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kristina duncan/Federal, State Agencies Plan Drought Operations for 2015

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kristina duncan/Federal, State Agencies Plan Drought Operations for 2015

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on dec.12 2014

In preparation for a fourth year of drought, the directors of five federal and state agencies primarily involved in operating and regulating California’s two biggest water projects, the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, together have developed a strategy for potential implementation. State and federal agencies have developed a plan for 2015 operations and a summary of key lessons learned during 2014 in managing this extreme drought.

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beautiful =)

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what is the future of coal?

Coal is the biggest source of fuel for generating electricity in the U.S. and coal exports are growing fast, it is booming in the open-pit mines of Wyoming and under the plains of Illinois and Indiana.

Overall, U.S. coal production is projected to remain relatively constant over the next three decades, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

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tropical rain forest are located near the equator. 57%of all tropical rain forests are found in Latin America. 1/3 of the world's tropical rain forests are in Brazil. Other tropical rain forests are located in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands (25% of the world's tropical rain forests) and West Africa (18%).

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Get your brand new Wikispaces Classroom now and do "back to school" in style.

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i enjoyed learning about how much pollution there is in the different countries . i think its crazy how people live in that in some places. its a huge hazardous issue that causes so many medical issues. its also crazy how the cities within these countries choose to do nothing about cleaning up the air either. its like they don't care about their citizens.

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the San Andres fault is one of the most famous

faults in the world. part of the reason there is a

fault is because of the San Francisco earthquake

in 1906. the fault passes the fault passes through

California. a fault is where 2 tectonic plates touch

which in this case is north america and pacific plates.

these plates are continuously moving . if its moves

enough and the rocks slip it could be enough to start

an earthquake.

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It was a great class

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Te study guides were very helpful!!!

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I thought this was a cool picture of the tropical savanna.

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Yellowstone National Park, one of the biggest super volcano in the world.

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Crazy geyser formation in Nevada.

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Bizarre mountain nicknamed Devil's tower in Wyoming.

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Cool stand-alone rock formation in Australia.

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Interesting rock formation in

the UK.

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Joshua Tree National Park in California.

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California Salton Sea, much smaller

than it was in the past.

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Past picture of giant redwood

trees in California

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Channel Islands, off the coast of southern

California.

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Lake Tahoe, on the border of Nevada

and California.

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Merry Christmas

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This was a good class enjoyed taking this class

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What to visit a town like this

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Can't beat the snow

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That paper was something else to finish

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Cadillac Desert was an interesting video enjoyed watching it

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Wish I could do this

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Looks like a great vacation place

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Awesome

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I site I like to see one day

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Miss camping can't wait to go again soon

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Great view ready for vacation

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Scientist have found better and more resourceful ways to drill for oil

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just read about the volcano eruption in cape verde villages

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this class is very informative. i like that we talk about real time events happening around us now

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it is very helpful that the teacher goes over the studyguide before the test

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The youtube video on LA water supply was very good. its crazy that they steal so much water from other places in the state.

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During the lecture about our drought it was very eye opening to see the level that our land has dropped.

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Just took the final, i felt really good about it

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fracking is a new process to me that i have never heard of before the asingment was given.

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Global warming is something that is obviously present in our current day. i feel that if we all contributed to keeping our atmosphere less polluted, we can help slow the process of global warming.

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abu dubia is a great place to vist. i love abu dhabi architecture!

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I didnt know anything about hydraulic fracturing before doing the research. now I realized that hydraulic fracturing is affecting our environment badly.

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chasing the Ice.

The best documentary that I ever liked! I recommend all of guys to watch if you get a chance.

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Really liked how you answered the questions to our study guide, made it very useful

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Saul Valenzuela

Found this really interesting!

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Environmental cartoon Captain Planet and the Planeteers is getting the big-screen treatment.

Sony Pictures is in final negotiations to pick up the rights to the early 1990s series for an adaptation to be produced by Mark Gordon, Don Murphy and Susan Montford.
PHOTOS: 26 of Summer's Most Anticipated Movies: 'Man of Steel,' 'Wolverine,' 'The Lone Ranger'
The show was produced by Turner Broadcasting and DIC Entertainment, the latter known for Inspector Gadget and The Real Ghostbusters cartoon shows.

Captain Planet told the story of five teens from around the world -- North America, Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia and South America (if this isn't tailored for today's international marketplace, I don't know what is) -- that are given powers by Gaia, the earth spirit, in order to protect the planet from the devastation of polluters.

When their powers are not enough, the teens combine to summon a superhero named Captain Planet.

The Captain and the Planeteers fought villains such as Dr. Blight, Verminous Skumm, Duke Nukem and Looten Plunder. (The series initially attracted high-profile celebrities to play the baddies -- Sting, Meg Ryan and James Coburn among them.)

A movie adaptation attempted to take form in the 1990s but only reached the script stage. Murphy and Montford developed a live-action series with Cartoon Network in the late 2000s but it never took root.

Andrea Giannetti will oversee for the studio.

Gordon is a veteran producer whose credits range from Speed and Broken Arrow to Saving Private Ryan and 2012. He is also the executive producer behind shows such as Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds, and the upcoming Ray Donovan.

Murphy, one of the producers behind The Transformers mega-franchise, and Montford are in production on Vampire Academy, the adaptation of the YA novel by Richelle Mead being directed by Mark Waters.
E-mail: [email protected]Twitter: @borys_kit

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'Captain Planet and the Planeteers' Movie in the Works From Sony (Exclusive)

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Environmental cartoon Captain Planet and the Planeteers is getting the big-screen treatment. Sony Pictures is in final negotiations to pick up the rights to the early 1990s series for an adaptation to be produced by Mark Gordon, Don Murphy and Susan Montford.

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Overall I enjoyed this class, everyday I learned at least something new.

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The video of Cadillac Desert was awesome really learned a lot from history of Mulholland.

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I really enjoyed the extra credit of going to the fresno fair to the gem and mineral building.

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Overall, I enjoyed this class way more than i thought I would. I normally zone out during science but this class taught us about interesting topics that are actually relevant to stuff going on in the world today. I had a great time learning from Prof. Ford and good luck to everyone on the final today!!

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Majority of the world's nutrients are delivered by corn, wheat and rice.

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Since I will be going there to cheer at the football game, I thought Hawaii's black sand beaches were very interesting. the black sand comes from tiny slivers of volcanic glass and is there in finite amounts.

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NSC115 was the class were I learned about fracking, i had never learned about it since this semester and the fracking essay helped me a lot as well.

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Scientists found a breed of Pygmy Killer Whales off of the coast in San Diego which has never been recorded to be in California Waters

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Marine mammal biologist Paula Olson was at her post aboard the Ocean Starr ship in the early afternoon of Oct. 14 when she saw a group of dark dolphins in the distance through her high-powered binoculars.

The ship carrying a team of scientists, then roughly 150 miles west of the Channel Islands, drew closer for a better view.

"We realized, 'Oh, this is different,'" Olson said.

Olson and the rest of her team soon knew they were watching pygmy killer whales, members of the dolphin family never recorded by survey scientists in California waters and - despite their name - not considered dangerous. The team then got into an inflatable boat and used a crossbow fitted with a small biopsy dart to collect a skin sample of a dolphin. The samples allow the scientists to learn more about the species, its population and gender.

The pygmy killer whales were hardly the only unusual sightings for scientists during a four-month cruise of the California coast, where they monitored the appearances of whales, dolphins, sea turtles and birds on the Pacific Ocean. Sei and Blainville's beaked whales along with band-rumped storm-petrels and loggerhead sea turtles were among the atypical sightings reported during the survey, which began Aug. 5 and ended Dec. 9.

The cruise included five separate legs, with different groups of scientists boarding at each leg to study the California current, which stretches from the Canadian to the Mexican borders.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla has conducted the marine mammal surveys along the California coast every three to six years since 1991 and along the West Coast since 1996. The last survey occurred in 2008, said Lisa Ballance, director of the center's marine mammal and turtle division.

"We keep the ocean safe," Ballance said. "We're really all about monitoring status and trends to ensure that marine mammals and turtles are healthy."

Using equipment like Olson's special binoculars and a free-floating recording device, the scientists wanted to know the distribution of marine mammals, including whether endangered species are recovering.

The aim is to measure how different species are responding to changes in the ecosystem and to protection efforts, said Jay Barlow, the survey's chief scientist.

"The ecosystem is extremely dynamic," Barlow said.

The humpback whale population, for instance, has risen from about 1,000 back in the late 1960s to well over 20,000 in the entire northern Pacific, Barlow said.

The rare appearance of tropical species like pilot and pygmy killer whales in Southern California is likely linked to the area's water being warmer than usual, he said.

"We've never seen the pygmy in California waters," Barlow said. "It does tell me that as the world's oceans warm, we will see more of these tropical species in these waters."

The survey scientists are not alone in having rare sightings this year.

Leslie Kretschmar, director of at-sea programs at the Ocean Institute, an ocean education center in Dana Point, said pilot and false killer whales were new sightings for her boat this year.

"It's been kind of a capstone year for having once-in-a-lifetime opportunities," said Kretschmar, also a marine biologist. "Something is going on. There's definitely a lot of food out there."

Alisa Schulman-Janiger, a whale researcher with the Los Angeles chapter of the American Cetacean Society, said the pygmy killer whale sighting "in itself is extraordinary," but she also is fascinated by the appearances of other warm-water species in the California current like the brown booby, a seabird.

"It's a multiple-species shift," she said.

Schulman-Janiger said she has been contacted by the survey scientists to help with identifying some killer whales.

The survey was not limited to what scientists saw. An acoustics team charted the sounds of the ocean.

Jennifer Keating, a research biologist at the center, used a hydrophone array to listen for and record whale and dolphin vocalization, which typically cannot be heard by the human ear alone. Computer software allows her to match the sound to an image of the species. At one point, she located the clicking sounds of the rare Blainville's beaked whale.

The scientists are learning how the whales "function as a social group," Keating said.

"It's listening to how the animals communicate in the ocean."

Keating got a jolt when a shark bit part of her array. But those kinds of unplanned events challenge the scientists to think on their feet, said Emily Griffiths, also a research biologist at the center.

"You learn to be a better scientist," said Griffiths, who contended with an equipment failure and a bad allergic reaction when she was on the cruise. "Things happen in the field that are unpredictable, but you cope with it."

Analyzing the data collected will take a year or longer, Barlow said. The survey's cost was about $3 million, largely federally funded, he said.

Scientists said that their surveys always reveal new information because the animals are unpredictable and the ocean is active. There also is a constant sense of mystery about the sea.

"We know so little about the ocean and what lives there as opposed to the terrestrial environment," Olson said. "It's harder to study."

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Ocean scientists find unusual species off California's coast

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Marine mammal biologist Paula Olson was at her post aboard the Ocean Starr ship in the early afternoon of Oct. 14 when she saw a group of dark dolphins in the distance through her high-powered binoculars. The ship carrying a team of scientists, then roughly 150 miles west of the Channel Islands, drew closer for a better view.

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here's a funny comic describing the volcanos in Hawaii

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Science cartoons, earth humor and geology comics from http://unearthedcomics.com/ #science #humor #cartoons #webcomics #geology #earth #comics #unearthedcomics

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The largest mass extinction is known as the Permian-Triassic

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Something interesting I learned during the the semester was that 70 % of earth's surface is covered by water.

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On Dec. 16, 2014 President Obama has put another ban on oil drilling in Alaska's Bristol Bay to protect the local fisheries.

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Obama Indefinitely Bans Drilling in Alaskan Bay (Published 2014)

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President Obama has again enforced environmental policy by executive action, extending a ban on oil and gas exploration in Bristol Bay, Alaska, home to major fisheries and marine mammals.

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With the Ebola virus being a concern by everyone lately, the United Nations secretary general has announced that he will visit the "ebola-plagued" nations toward the end of this week. The United Nations have been criticized for responding too slowly to the outbreak and have admitted they do not think they'll reach their goal of treating all of the infected and burying all the dead by the end of the year.

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U.N. Secretary General to Visit Ebola-Plagued Nations (Published 2014)

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The trip, which is to begin later this week, seems designed to send a message of solidarity with the three affected countries: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

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Scientists have now found lifeforms during the deepest underwater drilling to date. The exploration went a little over 8,000 feet and found single cell organisms

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Life uncovered by the deepest-ever marine drilling expedition has been analysed by scientists.

The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) found microbes living 2,400m beneath the seabed off Japan.

The tiny, single-celled organisms survive in this harsh environment on a low-calorie diet of hydrocarbon compounds and have a very slow metabolism.

The findings are being presented at the America Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.

Elizabeth Trembath-Reichert, from the California Institute of Technology, who is part of the team that carried out the research, said: "We keep looking for life, and we keep finding it, and it keeps surprising us as to what it appears to be capable of."

The IODP Expedition 337 took place in 2012 off the coast of Japan's Shimokita Peninsula in the northwestern Pacific.

From the Chikyu ship, a monster drill was set down more than 1,000m (3,000ft) beneath the waves, where it penetrated a record-breaking 2,446m (8,024ft) of rock under the seafloor.

Sluggish ways

Samples were taken from the ancient coal bed system that lies at this depth, and were returned to the ship for analysis.

The team found that microbes, despite having no light, no oxygen, barely any water and very limited nutrients, thrived in the cores.

To find out more about how this life from the "deep biosphere" survives, the researchers set up a series of experiments in which they fed the little, spherical organisms different compounds.

Dr Trembath-Reichert said: "We chose these coal beds because we knew there was carbon, and we knew that this carbon was about as tasty to eat, when it comes to coal, as you could get for microbes.

"The thought was that while there are some microbes that can eat compounds in coal directly, there may be smaller organic compounds - methane and other types of hydrocarbons - sourced from the coal that the microbes could eat as well."

The experiments revealed that the microbes were indeed dining on these methyl compounds.

The tests also showed that the organisms lived life in the slow lane, with an extremely sluggish metabolism.

They seem to use as little energy as possible to get by.

Other worlds

The researchers are now trying to work out if there are lots of different kinds of microbes living in the coal beds or whether there is one type that dominates.

They also want to find out how the microbes got there in the first place.

"Were these microbes just in a swamp, and loving life in a swamp, because there is all sorts of carbon available, oxygen, organic matter... and then that gets buried?" pondered Dr Trembath-Reichert.

"It could be that they didn't get a chance to escape - they couldn't exactly walk out. So is it that they were there to begin with and then they could maintain life?

"Or were they like microbes that were able to travel down to those depths from the surface?"

The discovery of vast ecosystems of microbes deeper and deeper underground is causing scientists to reassess the role that these organisms play in the carbon cycle.

Because these organisms take in hydrocarbons and expel methane, a greenhouse gas, as a waste product, they may be having a greater impact on the system that governs the Earth's climate than was previously thought.

The findings also have implications for the hunt for life on other planets.

If life can survive in the most extreme conditions on Earth, perhaps it has found a way to cope with harsh environments elsewhere in the cosmos.

Follow Rebecca on Twitter

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Microbes discovered by deepest marine drill analysed - BBC News

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Life uncovered by the deepest-ever marine drilling expedition has been analysed by scientists. The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) found microbes living 2,400m beneath the seabed off Japan. The tiny, single-celled organisms survive in this harsh environment on a low-calorie diet of hydrocarbon compounds and have a very slow metabolism.

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This comic is showing that with fracking laws as they are right now, many water supplies are becoming contaminated

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When learning about viruses, I had never fully understood that when you receive a vaccine at a doctor's office, they were actually injected you with a small dosage of the virus itself to build up your immunity.

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I really enjoyed the Eastern Island video. i feel like it really put everything into perspective as far as our current drought situation. I think that the more informed we are on what is happening with the land we are on, the more prepared we can be to help keep it healthy.

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extinct pre historic species in USA

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commensalism relation between shark and sucker fish

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predation

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mutualism relationship between

flower and butterfly

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construction of LA aqueduct from owens valley

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death valley

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TROPICAL RAIN FOREST

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I pretty much believe in the theory of evolution having a common ancestor for a vast number

of species today, as about similar embryos in initial stages.

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I liked researching about hydrofracking and found this topic very interesting. It is a serious concern for current times.

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The earthquake that rattled Napa Valley wine country early Sunday morning clocked in at a magnitude 6.0. That was big enough to be felt across the Bay Area and to damage buildings, spark fires, and cause injuries in this populated region.

But it was far from the biggest in a state that was home to five of the ten biggest quakes on record in the lower 48 U.S. states. (Related: " What Caused California's Napa Valley Earthquake? Faults Explained.")

Sunday's shake-up was one of the largest to strike northern California since the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta quake in 1989. But quakes of magnitude 6.0 and greater are not uncommon historically along California's network of faults, notably the San Andreas.

The buildup and periodic release of seismic pressure along the northern San Andreas fault in the 1800s produced a series of magnitude 6.0 or greater earthquakes, leading up to the famous 1906 San Francisco magnitude 7.8 earthquake, says John Rundle, a geophysicist at the University of California, Davis. And that pressure is building again, seismologists think. "History will not necessarily repeat itself, but we might see something similar," he added.

As for the biggest quakes in recorded history, size estimates vary. Over the past century, the ways that earthquake magnitude and intensity are recorded have changed with improving seismic measurements. The well-known Richter scale was devised in the 1930s to describe the relative sizes of earthquakes in southern California. In the 1970s, the moment magnitude scale was introduced to describe the physical size of an earthquake, and is preferred for very large earthquakes.

Here are the biggest earthquakes in California's recorded history, according to magnitude estimates from the U.S Geological Survey.

Often compared to the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the Fort Tejon quake actually caused larger average ground movements than the more famous 1906 quake. Horizontal displacement along the fault was as much as 29.5 feet (9 meters). The rupture, which shook the San Andreas fault north of Los Angeles, set off tremors felt throughout northern and southern California and inland as far east as Las Vegas. One person died when an adobe house collapsed.

Twenty-seven people were killed when a row of houses collapsed in Lone Pine, east of the Sierra Nevada mountains, in the early morning. Both dip-slip and strike-slip faulting, referring to vertical and horizontal movements of the Earth's crust, occurred on the Owens Valley fault, moving the ground horizontally as much as 23 feet (seven meters) and vertically an average of three feet (one meter). The earthquake was felt throughout California and into Nevada. It stopped clocks in San Diego and caused an estimated $250,000 of property loss, a large amount of money at the time.

Ground fissures and rock slides, crumbled adobe and plaster, and some 155 tremors followed this quake that struck near Baja, California. Both dip-slip and strike-slip movement probably produced the earthquake on the Laguna Salada fault. Aftershocks continued every few days through April 1892. But the earthquake affected a largely uninhabited region, and no deaths were reported.

Striking early in the morning, the "Great Quake" of 1906 left more than 80 percent of the city damaged from the quake itself and from fires. With the quake's epicenter near San Francisco, tremors from the shaking caused by rupture and horizontal displacement of the San Andreas fault were felt from southern Oregon to southern California and inland to central Nevada. Although some estimates place the number of deaths from the earthquake and fires at around 700, the number is now thought to be at least 3,000.

The 1906 earthquake remains one of the most significant earthquakes in U.S. history. Scientists study the quake as an example of seismic cycles in the Bay Area in which a huge quake, of magnitude 7.0 or more, is preceded by a series of smaller earthquakes.

This offshore quake caused by the Mendocino fault off the coast of northern California was felt from Eugene, Oregon, to San Francisco. In 1992, a series of earthquakes greater than magnitude 6.5 struck over an 18-hour period in the same region. In 2010, another magnitude 6.5 offshore earthquake shook coastal Eureka, breaking windows and snapping power lines.

The largest temblor in the lower 48 United States since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, this quake caused property damage estimated at $60 million and claimed 12 lives. The shock was felt over most of California, in western Arizona, and in western Nevada. Nearly 200 aftershocks of magnitude greater than 4.0 were recorded through September 1952.

This early morning quake with an epicenter near the southern California town of Landers shifted the ground horizontally as much as 18 feet (5.5 meters) and vertically as much as 5.9 feet (1.8 meters). Three people died and more than 400 were injured. The shaking was felt throughout southern California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah, as far north as Idaho, east to New Mexico and Colorado.

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7 Biggest Earthquakes in California History-Napa's Not Even Close

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The earthquake that rattled Napa Valley wine country early Sunday morning clocked in at a magnitude 6.0. That was big enough to be felt across the Bay Area and to damage buildings, spark fires, and cause injuries in this populated region.

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Tornado in CA

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Los Angeles (CNN) -- Just when you thought the nation's entertainment capital couldn't deliver a new surprise ending, a camera-wielding resident reveals how this week's Pacific storm sent Los Angeles a tornado.

The rare twister was captured on tape: roofs obliterated, shingles hurled like leaves, and the amateur videographer gasping in profane disbelief. Friday's melee even damaged the steel of a billboard.

"It was crazy. It was crazy," Jamie Mena told CNN affiliate KABC after shooting a video of bent-over palm trees and his rooftop flying off. "I am shaken up."

Before Friday, the last time a twister made big news in Los Angeles was 1983, slamming into the downtown Los Angeles Convention Center, though there have been a few tornadoes since then around the area.

"They are pretty rare, but not as rare as you might think, though," said National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Sukup of the Los Angeles-Oxnard office.

Los Angeles hasn't seen a tornado for the past few years, but a study in the 1990s showed that "the amount of tornadoes we get in the L.A. basin is comparable to what they get in the Midwest but it's much weaker," Sukup said.

"Most of the ones we get out here are EF0's, whereas out in the Midwest, they get the EF3's and larger," Sukup said.

On a tornado damage scale, an EF0 is the weakest, with three-second gusts between 65 and 85 mph, according to the service. The worst of tornadoes is ranked EF5, with the winds exceeding 200 mph. An EF3 has such gusts between 136 and 165 mph.

That means Friday morning's twister in south Los Angeles struck with winds between 65 mph and 85 mph, ripping two residential roofs and knocking over trees, the service said.

The tornado was born out of a Pacific storm that pummeled much of the coast from Wednesday to Friday.
What to know about tornadoes
One of the more memorable tornado seasons in Los Angeles was the 1997-1998 winter when a strong El Niño weather phenomenon brought several storms and weak twisters, Sukup said.

An El Niño event involves the warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean and influences the jet stream where storms track.

"We might be going into a weak El Niño this year, but it doesn't tell us how wet of a year we're going to have or how many storms we're going to have," Sukup said.

More rain will fall on Southern California beginning late Sunday, and Los Angeles may received a quarter- to a half-inch of rain on Monday, with a chance of showers through the week, Sukup said.

But next week's rainfall shouldn't cause the kind of disasters seen this past week, Sukup said.

At a minimum, those rains will help slake a historic drought that's been drying up California the past three years.

"It doesn't look like it's going to be a major deal, more of a beneficial rain," Sukup said of next week's forecast.

The recent storms flooded and ravaged the West Coast: homes fell into the sea in Washaway Beach, Washington; schools closed pre-emptively in San Francisco and Oakland; a landslide buried houses in Camarillo; and a long balcony of second-floor apartments collapsed upon ground-level storefronts in Long Beach.

No one in California was killed, but falling trees killed two people in Oregon and left a third seriously injured, authorities said.

On Saturday, California experienced lingering damage and sporadic power outages, but for the most part, the state had recovered, said Kelly Huston, deputy director of the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services.

"Widespread outages are pretty much gone," Huston said Saturday. "What we're seeing is the cleanup part of the process for us.

"It was a bad storm for us," Huston said. "Luckily, we didn't suffer as many of the impacts as we thought we might have."

California rescuers saved people trapped in a mobile home park, in the Los Angeles River and a few other spots.

Northern California got the worst of the storm Thursday, as evidenced by swaying Bay Area bridges, halted ferry and cable car services around San Francisco and blizzard-like conditions in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

On Friday, it was more Southern California's turn. Several spots in the region had record rainfall for the day, including 2.36 inches in Oxnard and 1.54 inches at Long Beach's airport.

A storm like this -- the biggest to hit the area in years -- leaves a big mess behind, from flooded roadways to damaged houses to lives disrupted or turned entirely upside down.

Thankfully, in California at least, the vast majority of the once 300,000 customers left in the dark now have their power back on. And Huston said that, as bad as this storm was, "it was not quite as bad as we expected."

Even then, there's still a lot to do Saturday to get things back to normal. But this time, at least, Mother Nature should cooperate.

"We're looking pretty good," Huston told CNN. "We're hoping for some sunshine today here in California, and that will (help in) the cleanup process going on in several parts of the state."

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West Coast storms surprise Los Angeles with...a tornado, captured on video

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Los Angeles (CNN) -- Just when you thought the nation's entertainment capital couldn't deliver a new surprise ending, a camera-wielding resident reveals how this week's Pacific storm sent Los Angeles a tornado. The rare twister was captured on tape: roofs obliterated, shingles hurled like leaves, and the amateur videographer gasping in profane disbelief.

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Global Warming

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21Also, the planes did not sink in the ice over time as some have suggested.Their density was less than the ice or snow since they were not filled with the snow, but remained hollow.They were in fact buried by the annual snowfall over the course of almost 50 years.

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Grand Canyon

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In a rare event late last week, visitors to Grand Canyon National Park were able to see fog roll into the canyon like a tide, blanketing the popular tourist attraction.

The phenomenon was caused by a temperature inversion, or simply, a reversal of normal air temperatures, which allowed a shallow layer of cold air sit at ground level and warmer to hover above it.

"With just enough moisture on the ground from rain a week prior, the air at the bottom of the canyon cooled more rapidly, causing fog and a strong inversion to form," AccuWeather.com Expert Meteorologist Brett Anderson said.

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PHOTOS: Once-Per-Decade Fog Fills Grand Canyon
AccuWeather.com Winter Weather Center
Grand Canyon, Arizona, Extended Forecast

The inversion trapped the fog like a 'lid' on the canyon, Anderson said.

While it's rare for clouds to blanket the canyon in this way, it is not unheard of. This is the second year in a row that the phenomenon made its appearance across the canyon.

'It's back," the National Park Service said of the event on Facebook.

"The clouds were trying to settle in the canyon for the past couple of days, but today we're getting a real show," they wrote Thursday.

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WATCH: Rare Tidelike Fog Washes Over Grand Canyon

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In a rare event late last week, visitors to Grand Canyon National Park were able to see fog roll into the canyon like a tide, blanketing the popular tourist attraction. The phenomenon was caused by a temperature inversion, or simply, a reversal of normal air temperatures, which allowed a shallow layer of cold air sit at ground level and warmer to hover above it.

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CA

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More than 80% of California is now in a state of extreme drought, according to the latest assessment. The environmental conditions that residents are experiencing today actually began in 2011. Still, there seems to be no end in sight. Water costs are sky high, as you would expect, but Californians are paying the price in more ways than one. The state's Central Valley agriculture industry, for example, stands to lose $1.7 billion this year as a result of what some believe is the worst drought to affect the region in 500 years. Some 14,500 workers could lose their jobs in an area responsible for half of the state's agriculture and five percent of the entire nation's.

How will California survive? For a problem of such massive scope, the solutions will be complex, experts say. One thing is certain: technology will play a key role.

Halla Razak is the director of public utilities for the city of San Diego. Diversifying the water supply has been a top priority, she tells Fortune, because more than 90 percent of San Diego's water has historically been purchased from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. It became clear in 1990, when there was another drought, that the existing plan wasn't sustainable, Razak said. It prompted officials to take a fresh look at alternatives.

Since 2007, per-capita water use in the San Diego region has decreased about 27 percent. Officials point to rebates, tools, and educational programs aimed at improving water-use efficiency as factors in the change.

"These are low-tech solutions," Razak concedes. They are not like the brand-new and pricey reverse-osmosis desalination plant now under construction. The new Carlsbad Desalination Project, the work of the private developer Poseidon Water, is expected to open in late 2015. It will supply roughly 50 million gallons of water per day, which is about 10 percent of what the region uses each year, Razak says.

Desalination is something of a controversial topic. Though it is an established technology that has long provided drinkable water to many parts of the world, most notably the Middle East, it is also frequently criticized for its high energy demands.

'San Diego's most expensive source'

"We've been desalinating water for over 100 years," says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit that works with Fortune 500 companies on water solutions. "We know how to desalinate, but that's not the long-term answer because it's still extraordinarily expensive."

Reverse osmosis technology has helped improve desalination's energy footprint compared with past alternatives, Gleick says. Even so, the new Carlsbad plant "will be San Diego's most expensive source of water," he says.

In Gleick's view, the "more mundane" technologies that help people use water more efficiently, from efficient toilets to irrigation equipment, are far more important. "Drip irrigation is not a new technology, toilets are not new, but there are new versions that let us save a tremendous amount of water cost-effectively," he says. "They may not be sexy, but they're frankly the smartest things we could be doing."

A full 80 percent of the water used in California goes to agriculture, Gleick points out. "Farmers know how to implement drip irrigation. It's not a new technology, but they're learning new ways to do it." Soil-moisture monitors and smart meters also help reduce waste. "It turns out that with the right feedback delivered in the right way, people cut their water use by 5 percent," he says. "That doesn't sound like a lot, but in a drought it makes a big difference."

But reduction is not enough. As extreme drought conditions persist, many officials are looking at water reuse as an answer. In Orange County, used water is treated and fed back into the ground to replenish local aquifers. "They have innovative water treatment plants there and are treating it to high standards and then putting it to use," Gleick explains. "In the old days, it would have been thrown into the ocean."

Through a combination of water-saving practices, water reuse, and recaptured storm water, California could save up to 14 million acre-feet of untapped water, enough to supply all of California's cities for a year, according to a report published last month by the Pacific Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

'This is the real future for California'

Water reuse is also a focus in San Diego. The city of 1.3 million is currently in the planning stages of an effort called P ure W ater, which follows in the footsteps of Orange County. The new project calls for more reuse of the water the city has already been cleaning but reserving for non-potable uses only such as irrigation.

"We in San Diego aren't as lucky as Orange County in that we don't have good aquifers underground," Razak says. "But we do have large reservoirs."

The Pure Water plan involves building a plant that will treat used water with three different techniques: membrane filtration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet disinfection. Why so many steps? To make it "as pure as can be," Razak says. The renewed water is then piped to local reservoirs, where it will sit for six months. Then it will be treated again before it's mixed with other water sources for potable use.

Eventually, Razak hopes to skip the reservoir and subsequent stages, since already "the water is being treated to the best standard of quality of any other raw water we get in the county." Those later stages are "mostly to improve people's acceptance of this process," she admits.

The goal is to purify 15 million gallons per day by 2023. Longer term, officials hope the purification facility supplies more than a third of the region's water by 2035, Razak says.

"I honestly believe this is the real future for California," she says. "We take pristine water from rivers and lakes; we treat it and we clean it; and then we use it. Then we treat it again to a pretty high standard before we dispose of it in the ocean and rivers. We've already spent time and energy, but then we're letting go of it. The best thing for California is once we already possess that water and it's treated to a high level, to treat it further and reuse it."

Simon Gottelier, who runs the water strategy at the asset management firm Impax, agrees. "This is taking treated wastewater that would normally go out into the ocean and using it on a grand scale," he says. "If I had to say how California will cope going forward, my sense is these water-reuse projects are going to be one of the major ways California can do it."

'We're trying to offer a path to market'

To make an impact in drought conditions, "there are two legs you have to walk on," said John Briscoe, a professor of environmental engineering and environmental health at Harvard University and the director of the Harvard Water Security Initiative.

"First, you have to have infrastructure," Briscoe explains. "Second, you have to have institutions"-that is, rules and organizations to govern the effective management of water.

As in financial investing, it is important to have a diverse "portfolio" of water sources, Briscoe says. Cheaper ones can be used when water is plentiful; more expensive ones can sustain an area during difficult conditions.

Briscoe points to Australia, home of a new futures exchange focused on water, for its success dealing with drought. "They have a very flexible set of institutions with very clear signals about the value of water use," he says. "Once water has this value, there's a huge call for new technology. It becomes more information- and technology-intensive."

Globally, the water market is worth roughly half a trillion dollars per year, says Scott Bryan, chief operating officer at the clean water nonprofit Imagine H2O. "If you look at the magnitude of the ecological and humanitarian need plus the market need, why don't we have more entrepreneurs and investors looking into this issue?" Bryan asks. Even in California itself, "very little of the tech boom focuses on our region's most pressing issue," he adds.

For the last five years, Bryan's firm has offered an annual business innovation competition through which early stage entrepreneurs and researchers can submit their ideas for judging by a panel of venture capitalists and other experts. It then gives the top 12 contenders a place in its accelerator program. "Our winners and finalists now represent one in every six dollars of early stage financing in the water sector," Bryan says.

"What we're trying to offer is a path to market," he explains. "We have a lot of great technology out there, it just doesn't make it to market. A lot of our work is reaching out to people who can bring new business models to the sector-that's almost more important than new technology."
Correction, August 12, 2014: An earlier version of this article misstated the date when the Carlsbad Desalination Project is expected to open. It is late 2015.

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Can technology help us survive California's drought?

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More than 80% of California is now in a state of extreme drought, according to the latest assessment. The environmental conditions that residents are experiencing today actually began in 2011. Still, there seems to be no end in sight. Water costs are sky high, as you would expect, but Californians are paying the price in more ways than one.

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13 Most Incredible Geological Wonders on Earth

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Meteors crashing to earth, altering the landscape forever. Wind and sand blowing for millions of years, changing the shape of rocks and exposing formations buried for eons. Water continuously rushing through the ages, shaping new channels and widening old ones. Volcanoes underground lifting up the earth's crust to show itself for the first time in millennia, their craters collapsing to form lakes. Earthquakes opening up hidden caverns...

These are the monumental events that form our amazing world and the geological wonders in it. Here we take a look at thirteen of them. Some you will know and others will be completely new to you. All will be examples of the power of nature to create wonderful things.

Formally known as the Richat Structure, the Eye of the Sahara is a much more appropriate name. This mysterious blue eye has puzzled scientist since the first space flights, when astronauts noticed it looking back at them. Space shuttles use the 50 km-wide feature as a landmark even today, it is so clear in the middle of the barren Sahara desert. Researchers now believe it is a "symmetrical uplift", essentially an area that rose up as hard quartz while softer rock and sand was eroded from it.

This mysterious and ghostly phenomenon occurs at Racetrack Playa, Death Valley which is a fitting location! The stones travel long distances without any human or animal help! It seems as if they just lift themselves up and scoot along, making a trail or groove in the rock surface as they travel. Scientists' best guess as to why this happens at present is that wind at the level of the stones causes them almost to hydroplane. Sometimes they turn left or right, and other times it looks like two stones are racing each other. They only move every three or four years and the grooves take some time to build up. Definitely a wonder of the world!

The Blue Grotto in Capri is a gorgeous cave with a brilliant blue color to it due to two separate sources of light. One is tiny, the opening you can see in this picture which allows small rowboats in. The other opening is much larger and beneath the first, sending in rays of light into the cave from below. Of course, it is more difficult for this second hole to allow light through as it is underwater, but its size makes the difference.

Standing in 90 degree heat on huge logs of crystals, one might indeed be in a giants' showroom in Chihuahua, Mexico. Dwarfing humans in size, these are the largest crystals of selenite ever found. The heat inside comes from magma under the floor of the cave, and it was magma-heated water that once filled the whole space. As a result, it became rich in minerals like gypsum, causing the crystal logs to form. Because of the heat and humidity, scientists can't spend more than 10 minutes at a time in the cave without suffering ill effects, so it is no wonder tourists won't have the opportunity to visit in the near future.

The Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park in Madagascar is also known as its Stone Forest. The unbelievable array of rock formations are part of the World Heritage Site and National Park. The forest is also home to numerous species including critically endangered lorises. As is often the case, the local name is a perfect descriptor, as it means "where you cannot walk barefoot". These karst formations were formed through erosion of the uplands - erosion that happened both horizontally and vertically, creating a breathtaking sight of "trees", fissures and caverns.

The Chocolate Hills in the Philippines are named for their resemblance to Hershey kisses during the dry season when the grass is brown. With estimates of up to 1,776 of these amazing mounds - actually called haycock hills - they make a spectacular landscape. When visiting, you are standing on millions of years' worth marine limestone, which contains fossils, old coral and mollusks! They were created by erosion from above and below by water after they had been lifted up from sea level.

This incredible rock is found in Hayden, Australia. It looks like the earth sculpted a breaking wave and put it down on the land - which is almost exactly what happened! The rock, composed of granite, formed by a process of erosion while still underneath the earth 60 million years ago! As the earth exposed more of the area, it finally came into view to amaze and delight us all.

Many know of Crystal Cave in Bermuda but few know of her sister cave, Fantasy. As beautiful as her sibling, she is also deeper. There are 88 steps down into her cavern. The authorities had to close the cave for a long time in the 1940s, but it was reopened with all new lighting and pathways in 2001.

Bungle Bungles (a great name!) are found in the the Purnululu National Park in Western Australia, also a World Heritage Site. They are beehive shaped mounds with tiger striping caused by bacteria growing on the gray stripes and iron manganese on the red. They're an incredible sight, looking like the condominiums of giant bees as big as helicopters!

The Moeraki Boulders are amazing boulders found on the New Zealand coast. They are highly spherical in almost all cases and were exposed due to erosion and winds. As with many geological wonders, you would be excused for thinking that giants have been there, playing marbles as they crash among the waves.

This incredible formation of sandstone rock is stunning in its colors. Formed from Jurassic era sandstone (about 190 million years old), researchers say that sand dunes compacted and hardened, with erosion now forming the wavelike lines and shapes in the structure. Like a painting, everywhere you look there are new and amazing shapes to stun the eye.

These stunning terraces of water are found in Pamukkale Turkey and were shaped from a substance called travertine, which forms from the build-up of sediments of calcium carbonate deposited in water from hot springs. Then the calcium dioxide degasses and you are left with these beautiful terraces, with warm water flowing over them.

Antelope Canyon is one of the world's most beautiful canyons. Called Tsé bighánílíní in Navaho, which means "the place where water runs through rocks", it is found in the state of Arizona. It was formed from the erosion of rocks, when flash floods above picked up speed and grit. The water and sand smoothed and carved the edges of the slot canyon, widening it in some areas. Mother Nature truly is an abstract artist!

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13 Most Incredible Geological Wonders on Earth

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Photo: Dirk van der Velde Meteors crashing to earth, altering the landscape forever. Wind and sand blowing for millions of years, changing the shape of rocks and exposing formations buried for eons. Water continuously rushing through the ages, shaping new channels and widening old ones.

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Cornellchem wiki: Home Anatomy Biology Chemistry Bio/Chem Advanced Science Environmental Science Reefkeeping Club Geocaching Club External Links: Mr. Bogue's Website - edtek.info BogueBlog Blackboard

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Mount Whitney, tallest mountain

in California.

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Morro Bay rock.

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Wow didn't know this many earth quakes were happening just here in California.

http://earthquaketrack.com/p/united-states/california/recent