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Western Colorado Water Purchases are Stirring up Worries About the Future of Farming

For five years, Zay Lopez tended vegetables, hayfields and cornfields, chickens, and a small flock of sheep here on the western edge of Colorado’s Grand Valley – farming made possible by water from the Colorado River.

Lopez has a passion for agriculture, and for a while, he carved out a niche with his business, The Produce Peddler, trucking veggies seven hours away to a farmers market in Pinedale, Wyoming.

New Study Shows Global Warming Intensifying Extreme Rainstorms Over North America

New research showing how global warming intensifies extreme rainfall at the regional level could help communities better prepare for storms that in the decades ahead threaten to swamp cities and farms.

The likelihood of intense storms is rising rapidly in North America, and the study, published Monday in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, projects big increases in such deluges.

“The longer you have the warming, the stronger the signal gets, and the more you can separate it from random natural variability,” said co-author Megan Kirchmeier-Young, a climate scientist with Environment Canada.

Australia’s Water Is Vanishing

The early afternoon sun was pounding the parched soil, and Gus Whyte was pulling on his dust-caked cowboy boots to take me for a drive. We’d just finished lunch—cured ham, a loaf of bread I’d bought on the trip up, chutney pickled by Whyte’s wife, Kelly—at his house in Anabranch South, which isn’t a town but rather a fuzzy cartographic notion in the far west of New South Wales, a seven-hour drive from Melbourne and half as far again from Sydney.

Improving Atmospheric Forecasts with Machine Learning

An efficient, low-resolution machine learning model can usefully predict the global atmospheric state as much as three days out.

Self-Assembling Traps Capture PFAS

University at Buffalo chemists have shown that self-assembling molecular traps can be used to capture PFAS — dangerous pollutants that have contaminated drinking water supplies around the world.

The traps are made from iron-based and organic building blocks that connect, like Legos, to form a tetrahedral cage. Experiments showed that these structures bind to certain PFAS (short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), and a lab analysis revealed how this happens. As it turns out, the PFAS stick strongly to the outside of the cages instead of getting caught inside, researchers say.

Conservative States Defend Water Rule From California-Led Suit

A coalition of conservative-leaning states went to court Monday to defend the Trump administration’s water jurisdiction rule.

Klamath Farmers Protest Early Water Cutoff

In two weeks or less, farmers and ranchers near the California-Oregon border will see their water supplies run dry, after operators of the federal Klamath Water Project unexpectedly cut allocations in response to concerns about protected fish.

Mexico Poised to Breach 75-Year Water Treaty with US

Mexico is at risk of breaching a 75-year old water treaty with the US if it does not come up with a new strategy to deliver 457,800 acre-feet (565 million cubic meters – Mm3) of water to its northern neighbor by October 24.

That amount represents 350,000 acre-feet of water that the Latin American country is expected to deliver annually under the US-Mexico water treaty of 1944, in addition to making up for the delayed delivery of around 108,000 acre-feet that it has postponed during the 2015-20 cycle.

U.S. EPA Moves to Curb State Powers to Deny Permits for Energy Projects

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler signed on Monday a rule limiting state powers to block energy infrastructure projects, setting up a fight with some Democratic governors who say Washington is stripping their ability to protect their states’ interests and combat climate change.

Officials Worry About Wildfires as More People Enjoy Nature After Coronavirus Lockdowns

Parts of the West are already in extreme drought ahead of wildfire season, and officials in some areas are worried about an uptick in fire action as more people emerge from coronavirus-related lockdowns and resume outdoor activities like hiking and camping.