planetwater

ground- water, geo- statistics, environmental- engineering, earth- science

Archive for 2007

Loetschberg Tunnel Completed

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The Loetschberg Basis Tunnel is completed and the first train rode through it. This tunnel together with the Gotthard tunnel are the two main tunnels through the Alps in Switzerland, connecting the north (Germany) with the south (Italy). The Gotthard tunnel is still under construction and will not be completed for another few more years.

Major Routes Through Switzerland

The Loetschberg tunnel is about 35 kilometers long, and will be used for cargo trains putting trucks on the train, and for high speed passenger trains. Cars will still go over the mountains. Before the construction about 1.5 million trucks travelled through Switzerland in north-south direction. After completion, the number is expected to drop to 650,000. Besides these environmental savings, the ride through the tunnel will save time as it is twice as fast as the ride over the mountain and will be cheaper than the truck prices for truck companies

How is this related to water? — As any tunnel they had huge water inflows at various stages of drilling, and there is a pretty neat water collection system in place now for the normally infiltrating groundwater.

In 2003 I was part of a field trip to the south portal in Raron, Switzerland. We saw the drilling machine in action, and the geotechnical lab and the rock-recycling facility.

The ZDF has a movie on it; The news from the tagesschau; The news from the handelsblatt; The news from the NZZ; The news from the independent;

Written by Claus

June 17th, 2007 at 3:43 am

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The Amish are Modern

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According to the New Scientist, the Amish are very fast in adapting solar power. By now, 80% of the Amish families in the largest Amish community in the world in Ohio, own solar power. Reasons for the quick adoption include:

  • safety concerns (gas lamps were a fire hazard)
  • legal requirements (transportation code requires horse buggies to be lit)
  • remain separated from the rest of American society by not hooking on to the electricity grid

After having lived in close proximity to Mennonites for a few years, and having enjoyed their agricultural products, and missing those products now that they are not available to me anymore, I do acknowledge the importance of such communities. In Waterloo they live peacefully together with the rest of the community, everybody chuckles about their horse buggies, but everybody is delighted by their fine potatoes, their fine produce, and their fine work.

Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Claus

June 3rd, 2007 at 3:01 am

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Measuring Rain

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Measuring how much rain falls during a given time, the meteorological parameter “rainfall intensity”, is difficult to measure. It gets even more difficult if the goal is to measure the spatial distribution of rainfall, and how it changes over time.

Rainy backyard

The Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study (COPS) will try and use different new remote sensing techniques and proven ground based or air borne techniques such as lidars, radars, precipitation detectors. Obviously over a large are, the Black Forrest in south-west Germany. The german news station ZDF has quite an enthusiastic report on this measurement-campaign and the improvement the scientists will gain for mathematical weather forecasting.

Written by Claus

June 1st, 2007 at 7:11 am

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Climate Change and Water-Price-Change

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London will be where Porto is now

This interesting and well designed map shows some cities but not at their current geographic location, but at a geographic location that currently has the climate that this city will have in 70 years.

Drinking Water too Expensive in Germany

The German magazine Der Spiegel has reported on may-23 how prices of publicly supplied drinking water vary in Germany. Today the same magazine interviews the economic minister of the province of Hessia on that topic today, and he announces dramatic price cuts.

Written by Claus

May 31st, 2007 at 1:27 pm

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Another Cool Wave

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Another cool picture with a wave: Another cool wave

(via Flickr)

Written by Claus

May 31st, 2007 at 12:06 pm

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All that climate change discussion is crap!

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Well, if somebody’s telling you so, you might get some useful support from the NewScientist. A very nice collection of all the stories, why climate change isn’t happening, why it isn’t man made, why we shouldn’t trust scientists dealing with climate change. And a very nice collection of background information, where the stories come from, what’s the scientific basis and where the myth starts.

Written by Johannes

May 25th, 2007 at 8:24 am

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More Bottled Water

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Chinese Water

This picture shows Xu Jiehua (r), the wife of the detained Chinese environmental activist Wu Yilong, sitting behind water samples collected by Wu Yilong from Chinese urban rivers and lakes. To me this looks more like popsicle-colors and not like drinking water… hopefully popsicle have different constituents though… Water from Chinese rivers

Celebrity Water

Some people, I think might fall into the category “celebrities”, seem to fall for anything… H2Om is the world’s first “interactive natural spring water” and is infused with the power of positive energy through words, music, colors, symbols, and you. It’s only $34.95 a case. Your choice of: Perfect Health, Love, Prosperity, Gratitude, Will Power, Joy, or Peace. See here, via here

Again Liquid Gummy Bears

On my recent trip to Albuquerque, I had to find out, that the vitaminwater I recently wrote about, in fact is ubiquitous in supermarkets in New Mexico. Who would have thought? And I’ve noticed a lot of people actually drinking it. My only explanation is “good” marketing…

Water Bottles and Waste

The German magazine Der Spiegel has a feature on the waste produced by consuming water from water bottles instead from the tap. The article references the worldwatch institute, but on their webpage I could find only this, which is probably related. The point of the story is that worldwide sales of bottled water have doubled within only years. All these bottles have significant impact on the world’s waste situation.

Written by Claus

May 13th, 2007 at 4:45 am

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Still Water Problems in Europe

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The rivers Elbe and Donau in Germany still suffer extreme low water levels, and are partially closed for shipping — a situation unheard of in May.

Italy ended up declaring a state of emergency yesterday, after no rain had fallen since last week

Written by Claus

May 6th, 2007 at 8:29 am

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Beginning of the End of Bottled Water

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CNN reports on some “evidence” that some parts of society start to realize that bottled water is not the way to go.

Written by Claus

April 28th, 2007 at 4:27 pm

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Drought Earlier Than Usual in Southern Germany and Italy

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The month of April has been exceptionally warm, and there has been exceptionally little precipitation in Germany. The danger of forest fires is extremely high, barbecue stations in the forests around Stuttgart are being closed because the danger of accidentally starting a fire are too high. Generally, vegetation is about four weeks ahead of the average time for flowering. Personally, I was sleeping outside in a sleeping bag without using a tent in early April. I had never done this before. Die Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) has two articles relating to this topic in its issue from April 26th:

  • Italien ruft Wassernotstand aus“: Farmers in the valley of the river Po in northern Italy needed to start irrigating their fields in early April, about 4 weeks earlier than normal, leading to a water level in the river meters below the average. Additionally, water levels in Italy’s northern lakes (Lago di Garda, Lago di Como) are down as well. Decreased water levels in rivers are anticipated to decrease the output of power plants and hence power shortages are expected. The author expects that a state of emergency will be issued early next week if it doesn’t rain until then.
  • Die Angst vor der grossen Duerre“: This article paints a similar picture for southern Germany as for Italy: early beginning of irrigation, decreased yield of agricultural crops,

Written by Claus

April 28th, 2007 at 4:09 pm

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