Latest River delta Stories

Rapid advances in the new and developing field of restoration sedimentology will be needed to protect the world's river deltas from an array of threats, Indiana University Bloomington geologist Douglas A. Edmonds writes in the journal Nature Geoscience. The commentary, published this week in the November issue, addresses the fact that land is disappearing from river deltas at alarming rates. And deltas are extraordinarily important: They are ecologically rich and productive, and they are...

When WHOI geologist Liviu Giosan first reconstructed the history of how the Danube River built its delta, he was presented with a puzzle. In the delta’s early stages of development, the river deposited its sediment within a protected bay. As the delta expanded onto the Black Sea shelf in the late Holocene and was exposed to greater waves and currents, rather than seeing the decline in sediment storage that he expected, Giosan found the opposite. The delta continued to grow. In fact, it...

Simultaneously attaining a reliable water supply for California and protecting and rehabilitating its Bay-Delta ecosystem cannot be realized until better planning can identify how trade-offs between these two goals will be managed when water is limited, says a new report from the National Research Council. Recent efforts have been ineffective in meeting these goals because management is distributed among many agencies and organizations, which hinders development and implementation of an...

INDIANAPOLIS, Nov. 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The team at Delta Faucet knows that do-it-yourself (DIY) can take many forms. From home renovations to the small improvisations that make everyday life a bit easier, sometimes it's the things we do ourselves that are the most rewarding. Now, to celebrate the everyday ways people make improvements around their homes and in their lives, Delta Faucet is inviting its Facebook fans to share their photos in a contest to win one of four $500 Visa gift...

NOVATO, Calif., May 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- In his most outrageous performance yet, Congressman Devin Nunes, the southern San Joaquin Valley Republican lawmaker who accuses environmentalists of being Communists and attacks water officials who negotiate environmental agreements as sell-outs, has introduced a new bill that would eliminate or weaken most protections for the collapsing Bay-Delta ecosystem. HR 1837, the San Joaquin Valley Reliability Act, introduced on May 11, would completely...

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Feb. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The Delta Stewardship Council released the first draft of its 50-year plan to revitalize the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. After reviewing the plan, Allen Short, the General Manager of the Modesto Irrigation District, has serious concerns. "Unfortunately the draft plan as released has yet to define several key components essential to the long-term balance of the Delta. The cost to water and electric rate payers throughout California has...

By adding information about the subsoil to an existing sedimentation and erosion model, researchers at TU Delft have obtained a clearer picture of how rivers and deltas develop over time. A better understanding of the interaction between the subsoil and flow processes in a river-delta system can play a key role in civil engineering (delta management), but also in geology (especially in the work of reservoir geologists). Nathanaël Geleynse et al. recently published on their work in this...

NOVATO, Calif., Aug. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, as the California Senate considers major new recommendations to increase freshwater flows to the San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary, the Bay Institute released Gone with the Flow, a primer on how flows support a healthy ecosystem, and how the lack of flow is degrading that ecosystem to the point of collapse. The primer is available for free at http://www.bay.org/assets/Gone%20with%20the%20Flow%20WEB%20FINAL.pdf. "Flow is the most important driver...

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Aug. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- The Delta Stewardship Council released a survey today at www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZFRFMYK to hear from a variety of Californians about how this new independent state agency, charged with creating a working plan for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, can best communicate with them. The Legislature created the council via a bill that was approved last fall. The legislation was part of a comprehensive package to overhaul California's water...

NOVATO, Calif., July 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the State Water Resources Control Board released its long awaited draft report, identifying new flow criteria for the endangered Delta ecosystem. The report recognizes that the Delta ecosystem is getting far less water than is needed to protect public trust resources, and recommends new flow criteria that would significantly improve conditions in the estuary, based in large part on analyses and recommendations developed by The Bay Institute....