A new study provides the first global accounting of fluctuations in lake and reservoir water levels. The research shows 57 percent of the variability occurs in dammed reservoirs and other bodies of water managed by people, highlighting the dominant role humans now play in Earth s water cycle.
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Coastal communities at the forefront of climate change reveal valuable approaches to foster adaptability and resilience, according to a worldwide analysis of small-scale fisheries by Stanford University researchers.
Globally important for both livelihood and nourishment, small-scale fisheries employ about 90 percent of the world s fishers and provide half the fish for human consumption. Large-scale shocks like natural disasters, weather fluctuations, oil spills and market collapse can spell disaster, depending on the fisheries ability to adapt to change. In an assessment of 22 small-scale fisheries that experienced stressors, researchers revealed that diversity and flexibility are among the most important adaptive capacity factors overall, while access to financial assets was not as important for individual households as it was at the community scale. The research was published Jan. 23 in the journal
Humans drive most of ups and downs in freshwater storage at Earth s surface, Stanford study finds miragenews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from miragenews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Published 2 March 2021
Flooding has caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage in the U.S. over the past three decades. Researchers found that 36 percent of the costs of flooding in the U.S. from 1988 to 2017 were a result of intensifying precipitation, consistent with predictions of global warming.
In a new study, Stanford researchers report that intensifying precipitation contributed one-third of the financial costs of flooding in the United States over the past three decades, totaling almost $75 billion of the estimated $199 billion in flood damages from 1988 to 2017.
The research, published Jan. 11 in the journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, helps to resolve a long-standing debate about the role of climate change in the rising costs of flooding and provides new insight into the financial costs of global warming overall.
Gendered division of labor in human societies shaped spatial behavior and landscape use
Navigating, exploring and thinking about space are part of daily life, whether it s carving a path through a crowd, hiking a backcountry trail or maneuvering into a parking spot.
For most of human history, the driving force for day-to-day wayfinding and movement across the landscape was a need for food. And unlike other primates, our species has consistently divided this labor along gender lines.
In new research published in
Nature Human Behaviour, scientists including James Holland Jones of Stanford and lead author Brian Wood of University of California, Los Angeles, argue that the increasingly gendered division of labor in human societies during the past 2.5 million years dramatically shaped how our species uses space, and possibly how we think about it.