Dive into the archives.
- Trash Vortex: sea-based landfilling?
08-12-03: Trash Vortex
The world’s largest garbage dump is located thousands of miles from land. Also known as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Pacific Trash Vortex is an area of marine debris floating in the Pacific Ocean. This collection of trash is characterized as a plastic-soup due the high concentrations of suspended disposable plastics that [...]
- Farming the Atmosphere for Water
[Clouds in the Mojave Desert]
Beyond the astonishing bird’s nest featured at the recent Beijing Olympics was perhaps a more spectacular accomplishment: large-scaled cloud seeding. Chinese film and Olympic opening ceremony director Zhang Yimou cited rain as the largest threat to the opening ceremonies. To ensure a rain-free performance, 1104 rocket’s filled with silver [...]
- Gongoozolers, Aqueducts, and Lifts
[The inland waterways of England and Wales is comprised of over 5,000 navigable kilometers.]
Shipping just got a whole lot smarter. With the advent of software able to forecast the optimum shipping route and method for products still relying upon our globalized capital, suppliers and manufacturers are better able to soften the constricting power of rising [...]
- Dam Politics in the ‘Stans
[The Nurek Dam in Tajikistan forms this massive 10.5 km³ reservoir. Photo by Carolyn Drake for The New York Times.]
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many freshly independent Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan, were dealt either a strong or poor hand with regard to land resources. Reading in the NYTimes on Sunday, Tajikistan [...]
- Marked Routes
[A superimposition of 23 significant journeys. (click to view large)]
Stumbling upon a map produced by GOOD magazine (and executed by the reliable graphics of Graham Roberts), suggests the power of historic routes to mark the very teritory in which they navigate - whether it be land, water, or air. Some chartered in open territories are [...]
- Dead Zones
[Over 400 dead zones dot the globe (see black dots above). There seems to be a bit of a graveyard forming in the Eastern US and Northern Europe...]
An interesting article in Science chronicles the ever rising numbers of dead zones. Dead zones are oxygenless waters as a result of activities such as riverine runoff of [...]
- Aquacultural Hubs
[Cabling network system of the Kona Blue aquaculture Sea Station.]
Resembling something out of the portfolios of Frei Otto or Cedric Price, the Kona Blue Sea Stations off the coast of Hawaii are open sea offshore 3,000-cubic-meter submersible fish pens.
Kona Blue’s premiere achievement is Kona Kampachi®, a premium sushi-grade Hawaiian yellowtail species.
Currently, four open ocean aquaculture [...]
- Farming the Desert
[In Toshka farm,near Egypts border with Sudan, the Egyptian goverment hopes to grow 2 million acres of wheat, alongside fruits such as the grape fields as above.]
As recently chronicled in the NY Times, Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a dilemma: grow more crops to feed expanding population or [...]
- Tidal Turbines
[Severn Tidal Fence]
The idea of a tidal fence / barrage has been kicking around for almost 100 years as a means for flood control, transport, and potentially tidal power. The last 20 years years has seen an increase interest in tidal energy harvesting, though many countries, such as Canada, have completely sworn it off. One [...]
- Green Bloom
08_06_30_algae1
A massive algae outbreak has seized the city of Qingdao. Algae are now blooming over more than 12,900 square kilometers, or 5,000 square miles, of sea water. State media reported that 100,000 tons of the algae had already been taken out of the water. Much of it was being transported to farms as feed for [...]
