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Photograph courtesy Russell Watkins, U.K. Department for International Development
Trees shrouded in ghostly cocoons line the edges of a submerged farm field in the Pakistani village of Sindh, where 2010’s massive floods drove millions of spiders an possibly other insects into the trees to spin their webs.
Beginning last July, unprecedented monsoons dropped nearly ten years’ worth of rainfall on Pakistan in one week, swelling the country’s rivers. The water was slow to recede, creating vast pools of stagnant water across the countryside. (See pictures of the Pakistan flood.)
“It was a very slow-motion kind of disaster,” said Russell Watkins, a multimedia editor with the U.K.’s Department for International Development (DFID), the organization tasked with managing Britain’s overseas aid programs.
According to Watkins, who photographed the trees during a trip to Pakistan last December, people in Sindh said they’d never seen this phenomenon before the flooding.
(See pictures: “World’s Biggest, Strongest Spider Webs Found.”)
As for what exactly had spun the webs, Watkins said: “There wasn’t a scientific analysis of this being done. Anecdotally, I think it was pretty much any kind arachnid species, possibly combined with other insects.
“It was largely spiders,” he added. “Certainly, when we were there working, if you stood under one of these trees, dozens of small, very, very tiny spiders would just be dropping down onto your head.”
Editor’s note: Corrected November 30, 2011, after it came to our attention that it’s not certain that all the silk pictured was spun by spiders.
—Ker Than
Updated November 30, 2011

(via Pictures: Trees Cocooned in Webs After Flood)

Photograph courtesy Russell Watkins, U.K. Department for International Development

Trees shrouded in ghostly cocoons line the edges of a submerged farm field in the Pakistani village of Sindh, where 2010’s massive floods drove millions of spiders an possibly other insects into the trees to spin their webs.

Beginning last July, unprecedented monsoons dropped nearly ten years’ worth of rainfall on Pakistan in one week, swelling the country’s rivers. The water was slow to recede, creating vast pools of stagnant water across the countryside. (See pictures of the Pakistan flood.)

“It was a very slow-motion kind of disaster,” said Russell Watkins, a multimedia editor with the U.K.’s Department for International Development (DFID), the organization tasked with managing Britain’s overseas aid programs.

According to Watkins, who photographed the trees during a trip to Pakistan last December, people in Sindh said they’d never seen this phenomenon before the flooding.

(See pictures: “World’s Biggest, Strongest Spider Webs Found.”)

As for what exactly had spun the webs, Watkins said: “There wasn’t a scientific analysis of this being done. Anecdotally, I think it was pretty much any kind arachnid species, possibly combined with other insects.

“It was largely spiders,” he added. “Certainly, when we were there working, if you stood under one of these trees, dozens of small, very, very tiny spiders would just be dropping down onto your head.”

Editor’s note: Corrected November 30, 2011, after it came to our attention that it’s not certain that all the silk pictured was spun by spiders.

—Ker Than

Updated November 30, 2011

(via Pictures: Trees Cocooned in Webs After Flood)

Flood berm bursts at Nebraska nuclear plant - CNN.com »

Remember, “we all live downstream.”

By the CNN Wire StaffJune 26, 2011 10:36 p.m. EDT
(CNN) — A water-filled berm protecting a nuclear power plant in Nebraska from rising floodwaters collapsed Sunday, according to a spokesman, who said the plant remains secure.
Some sort of machinery came in contact with the berm, puncturing it and causing the berm to deflate, said Mike Jones, a spokesman for the Omaha Public Power District (OPPD), which owns the Fort Calhoun plant.
The plant, located about 20 miles north of Omaha, has been shut since April for refueling.
“The plant is still protected. This was an additional, a secondary, level of protection that we had put up,” Jones said. “The plant remains protected to the level it would have been if the aqua berm had not been added.”
Parts of the grounds are already under water as the swollen Missouri River overflows its banks, including areas around some auxiliary buildings, Jones said.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is under threat after massive flooding has poured debris, sediment and pesticides into the ocean. Researcher Michelle Devlin said, “This is a really massive event. It has the potential to shift the food web, it has the potential to shift how the reef operates.” The floods have cut off access to 22 towns and forced Australia to close 75 percent of its coal mines.

“

—	Democracy Now! \| Headlines for January 05, 2011

Flooding and Cholera in Haiti Barely Registers in U.S. Media »

icancstructures:

Last weekend’s passage of Hurricane Tomas, left Port-au-Prince relatively unscathed and despite the continuing deadly outbreak of cholera that has reached the capital, stories about the double…

When I taught Globalization for a first-year seminar at Endicott College, I had my students compare LinkTV’s Mosaic with a half-hour of network national news. When I was watching Mosaic regularly, I became a fan of the Mosaic Intelligence Report, a shorter occasional summary and commentary on similar subjects.

Ban Ki-Moon’s depiction of the Pakistan flooding as “a slow-motion tsunami” is apt, capturing both the scale of the disaster and the relative absence of global response.

Mosaic Intelligence Report: August 20, 2010

Pakistan’s flood crisis may require the largest aid effort in modern history. Yet, flood aid has been too slow and too little. Is donor fatigue to blame? And, will governments answer the plea?

Read More on the Mosaic Blog

Learn how you can help

These folks are only in the middle of monsoon season, and this is likely to continue to hamper relief efforts.

doctorswithoutborders:

A man transports his furniture in the flooded street in Nowshera. In Noshwera, the MSF team had to postpone a distribution of basic relief items to around 4,500 families as the place identified had been flooded. Unfortunately, because of heavy rains in the last couple of days, they desperately needed delivery of items such as soap, buckets, toothpaste and cooking utensils.

Pakistan 2010 © Jean-Marc Jacobs