A Doozy of a Drought & What You Can Do About It

It's been a doozy of a summer for California and many other places plagued with drought.

Even despite a record rainfall July 20th of this year, California is hurting.  Tends to work that way when you are 4 years into a drought. Especially when it's perhaps the worst one California has had to date. According to NASA, megadroughts such as these aren't going to go away.

Drought brings about a wealth of other secondary issues (many of which can create critical and emergency situations):

• increases in wildfires
• diminished agriculture yields (which effects national, state, local, & personal economics)
• increased food/water costs
• loss/destruction of animal habitat
• diminished water supplies for home/commercial use & drinkable water
• soil erosion &/or poor soil quality
• increased health issues due to poor air quality
• a rise in stress-related distress due to all of the above

The cause? If you ask me (and perhaps the vast majority of climate scientists out there), all fingers point to climate change. Yet, some states aren't even allowed to use those words.  But I digress....

So what do you do if this is where you call home?  Clearly, you conserve water! Additionally you make some different landscaping choices [called "greenscaping"] to remove the heavy need for your front lawn to gulp down massive amounts of water. Here are some effective & even some innovative ways to go about doing that.

• "How to Get Your Yard off Grass"    (by David Suzuki,  7/21/2015)
• "How to Conserve Water"    (by David Suzuki,  7/9/2015)
• "4 Tips for Watering Your Garden During the Drought"    (from Earth 911,  7/6/2015)
• 7 beautiful drought-friendly lawn alternatives    (from Inhabit.com,by Emily Peckenham,   5/26/2015)
• 43 Ways to Save Water During the Drought -- While Still Keeping the Lawn    (From the LA Times, by Rene Lynch,   6/13/2015)
• Here's perhaps the most unique:  Lawn Painting:

What do you do to conserve water where you live?

Images from http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/14/us/nasa-study-western-megadrought/ and http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/07/20/all-that-record-breaking-rain-in-california-still-isnt-enough-to-dent-the-drought/; video from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6lTl9JIW5Y