Geography at NOVA - Alexandria campus

01/21/2025

01/21/2025

WHO comments on United States announcement of intent to withdraw

01/18/2025

Does the U.S. have enough water? The answer is more complex than you might think. 💧

Today, the USGS Water Resources Mission Area released the National Water Availability Assessment, offering a comprehensive look at water supply and demand across the conterminous U.S.

At the national scale, water supply is much higher than our water demand. However, this pattern is not true for all regions or times. For example, between 2010 and 2020, regions such as the Southern High Plains and Southwest Desert had the most widespread exposure to local water limitation in the U.S. These widespread water-limited regions face challenges expected to intensity due to population growth, rising food demands, and climate change.

This graph shows just how much water limitation varies across the U.S.

Want to learn more? Explore the Key Findings Interactive Website, where you’ll discover 8 critical takeaways from the report 👉https://ow.ly/IS0z50UHMAB

01/11/2025

01/11/2025

Nearly 500 years after the collapse of the largest empire in the Americas, a single bridge remains from the Inca's extraordinary road system: https://bbc.in/4gPFxsV

01/10/2025

First, let’s get this out of the way: We’re just as confused as you are.

As devastating wildfires continue to burn through Los Angeles, President-elect Donald Trump has decided to point his ire toward the delta smelt, a small fish species found only in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Not the severe Santa Ana winds that fueled the fires. Not the unusually dry weather. Not the steady march of home development into fire-prone areas.

A fish.

On his Truth Social platform, Trump blamed California Gov. Gavin Newsom for depriving the LA region of water because he wanted to protect “an essentially worthless fish.” Trump chided Newsom for not approving a water restoration declaration that doesn’t exist, per Newsom’s office, and also implied that protections for the smelt caused some fire hydrants to run dry in parts of LA. (This is false. Earlier this week, fire hydrants in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood ran dry, not because the city had no water but because of water pressure and other infrastructure issues.)

This isn’t the first time that Trump has bad-mouthed this fish. And he’s not alone: Other GOP leaders and conservative hosts have also targeted the smelt in the past. Why do right-wing leaders have so much beef with this humble fish? Vox’s Benji Jones explains: https://voxdotcom.visitlink.me/pAxe8H

📷 USFWS

01/10/2025

RELEASED: 2024 Annual U.S. Climate Report

⮚ The average temperature of the contiguous U.S. in 2024 was 55.5°F, 3.5°F above average, the warmest year in the 130-year record.

⮚ The Atlantic basin saw an above-average season, with 18 named tropical cyclones and five hurricanes making landfall.

⮚ Hurricane Helene became the seventh-most-costly Atlantic hurricane on record, causing an estimated $78.7 billion in damages.

⮚ Annual precipitation for the contiguous U.S. was 31.58 inches, 1.66 inches above average, ranking in the wettest third of the historical record.

⮚ A preliminary count of 1,735 tornadoes was reported in 2024, the second-highest annual total on record.

⮚ Drought coverage across the contiguous U.S. ranged from a minimum extent of 12% on June 11—the lowest extent recorded since early 2020—to a maximum coverage of 54% on October 29.

Learn more in our Annual 2024 U.S. Climate Report: http://bit.ly/USClimate202413

01/10/2025