submitted by Samuel Bendett

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Groundwater depletion has been most severe in the purple areas indicated on these maps of (A) the High Plains and (B) California's Central Valley. These heavily affected areas are concentrated in parts of the Texas Panhandle, western Kansas, and the Tulare Basin in California's Central Valley. Changes in groundwater levels in (A) are adapted from a 2009 report by the U.S. Geological Survey and in (B) from a 1989 report by the USGS.

Homeland Security News Wire - May 29, 2012

The U.S. food supply may be vulnerable to rapid groundwater depletion from irrigated agriculture; for example, from 2006 to 2009, farmers in the south of California’s Central Valley depleted enough groundwater to fill the U.S. largest man-made reservoir, Lake Mead near Las Vegas — a level of groundwater depletion that is unsustainable at current recharge rates

In this Jan. 2, 2005 file photo, a wide area of destruction is shown from an aerial view taken over Meulaboh, 250 kilometers (156 Miles) west of Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Researchers in the United States are hoping to use GPS data to speed up current warnings. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara, File)

U.S. seismologists currently testing new warning system

by Andrew Pinsent - CBC News - May 5, 2012

Scientists in the United States have been testing an advanced tsunami warning system using GPS data, combined with traditional seismology networks, to attempt to detect the magnitude of an earthquake faster so warnings of potential tsunamis can get out to potentially affected areas sooner.

The prototype is called California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN), and is a collaboration between the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, whose focus is on environmental conservation.

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Homeland Security News Wire - April 19, 2012

Researchers place a model hospital on a shake table to assess the structure’s ability to withstand earthquake; in accordance with California latest building code, base isolators, which are rubber bearings intended to absorb the shock of the motion, were installed underneath the structure; the hospital passed the 6.7-magnitude and 8.8-magnitude tests with flying colors.

Last Tuesday, engineers from the University of California, San Diego conducted an ambitious and successful earthquake simulation, with what some called “boring” results.

Engineered had constructed a 5-story building, complete with a hospital operating room, an elevator, a kitchen filled with glassware. They also added a heavy air-conditioning unit to the roof. The building, built to California’s top earthquake codes, was then placed on top of a shake table, a device for shaking structural models or building components with a wide range of simulated ground motions, including reproductions of recorded earthquake time-histories.

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submitted by Janine Rees

The power plant has been shut down since this winter, when a small amount of radioactive gas escaped.

• Anti-nuclear activists warn of a potential environmental catastrophe
• The San Onofre nuclear plant has been shut down since radioactive gas escaped
• Officials have said there's no harm to the public health, but can't identify problem's cause
• The head of the NRC says the plant won't restart until a cause and plan is put forward

(CNN) -- A large Southern California nuclear plant is out of commission indefinitely, and will remain so until there is an understanding of what caused problems at two of its generators and an effective plan to address the issues, the nation's top nuclear regulator said Friday.

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California's Bay-Delta water supply area // Source: usgs.gov

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Homeland Security News Wire - March 30, 2012

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 integrated, comprehensive plan.  Additionally, it is impossible to restore the delta habitat to its pre-disturbance state because of the extensive physical and ecological changes that have already taken place and are still occurring, including those due to multiple environmental stressors.

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Workers fix subway lines that were damaged after an earthquake was felt in Mexico City on Tuesday, March 20. (Associated Press / March 19, 2012)

By Hector Becerra and Sam Allen, Times Staff Writers - latimes.com - March 22, 2012

The state spends a fraction of what countries like Mexico and Japan spend on their systems. One reason for the lack of interest, experts say, is that California has not experienced a catastrophic quake in more than a century.

submitted by Jonathan King

By: Rich Miller - datacenterknowledge.com - February 20, 2012

Jesse Robbins is a trained fireman. He also has managed some of the world’s largest Internet infrastructures. Robbins says the lessons of fire readiness can be applied to building reliable systems.

“You cannot learn the lessons of failure without experiencing it,” said Robbins, the co-founder and Chief Community Office at Opscode. “That’s why we do fire drills.”

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Good, and good for you. New Roots Community Farm hosts U.S. first lady Michelle Obama in April 2010. (Reuters/Mike Blake)

submitted by Janine Rees

by Jill Richardson - latitudenews.com - January 30, 2012

Imagine escaping from your farm in a war-riven part of Africa or Asia. You arrive in the U.S. What a relief! But you’ve replaced farming with asphalt and concrete of a U.S. city. Bewilderment, shock, all over again.

To help refugee farmers adjust, the International Rescue Committee started an urban farm in San Diego. It hired Amy Lint, then 31, to get New Roots Community Farm up and running.

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First, there is great value in a systems approach as a heuristic for understanding interlocked social-ecological-technological processes, and in analysis across multiple scales. Yet we need to move beyond both systems as portrayed in resilience thinking, and the focus on actors in work on vulnerability, to analyse networks and relationships, as well as to attend to the diverse framings, narratives, imaginations and discourses that different actors bring to bear.

For More:

http://resilienturbanism.tumblr.com/post/7573475902/reframing-resilience

There are many definitions of resilience from simple deterministic views of resilience anchored in Newtonian mechanics to far more dynamic views of resilience from a systems perspective, including insights from quantum mechanics and the sciences of complexity.  One baseline perspective of resilience sees it in terms of the viability of socio-ecological systems as the foundation for sustainability.  For those that are ready to look beyond resilience as the ability to return to the "normal state" before a disaster, take a look at:

http://www.resalliance.org/

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-ME) announced Monday she will introduce bail that would "significantly change the nation's food policy" by supporting local and regional farmers. The package of reforms and new programs, dubbed The Local Farm, Food, and Jobs Act, would encourage the production of local food by helping farmers and ranchers and by improving distribution systems, building on the success of farmers markets across the country.

Source: Food Safety News  Author: Helena Bottemiller | Oct 25, 2011

"This is about healthy local food and a healthy local economy. When consumers can buy affordable food grown locally, everyone wins," said Pingree, who owns an organic farm in North Haven, Maine. "It creates jobs on local farms and bolsters economic growth in rural communities."
Pingree tied local food system growth to creating jobs all over the country.
"We've seen explosive growth in sales of local food here in Maine and all across the country. This bill breaks down barriers the federal government has put up for local food producers and really just makes it easier for people to do what they've already been doing," the congresswoman said.