Deepest aqueduct in South America growing crops in the desert

Two thousand meters under the Andean range, South America's deepest aqueduct carries water that will grow thousands of hectares of fruit and vegetables in one of Peru's most desertic and underdeveloped regions.

This new development project is set to grow exponentially as its first crops are exported to North America and Europe.

The aqueduct, one of the largest engineering works ever undertaken in Peru, travels 20 kilometers (12 miles) under the Andean mountains, diverting the waters of the Huancabamba river towards Peru's northern coast to irrigate 43,500 hectares of crops planted in the desert, as EFE witnessed during a field visit.

The Olmos irrigation project is located 900 km (560 mi) to the north of Lima and required a $600 million budget, the investment director of the project's concessionary company H20lmos Odebrecht Latinvest, Alfonso Pinillos, explained to EFE.

The tunnel, conceived some 90 years ago by British engineer Charles Sutton, was completed in 2012 to alleviate the hydric resources deficit in the Olmos dry valleys in the Lambayeque region, which sees an average annual rainfall of under 25 liters per square meter.

Pinillos explained that the tunnel perforation, with a 4.8-meter diameter borehole and a capacity of 42 cubic meters per second (1,483 cu.ft/s), was developed using a custom-made tunneler and assembled piece-by-piece inside the tunnel.

No women were involved in the boring phase as a sign of "respect" to an old Andean mining tradition so the Pachamama ("Mother Nature" in the Quechua language) "doesn't get jealous." Its progress had to deal with unexpected rock collapses that delayed work and increased costs.

Once completed, the water will flow from the Limon dam, a wall 330 m (1,082 ft) long and 43 m (141 ft) high built across the Huancabamba river to dam 30 million m3; the starting point of a 65-km (40-mi) route that will carry water to the crops.

After covering 20 km underground, the tunnel becomes a waterfall into the Lajas river, 30 km (18.6 mi) later it is collected by irrigation channels leading to another dam that then proceeds to distribute the water to the fields.

Lands once arid now boast 12,000 Ha of produce: Sugar cane, grapes, avocados, mangoes, asparagus and even cranberries, and now employs 4,000 workers, according to Odebrecht's irrigation concession development manager, Juan Carlos Urteaga.

Urteaga estimated the project will generate 30,000 direct and 100,000 indirect jobs once its 43,500 Ha are fully operational. This will also require building a nearby new city for 70,000 people.

The project covers 5,500 Ha of Valle Viejo de Olmos' farmlands and 38,000 Ha purchased by Peruvian, Chilean, US and European corporations with an estimated production of around $650 million.

Within the first group, a farming co-op (Asociación Agropecuaria La Juliana) told EFE they plan to ship their first 32.4-ton banana crop container to Holland, which is worth around $9,000.

Among the project's corporate partners, the Peruvian group Gloria has built a $300 million sugar refinery plant and Agro-Frusan, a US-Chilean joint-venture producing 2.5 tons (5,512 lbs) of cranberries daily for export to US and Canada.

This project will achieve full speed once the project's second phase is completed, increasing by four the Limon dam's capacity and doubling the irrigated surface to nearly 100,000 Ha.

Source: EFE

Nemo sequel to raise awareness about saving Great Barrier Reef

With the release of the animated film 'Finding Dory', actress and comedian Ellen DeGeneres, together with environmental groups, joined a campaign to save exotic marine animals and the Australian Great Barrier Reef.

DeGeneres, who gives voice to the forgetful blue tang fish Dory in this sequel to 'Finding Nemo' appears in a video to raise awareness about the Great Barrier Reef, which stretches along 2,300 kilometres (1,429 miles) off the northeastern coast of Australia.

Source: EFE

El Chichon eruption implicated in Mayan upheaval

A Dutch team has investigated ash fall deposits, finding the age of the materials to be a good match for the so-called Mayan "hiatus".

This was a time when the sophisticated central Americans experienced cultural upheaval and political instability.

They also abandoned many of their favoured lowland sites.

A sulphur spike in ice core records from the poles indicates there was a big eruption somewhere on Earth in AD 540 - right at the start of the multi-decade hiatus.

It must have been a major event to have left such a distinctive signature in the frozen layers, and very likely led to global climate impacts and severe environmental degradation in the region of the blast.
Previous research has offered up Ilopango in El Salvador as the culprit.

Radiocarbon dating of tree remains puts this volcano in the vicinity timewise - but not convincingly so, argues Kees Nooren from Utrecht University.

Instead, he is pointing the finger at El Chichon in southern Mexico, a case he has outlined here at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly.

His research centres on ash fall dispersed across what were the Mayan lowlands.

This tephra can be connected chemically to the 1,200m-high volcano. Samples have been collected from Lake Tuspan and the Usumacinta-Grijavala delta on the Mexican coast.

Using multiple techniques, not just radiocarbon, Mr Nooren tightly packs the ages of the ash fall around AD 540.

"We already had dates from proximal deposits near the volcano and now we have dates for distal deposits, and when you combine them you get a date of AD 546, plus or minus 16," he explained.
"So, we have a very narrow window, which means it is very likely there was a large eruption in 540."

El Chichon last let go in spectacular style in 1982, destroying local communities and killing 2,000 people.

It spewed vast quantities of sulphur dioxide and other particulates into the atmosphere.

The AD 540 eruption would have been much bigger, the Utrecht researcher said.

Whether El Chichon really is the source of the sulphur seen in the ice cores would require a chemical analysis that has yet to be done, commented Matthew Toohey from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany.

The best one can say at the moment is that the event was probably located in the tropics, he told BBC News.

Dr Toohey says there are actually two closely spaced signatures in the ice record, with the second occurring in AD 536. This event could be an eruption somewhere in North America, perhaps Alaska.

His interest is trying to model the climate disruption that stems from volcano blasts.

When he does this for the "double event" of AD 536 and 540, his simulations come out in good agreement with historical archives.

Tree ring data in northern Europe from this time indicates there was very strong cooling - something you might expect if large volumes of sulphate aerosols were dispersed across the globe.

Archaeological evidence and other information also speak to societal disruption, such as a run of poor harvests and outbreaks of plague.

Dr Toohey said his simulations suggested there was a reduction in average summer temperatures across Northern Europe of two degrees.

"We estimate that if you take these two eruptions together and look at their impact over a 10-year period, focusing on the Northern Hemisphere - then this double event would have been clearly the strongest volcanic forcer of climate of at least the last 1,200 years, probably more like 2,000 years."

Source: BBC

'Monster cattle-eating alligator' is shot in Florida

Professional hunter Lee Lightsey said the 15 ft (4.5m) beast was one of the biggest he had come across in 18 years and required a tractor to move it.

Mr Lightsey and hunting guide Blake Godwin discovered the alligator in cattle ponds while supervising a guided hunt on Saturday.

When the creature surfaced about 20ft (6m) away from them, they shot it.

"Although this animal is huge I was not that surprised it existed," Mr Lightsey said. "We have come across lots over the last 20 years that have been only a little smaller.

"But what really drew our attention to this animal was the fact that it seems to have been feasting on the cattle on my farm, because mutilated body parts were found in the water. It was a monster which needed to be removed."

Mr Lightsey's company arranges hunts for alligators, wild boar and turkey on the farm he owns for hunting trips.
The largest alligator previously killed was just over 13ft (4m) long.

He charges $10,000 (£7,060; €8,780) to kill an alligator larger than 13ft (4m) and $4,500 (£3,180; €3,955) to kill an alligator between 10ft and 12ft. The animals are mostly killed with a high-powered rifle.

"But always we kill them with the minimum of suffering without allowing them to be injured before they die," he said.

There are hundreds of alligators for hunters between 10ft and 13ft, he says, while animals longer than 13ft are only encountered about once a year.

Mr Lightsey has been commercially hunting alligators since he began "harvesting" them in 1988 and more than 5,000 alligators bigger than 1.5m have been killed since then.

American alligators inhabit the south-east of the US with Florida and Louisiana each reported to have a population of more than one million alligators each.

Southern Florida is reputed to be the only place in the world where both alligators and crocodiles live alongside each other in freshwater environments such as rivers, lakes and swamps.

Mr Lightsey says he plans to get the alligator stuffed while the meat will be donated to charity.

Source: BBC