1) The Wall Street Journal on Stop the Beach Renourishment Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court last December. “Erosion threatens nearly 59% of Florida's 825 miles of sandy beaches, according to the state's Department of Environmental Protection. Under a 1961 law, the state dredges sand from one area and dumps it on another, expanding the width of a threatened beach. Six property owners in Walton County, banding together as Stop the Beach Renourishment Inc., argue that they should own the new beach and visitors shouldn't be allowed to spread their towels on it. The owners say their deeds entitle them to all land up to the mean high water line, including the additional 80 to 100 feet of beach the state added.” More on the SCOTUSblog.
2) 3quarksdaily on Tings Dey Happen, a one-man play by Dan Hoyle set in the sublime petroscape of Nigeria.
3) InfraNet Lab on the Thermarium. “The Thermarium envisions a new beach typology for the Toronto Waterfront. Responding to the lack of swimming at Toronto’s new urban beaches and consistent CSO (combined sewage overflow) closures at surrounding swim areas, the Thermarium offers new possibilities for water immersion and activity that are enabled, rather than prohibited, by the polluted run-off instigated by heavy rainstorms.”
4) Metropolis POV on protecting the Netherlands from sea level rise via soft coastal engineering.
5) A seven-story aquarium on Times Square. “Jerry Shefsky, a Toronto-based developer, said on Wednesday that he has signed a preliminary agreement with the landlord of an office tower on the western edge of Times Square to go forward with the $100 million project. He would install tanks featuring sharks, rays, penguins, otters, and other animals in the bottom floors of the 40-story building, known as 11 Times Square, hoping to attract some of the 35 million people who pass through Manhattan's major crossroads every year.”
6) The New York Times on military training sites as wildlife preserves.
7) Miller-McCune has an ongoing series on wildfires. “The war being waged against wildfires from Southern California to Greece and Australia is almost as complex as the infernos themselves. Innovative computer mapping tools advance, as do airborne imaging techniques that can look straight through black smoke for views of emerging dangers no firefighter ever sees. However, some crews battle blazes on bulldozers older than they are, and funding is tight all around. Still, the breakthroughs keep coming.” One article looks at state of the art remote sensing technologies while another looks at computer modeling to understand and hopefully predict the behavior of wildfires. A third looks at lo-tech strategies in places with modest budget.
8) The Wall Street Journal on the politics of the Asian carp.
9) The Los Angeles Times on the complicity of turfgrass in global warming, pollution and the water crisis. “For the first time, scientists compared the amount of greenhouse gases absorbed by ornamental turfgrass to the amount emitted in the irrigation, fertilizing and mowing of the same plots. In four parks near Irvine, they calculated that emissions were similar to or greater than the amount of carbon dioxide removed from the air through photosynthesis.”
10) Yahoo! Sports on the looming Peak Curling Stone crisis. Will curlers turn a Scottish island into the next Nauru?