

On "The Early Show" Friday, John Holden, the town's mayor, said it's preparing for what could be the worst flooding since 1927.


Bizarro Earth

US: 16 Whales Mysteriously Stranded in Florida Keys

Pilot Whale
© Adam Li / NOAA Photo LibraryPilot whale.

It's not yet clear why more than 16 pilot whales became stranded in the lower Florida Keys on Thursday, but the list of possible reasons is long -- and includes the whales' social nature.

Pilot whales live in groups called pods that consist of between 15 and 50 animals, and mass strandings like this one have happened before. Most recently, in 2003, about 25 pilot whales became stranded in the Keys, according to Anne Biddle, media relations director for the Marine Mammal Institute, which is responding to the stranding.

"They tend to strand in pods, they stick together, if one is sick, the whole pod is going to strand," Biddle told LiveScience. The whales are stranded in shallow water, and veterinarians are assessing them to determine if all or a couple are sick, she said.

Pilot whales are toothed whales that can grow to be between 14 and 17 feet (4.3 to 5.2 meters). They live in warm, tropical waters, according to Biddle.

There are many potential causes -- including diseases, parasites, loud noise, toxins or simple confusion -- so figuring out what is responsible for the mass stranding can be challenging, according to Chris Parsons, a professor at George Mason University who has tracked mass whale strandings around the world.

Cloud Lightning

US: For families of tornadoes' missing, a long torment

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© Dave Martin/APGeorge Thomas, 71, walks through the debris of the Rosedale Community where his brother-in-law lives in Tuscaloosa, Ala., Thursday, May 5. Authorities are continuing the search for victims over a week after killer tornadoes swept across the state.
Tuscaloosa, Ala. - Where is Johnnie Brown's sister? Or the friend Billie Sue Hall talked to every day? A week after tornadoes ripped neighborhoods to shreds across the South, there still are no answers.

It's unclear how many people are missing across the seven states where 329 deaths have been reported. There are 25 unaccounted for in Tuscaloosa alone, the mayor says, but that number could be off because of the chaos the storm left behind.

Cadaver dog teams across the region are scouring the debris to uncover whatever tragedies may remain, and even bad news would be comforting to anguished families.

Tracy Sargent's dog team took just minutes to do what humans searching for hours could not: Locate the body of a University of Alabama student in a maze of twisted trees and debris. The young man's father was there when the body was found in Tuscaloosa this week.

"(The father) went over there and bent over and touched his son and started talking to him," Sargent said. "And he hugged him, started crying, and told him that he loved him and that he would miss him."

Phoenix

Montana, US: Firefighters warn new fires burn in mysterious ways

Fire officials in a tri-county area said they're seeing extreme fire behavior in areas with trees killed by the mountain pine beetle.

Sonny Stiger, a fire behavior analyst, told a group gathered in Helena Wednesday for a forum on the impact of the rice-size beetles, that he's seeing flame lengths of 200 to 300 feet in places they wouldn't expect it; they're experiencing unusual embers being thrown farther ahead of fires and groups of treetops torching; and ponderosa pines' low-hanging dead branches are creating ladder fuels that allow blazes to spread more rapidly than in the past.

"The kind of things we're dealing with is one fire grew to three acres in two minutes, 10 to 15 acres in the next eight minutes - that's moving - and over 100 acres in the first hour," Stiger said. "So we are experiencing unusual, extreme fire behavior now."

During the past decade, mountain pine beetles have devoured about 9 million acres of forest in the Rocky Mountains from Colorado to Montana, and about 40 million acres in British Columbia. They kill mainly lodgepole and ponderosa pine trees by burrowing into them to lay eggs; when the eggs hatch, the young "girdle" the tree by eating around it in horizontal circles, cutting off the flow of nutrients, before they fly to new trees and re-create the deadly cycle.

Evil Rays

Earthquake shakes wide area of southern Mexico

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© Unknown
A moderately strong earthquake shook Mexico's Pacific coast resort of Acapulco on Wednesday, sending people fleeing into the streets. No damages or injuries were reported.

The magnitude-5.8 quake occurred at 8:24 a.m. local time (1324 GMT) and was centered about 85 miles (138 kilometers) east of Acapulco, the U.S. Geological Survey reported on its website.

The quake occurred at a depth of nearly 6 miles (10 kilometers).

Sherlock

Canada: The mystery of the disappearing salmon

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© Unknown
The disappearance of millions of sockeye salmon from the Fraser River has been compared to Murder on the Orient Express by two scientists helping a federal inquiry solve an environmental mystery.

Andrew Trites and Villy Christensen, both professors at the University of British Columbia Fisheries Centre, made the comparison to the Agatha Christie whodunit as they testified Wednesday at the Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River.

Led by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen, the commission has been given more than two years and a $25-million budget to figure out why sockeye salmon stocks have been in decline for the past two decades, and why only about one million fish returned to spawn in 2009, when 10 million were expected.