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The United States and Mexico have agreed to renew and expand a far-reaching conservation agreement that governs how they manage the overused Colorado River, which supplies water to millions of people and to farms in both nations, U.S. water district officials said. The agreement to be signed Wednesday calls for the U.S. to invest $31.5 million in conservation improvements in Mexico’s water infrastructure to reduce losses to leaks and other problems, according to officials of U.S. water districts who have seen summaries of the agreement.

It’s late September and Yosemite National Park’s most celebrated waterfall – Yosemite Falls – continues to put on a show with water plunging 2,425 from its top to the base of the lower falls. This is unusual. Yosemite Falls is as an ephemeral waterfall fed by snowmelt and usually expires for a couple weeks or months in late summer. Scott Gediman, a public information officer for Yosemite, has worked in the park for 20 years and he doesn’t remember the waterfalls ever flowing continuously through the summer into fall.

Mountain meadows are starting to get some respect. For over a century, meadows were the first alpine environments targeted for development, grazing and farming, because they tend to be flat and packed with rich soil and nutritious plants. But we’re starting to understand that meadows have a much more important role to play for society at large. Meadows, it turns out, are water banks. As winter snows melt, the runoff flows into meadows, where deep organic soil holds the moisture like a sponge and then releases it slowly.

Around the world, huge streams of water vapor known as atmospheric rivers can generate heavy rain or snow as they flow over land. Just a few atmospheric rivers, each typically more than 2,000 kilometers long and less than 1,000 kilometers wide, can deliver up to half of the annual precipitation on the U.S. West Coast, on average. Atmospheric rivers are common over the northeastern Pacific Ocean and California, where their saturated air rises and cools over mountain ranges.