Streamflow data gathered by thousands of U.S. Geological Survey gauges helps track the country’s floods and droughts. But it may be lost if the Trump administration follows up on a decision not to renew leases of USGS water science centers that read the gauges and disseminate the measurements. Reporter’s Toolbox on the value of this database and the risk of its loss.
"As a youngster, Barry McCovey Jr. would sneak through metal gates and hide from security guards just to catch a steelhead trout in Blue Creek amid northwestern California redwoods. Since time immemorial, his ancestors from the Yurok Tribe had fished, hunted and gathered in this watershed flanked by coastal forests. But for more than 100 years, these lands were owned and managed by timber companies, severing the tribe’s access to its homelands."
"A federal judge last week sided with environmental groups and US regulators in a dispute with an Iowa landowner over a Farm Bill provision that protects wetlands."
"Recent fixes to long-standing problems at the Federal Emergency Management Agency are in jeopardy as the Trump administration slashes programs and cuts staff, emergency experts warn."
"Before the remnants of Hurricane Helene swamped this town, the Super 8 Motel, wedged between a highway and the Swannanoa River, provided affordable short and long-term housing for dozens of people who couldn't find affordable housing elsewhere."
"As severe storms once again soak, twist and pelt the nation’s midsection, a team of dozens of scientists is driving into them to study one of the nation’s costliest but least-appreciated weather dangers: Hail."
"Researchers have long warned that tiny air pollutants — 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair — are linked to preterm births. Now they’re one step closer to knowing why: Breathing in these tiny particles — largely caused by traffic, industry, burning fossil fuels and wildfire smoke — disrupts the molecules in pregnant women’s blood, raising the risk for preterm and early births, according to a new study from Emory University."
"When the head of the Environmental Protection Agency announced a wide-ranging rollback of environmental regulations, he said it would put a “dagger through the heart of climate-change religion” and introduce a “Golden Age” for the American economy. What Lee Zeldin didn’t mention: how ending the rules could have devastating consequences to human health."
"President Trump has ordered what he called a restoration of a “gold standard science” across federal agencies and national laboratories. But the May 23 executive order puts his political appointees in charge of vetting scientific research and gives them the authority to “correct scientific information,” control the way it is communicated to the public and the power to “discipline” anyone who violates the way the administration views science."
"The biggest source of salty freshwater in D.C. and other major northern inland cities is an overapplication of road salt to thaw winter ice, which runs off into rivers or the ground."
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