PLANET IN PERIL

U.S. National Academy Sciences A Wikimedia photo. Across North America, streams and rivers are becoming saltier, and freshwater bodies, more alkaline, all thanks to human activity. According to a new study, salty compounds like road de-icers and fertilizers, which make their way into rivers, are significantly changing the salinity levels of the waters in the United States and southern Canada. Researchers analyzed the data recorded at 232 U.S. Geological Survey monitoring sites across the country over the past 50 years. It's the first study to simultaneously account for multiple salt ions — such as sodium, calcium, magnesium and potassium — in freshwater across the United States and southern Canada. The results suggest that salt ions, damaging in their own right, are driving up the pH of freshwater as well, making it more alkaline.

 inside climate  news Nine of the 10 warmest years on modern record have been since 2005. This was the warmest without El Niño's influence, and it was marked by climate-related disasters. Story here.

Bloomberg "Rainbow Lake" - Alberta tar sands. Photo credit - "Beautiful Destruction." Amid the bogs and forests of northern Alberta, in the heart of the Canadian oil patch, lie some of the largest waste dumps of the global energy business. Story here.

Common  Dreams Mt. Herschel, Antarctica. Photo by  Andrew Mandemaker. "We are in desperate need for governments to come together and do what is best for these amazing ecosystems." More here.

by Larry Powell A "Snowy" swoops down on its prey (probably a lemming). Photo credit - Government of Quebec. The beautiful Snowy Owl, like so many other wild creatures on Earth, faces an uncertain future. The  “Red List,”  a British agency, has just put the graceful, white bird of prey on the “vulnerable” list for the first time. It has drastically downgraded earlier estimates of 200 thousand individuals, worldwide, to as low as 10 thousand.  Snowy Owl numbers have proven hard to judge since they fluctuate so widely, depending on the availability of food. Factors in their decline may include illegal hunting, collisions with vehicles and power lines and climate change, which can affect the availability of prey. So the agency’s prognosis is a somber one.  “This species faces a high risk of extinction in the wild in the medium-term future.”  Snowy Owls nest in the Arctic, but have a range that spans the northern hemisphere.”  A conservation spe

ScienceNews Rising temperatures are skewing population ratios toward extreme imbalance. Story here. Photo by Karla