Tag: Climate and Agriculture15
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‘Small is Also Beautiful’ – Appropriate Technology Cuts Rice Farmers’ Water Use by 30 Percent in Punjab, India
Since the 1960s, farmers in Punjab, India have practiced some of the most intensive broad scale grain production in the world. As a result, the state has earned the nickname “the food bowl of India” for its out sized role in adopting and implementing Green Revolution technologies that in the last decades of the 20th…
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Is Groundwater Depletion Causing Sea-level Rise?
A recent study from Yoshihide Wada and other researchers from Utrecht University attempted to assess the status of global groundwater depletion—that is, the amount of water that is being drawn out from underground reservoirs that is not being replaced by precipitation—and came up with some startling conclusions. Chief among them that depletion of groundwater may…
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Columbia Engineers an Impact on Water Sustainability
The most recent issue of the Columbia Engineering Magazine profiles many of the Columbia University Engineering faculty who are addressing the issues of sustainability in the water, climate and energy fields. Several of Columbia Water Center’s researchers and collaborators were featured. Here are some teasers that demonstrate the depth and breadth of the talent at…
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Can We Have Our Water and Drink It, Too? Exploring the Water Quality-Quantity Nexus
Water quantity and quality have generally been considered as separate problems and have usually been treated as such in policy-making and environmental restoration efforts. Increasingly, however, research and experience is beginning to show a strong link between water quantity and quality.
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Global Population Growth and Water Scarcity Q&A
Russell Sticklor with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program in Washington, DC. recently contacted me requesting my thoughts on a number of issues for an article he is writing on global population growth and water scarcity for the magazine, Outdoor America. I thought some of the comments might be interesting to our blog…
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Energy, Agriculture, and the Environment: Dead Zones and the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico
Catastrophic, tragic, disastrous: these are all words that have been used to describe the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  It is impossible to deny that these words apply – thick, goopy crude has already coated the beaches and estuaries of the Gulf, contaminating more than 120 miles of coastline.  The spill is…
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Dust and its Impact on Earth’s Climate System
Last month, Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory hosted a conference on dust in the climate system as part of the NOAA funded Abrupt Climate Change in a Warming World (ACCWW) project. Most often, we think of dust simply as the stuff that accumulates on our windowsills, but those fine particles floating in the air play an…
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Climate News Roundup – Week of 6/7
10 Eastern States Join Wind Energy Consortium, Â Providence Business News On Tuesday a memorandum of understanding signed by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and the governors of ten states established an Atlantic offshore wind energy consortium. Â The goal is to promote the efficient development of wind resources on the Outer Continental Shelf from Maine…
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Creating More Useful Forecasts
Seasonal forecasts can be effective tools for agricultural planners, water resources managers and other decision makers. For example, after torrential rains and floods wreaked havoc in the West African nation of Ghana in 2007, displacing some 400,000 people there, the regional office of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies started using…
Congratulations to our Columbia Climate School MA in Climate & Society Class of 2024! Learn about our May 10 Class Day celebration. #ColumbiaClimate2024
