Drought

NAIROBI, Kenya, July 21 (UPI) — A rapid loss of genetic diversity in native African livestock could create a threat to the continent’s food supply, experts say.
The genetic diversity that maintains drought- and disease-resistant animals providing food and income to 70 percent of rural Africans is being lost at an alarming rate, a [...]

CANBERRA, Australia, July 12 (UPI) — Australia will spend $13 billion to build desalinization plants to provide up to 30 percent of the country’s drinking water from the sea, authorities say.
Still recovering from the worst drought in its history, blamed in part on climate change, Australia is turning to seawater to deal with [...]

WASHINGTON, July 12 (UPI) — A violent storm that swept through Brazil’s Amazon rain forest in 2005 may have killed half a billion trees in just two days, a new study says.
Storms have been understood as one cause of Amazon tree loss, but a new study funded by NASA and Tulane University says the [...]

AMES, Iowa, July 7 (UPI) — Studying drought effects on a pristine ecosystem could show how climate change may affect flora and fauna diversity, an Iowa State University researcher said.
Researcher Diane Debinski has studied meadows in the Rocky Mountains’ Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem since the 1990s, finding that if the area’s climate becomes drier [...]

WASHINGTON, June 2 (UPI) — Operation Hope, which combats drought in Africa, has been named the winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge.
The project — operated by the Africa Center for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe and the Savory Institute in Albuquerque — employs a strategy that transforms parched and degraded Zimbabwean grasslands and savannas [...]