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“Going into the New Year, the USGS reflects on the natural hazards of 2014 as a reminder of the dangers we face and the need for preparedness to save lives and property. In 2014, several damaging natural earthquakes occurred around the world. A devastating landslide occurred in Washington State, while heavy rains and landslides also hit …
CRS – Human-Induced Earthquakes from Deep-Well Injection: A Brief Overview. Peter Folger, Specialist in Energy and Natural Resources Policy; Mary Tiemann, Specialist in Environmental Policy. December 22, 2014. “The development of unconventional oil and natural gas resources using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) has created new demand for wastewater disposal wells that inject waste fluids into deep geologic strata. An increasing …
Seismological Society of America – “A new study links the March 2014 earthquakes in Poland Township, Ohio to hydraulic fracturing that activated a previously unknown fault. The induced seismic sequence included a rare felt earthquake of magnitude 3.0, according to research published online by the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA). In March 2014, a series of …
This Proposed Rule document was issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) For related information, Open Docket Folder Action Proposed rule and 12-month finding. Due Jan 27 2015. Summary – “We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), announce a proposed rule and a 12-month finding on a petition to list the African lion (Panthera leo leo) as …
John N. Smith, Robin M. Brown, William J. Williams, Marie Robert, Richard Nelson, and S. Bradley Moran. Arrival of the Fukushima radioactivity plume in North American continental waters. PNAS 2014 : 1412814112v1-201412814. “The large discharge of radioactivity into the northwest Pacific Ocean from the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactor accident has generated considerable concern about the spread of …
Via USGS news release, includes data files and photos :”Species distribution modeling was used to assess the relative impacts of climate and land-use change on fifty bird species for the conterminous United States. Species presence data, current and projected land-cover data, current and projected climate data, and topographic data were used in a maximum entropy …
“The first global maps of atmospheric carbon dioxide from NASA’s new Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 mission show elevated carbon dioxide concentrations across the Southern Hemisphere from springtime biomass burning and hint at potential surprises to come. At a media briefing at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California; …
“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) … announced [December 19, 2014] the first national regulations to provide for the safe disposal of coal combustion residuals (coal ash) from coal-fired power plants. The final rule establishes safeguards to protect communities from coal ash impoundment failures, like the catastrophic Kingston, Tenn., spill in 2008, and establishes safeguards to …
New York Times: “The Cuomo administration announced Wednesday that it would ban hydraulic fracturing in New York State, ending years of uncertainty by concluding that the controversial method of extracting gas from deep underground could contaminate the state’s air and water and pose inestimable public-health risks. “I cannot support high volume hydraulic fracturing in the great …
Via PLOS ONE – Marcus Eriksen, Laurent C. M. Lebreton, Henry S. Carson, Martin Thiel, Charles J. Moore, Jose C. Borerro, Francois Galgani, Peter G. Ryan, Julia Reisser. Published: December 10, 2014. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0111913 “Plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the marine environment, yet estimates of the global abundance and weight of floating plastics have lacked data, particularly from the Southern Hemisphere and remote regions. Here …
CNN: “Tucked inside the defense authorization bill that the Senate passed Friday was an unrelated public lands package that’s set to bring the biggest expansion to the National Park Service in decades. Despite some conservative opposition—a chorus that skewered the legislation as a pork-barrel land grab—the measure also establishes thousands of acres of new wilderness areas. …
DOD Contract Services: Improved Planning and Implementation of Fiscal Controls Needed, GAO-15-115: Published: Dec 11, 2014. Publicly Released: Dec 11, 2014. DOE and NNSA Project Management: Analysis of Alternatives Could Be Improved by Incorporating Best Practices, GAO-15-37: Published: Dec 11, 2014. Publicly Released: Dec 11, 2014. Federal Subcontracting: Linking Small Business Subcontractors to Prime Contracts Is Not …
