rivers

“When the sun peeped over the Sierra Madre, it slanted across a hundred miles of lovely desolation, a vast flat bowl of wilderness rimmed by jagged peaks. On the map the Delta was bisected by the river, but in fact the river was nowhere and everywhere, for he could not decide which of a hundred green lagoons offered the most pleasant and least speedy path to the Gulf.”

By Terence Houston, Science Policy Analyst The US Senate is moving forward with a new Water Resources Development Act, a comprehensive bill that authorizes funding for Army Corps of Engineers projects related to flood management, environmental restoration and other water resources infrastructure issues. The bipartisan legislation (S. 601) is sponsored by Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer…

By Liza Lester, ESA communications officer Mississippi River Basin. Green tributaries have sufficient flow for large-river specialist fishes, and long stretches unobstructed by obstacles of civilization. Blue tributaries fall below a critical flow threshold. Yellow tributaries discharge enough water, but are blocked by dams. On big rivers like the Mississippi, the infrastructure of modern civilization – dams, locks, dikes, power…