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Here in California we have had a really bad outbreak of West Nile Virus. It's been in record numbers, and I'm pretty sure it's because of the terrible drought we've been having. The abundance of stagnant water is making mosquitoes more likely to lay eggs in it, and then birds drink it. We've had 801 deaths so far, and 60% of dead birds (that's a lot of dead birds) are infected. If it weren't for the drought there is no doubt this wouldn't happen.
I find it interesting how much is caused by the drought in ways that you wouldn't think about immediately. Problems like this make me wonder how useful desalinization would actually be because it would likely not help to solve problems like this one.
ReplyDeleteLike Jacob, I think it is interesting that the drought in California indirectly causes other things to happen in the environment such as the West Nile Virus. It is shocking that 31 people died from this disease last year. The good news is that fixing the drought problem can also potentially fix this one. I wonder how many other problems in California are related to the drought.
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