Community avoids catastrophe thanks to innovative projects in the surrounding landscape: 'Can make an even greater difference'
Nonprofit Conserving Carolina has been remediating areas around waterways to build healthier floodplain ecosystems. This has included raising berms, creating pond off-shoots called sloughs, and planting native species. All of this work has provided an environment that can mitigate flooding before reaching people's homes downstream.
Three restoration projects along the French Broad River contained 1.25 billion gallons of water from Tropical Storm Helene, according to their designer Greg Jennings. Residents have been thankful for the work. "I feel like the hard work y'all did kept our house on Mud Creek Road from flooding worse," said local homeowner Lisa Moffit.
Even outside of a crisis situation, these habitat restorations are providing value. Floodplains are another filter, catching sediment that would otherwise go downstream. This improves water quality overall. Floodplains and wetlands are able to retain water when drought conditions are present, which is good news for local crops. The added geographic complexity also brings more wildlife to the areas. Workers have noted the quick return of some rare birds. That's a bonus for biodiversity and any sightseers.
We've seen small-scale wetland restoration on private property, but proper legislative protections like the BEACH Act are needed for more large-scale support. Conserving Carolina still sees plenty of work to do ahead.
"As we look ahead, the cumulative effect of more restoration projects like these can make an even greater difference," said David Lee, Conserving Carolina's Natural Resources Director, per BlueRidgeNow. "And we don't always have to do a full-scale restoration. We improve resilience every time we conserve the farmland and natural areas that already exist in the river corridor. Each conservation and restoration project contributes to a more resilient network of flood control that helps to safeguard both natural ecosystems and human communities."
What would you do if natural disasters were threatening your home?
Move somewhere else
Reinforce my home
Nothing
This is happening already
Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.
Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Yahoo
Sailor missing off Labrador coast rescued after cargo ship picked up his signal
ST. JOHN'S — A sailor who went missing off the southeast coast of Labrador is alive and well after a cargo ship picked up his alert. Martin Hurley with the maritime rescue sub-centre in St. John's says the man set out on a solo voyage to Greenland in a six-metre sailboat — called the Tonnerre — in early July from Blanc-Sablon, Que. Hurley says the man was keeping family and friends updated on social media, and someone called authorities on Sunday after his posts had stopped. Hurley says the sailor ran into stormy weather and five-metre-high waves, which likely damaged his vessel and its electronics. However, the man was able to send out a radio signal that was picked up Wednesday morning by the Lowlands Century bulk carrier ship. Hurley says a Cormorant helicopter hoisted the man out of his boat a few hours later, and he was safe and unharmed and taken back to shore. This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 24, 2025. The Canadian Press Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Atlantic
20 hours ago
- Atlantic
The Psychological Secret to Longevity
Your subjective sense of things going slowly, and then speeding up, is real. But you can also control it. Illustration by Jan Buchczik Want to stay current with Arthur's writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. W hen I was 9 years old , Thursday was my favorite day of the week, for one very special reason: I had my beloved weekly French-horn lesson. I remember thinking that Thursdays felt as though they came only about once a month. Some five decades later, Thursdays still have a special significance for me—as the day my Atlantic column comes out. But unlike the way I felt so many years ago, I now feel as though Thursdays occur about every three or four days. The weekly thing seems to come around much sooner than every week. What gives? This phenomenon of time seeming to speed up with age—or, for that matter, slow down under the influence of boredom or frustration—attracts a good deal of wonderment. The jarring juxtaposition of clock and calendar time with the subjective experience of time's passing can make life feel like a poorly dubbed movie. You may simply have assumed that your sense of time was unreliable, but the truth is more complicated—and interesting. An entire science and philosophy of perception explains this warping of time. Whether time speeds by or crawls along, a grasp of this concept can help you make the most of your life. Read: Being powerful distorts people's perception of time W e tend to think of time as a dimension of physics, but philosophers have much to say about its mysteries. A principal target of their skeptical scrutiny is whether time manifests objective linearity. The French philosopher Henri Bergson, for example, introduced the idea of time as a truly subjective unit of experience. A minute is not 60 ticks of a hand on the clock but rather a quantum of your individual existence. The size of that quantum depends on what you are doing: It is very small when you are sleeping; it is very large when you are waiting in line at Starbucks. We need artificial, objective measures of time—clocks and calendars—to manage many aspects of a functioning society, but clock time is no more 'real' than the map on your phone is the actual road you are driving on. Bergson's 19th-century compatriot Paul Janet argued that the size of a unit of time is primarily a function of age, because a person's perception of time depends on how much time they have themselves experienced. In other words, time truly does speed up as you get older. In 2017, a group of psychologists working from estimates that people gave of how they perceived the passage of time at different ages showed that most of us do experience this sense of acceleration. Many researchers believe that time perception shifts in a logarithmic way, and some social scientists have found evidence supporting this idea: In one 2009 experiment, study participants reported that the next three months seemed to them in that moment like three months, whereas when they were asked to contemplate a period of 36 months in the future, that felt like less than six months in today's terms. I have created my own equation that provides similar modeling of 'experienced life' (EL) at different ages. You need to specify your current age (a) and your expected age at death (n). Then the subjective years of life you have left is 1 minus EL multiplied by n. The numbers it generates are a bit discouraging, I'll admit. According to actuarial tables, given the good health I still enjoy at 61, I have even odds of making it to 95. That seems overly optimistic, given my family history, but I would certainly take an extra 34 years on the planet. Unfortunately, according to my formula inspired by our French philosopher friends, most of those 35 years are 'fake' because I have already experienced 91 percent of my life, which implies that I have only about eight subjective years left. If I live not to 95 but to 80, I have just five and a half years to go. No more waiting in the Starbucks line for me! (Or so you might think; more on this below.) Age is not the only reason that experienced time might be compressed. Another is your circadian rhythms. In 1972, a French explorer named Michel Siffre spent six months in an underground cave in Texas, living with a complete absence of natural light, clock, and calendar. Gradually, his 'days'—periods of being awake and asleep—began to stretch, sometimes to as long as 48 hours. When he emerged, he believed that he had been in the cave for only two or three months. If you struggle to get to sleep at night, your time perception might be a less extreme version of Siffre's. Researchers have found that some people have a natural circadian rhythm of more than 24 hours, meaning that days feel a bit too short and that these people are chronically not sleepy at night. If you lived in a cave, your life would have fewer days than those measured out in standard 24-hour chunks. Perception of time accelerates not just with age and circadian rhythms; it can also speed up—or slow down—depending on what you are experiencing at any given moment. This phenomenon is called tachypsychia. Neuroscientists have shown through experiments with mice that when levels of dopamine are elevated because of excitement and engagement, time passes more quickly in the brain; when dopamine is depressed because of boredom or anxiety, time goes by more slowly. In other words, time really does fly when you're having fun. An extreme form of tachypsychia involves time seeming to freeze—when a few moments seem like minutes or hours, and you remember them clearly for years afterward. This can be a positive experience, such as a 10-second roller-coaster ride, or negative, such as a car accident that your brain processes in ultra-slow motion. One hypothesis for this tachypsychic phenomenon is that during these extremely intense moments, you lay down memories very densely in the brain, which makes a moment's experience seem to endure an unusually long time. Read: Why a healthy person's perception of time is inaccurate A ll of the philosophy and research of experienced time yields this bitter irony: The more you enjoy yourself, especially in the second half of life, the faster time passes. So how can you alter this effect and live, subjectively speaking, longer? One answer is to spend more time tapping your foot impatiently in the Starbucks line, especially the older you get. Also, be sure to get into a lot of car accidents. ('Officer, I ran all those red lights because I am trying to live longer. I read it in The Atlantic.') If the boredom or trauma strategies don't suit you—and I don't recommend them—here are some better ways to get greater value from your scarce time. 1. Meaning is greater than fun. An important principle of time maximization is memory, as the accident example suggests: The denser your memories from an experience, the longer it seems to go on in the moment and the better you recall it later, in all its rich, imprinted detail. You don't have to leave this to chance—and especially not to an accident. Research suggests that your memory is enhanced by significant, emotionally evocative activities, which implies that a truly long life favors the pursuit of deep meaning over simple fun. I find this true when I recall a spiritual experience such as walking the Camino de Santiago with my wife in a way I can savor—whereas a beach vacation that lasted the same number of days on the calendar went by very pleasantly, but without leaving much trace of its significance. I think of one as lasting, in every sense; the other, as fleeting. 2. Savor the moments. Part of seeking meaning is to be strategic in your choice of activities and partners. But another part of the task requires you to be purposeful and present in your life. I have written before about the art of savoring life, which psychologists define as the 'capacity to attend to, appreciate, and enhance the positive experiences.' This means paying full attention to whatever you are doing now, instead of thinking about whatever might come next. To expand my perception of time while savoring, I try to include not just the positive experiences but also negative ones—rather than trying to eliminate them as quickly as possible. Although that practice can be hard at first, it ends up making me feel more fully alive. 3. Avoid routine. I have moved home a lot in my adult life—about 20 times in the past 40 years. (No, I am not in a witness-protection program.) I also travel almost every week. One reason for this is that I'm allergic to routine. Some people like a predictable commute to work and seeing the same people and things every day, but I am not one of them. This restless bias of mine does create some transaction costs, but the constant novelty has the benefit of giving me denser memories and thus the sensation of a longer life. Researchers have run experiments that show that when people pursue familiar activities, time goes by more quickly, whereas unfamiliar experiences slow time down. Routines put you on autopilot, and that makes savoring difficult and its rewards elusive. You might not want to go so far as to move house, which is certainly stressful, but you can do a lot to change up your environment, your daily habits, and the people you see. Arthur C. Brooks: How to be your best despite the passing years O ne more point in closing: The most important principle in managing your time well is not how much of it you have, or how long you can extend it, but how you use each moment of it. We tend to act as though our lives will go on forever, so we waste time on trivial activities (scrolling) or participate in unproductive ones (meetings). This is not a new problem. The Stoic philosophers of antiquity recognized it well, which is why they used the adage memento mori ('remember you will die') to guide their meditations. By focusing on nonbeing, they argued, you will appreciate being more fully. That consciousness, whether your life goes by quickly or slowly, will help you use your time well. On that note, I am pondering the fact that one Thursday will be my last column. But this is not it, which makes me happy. Arthur C. Brooks is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the host of the How to Build a Happy Life podcast. To receive his weekly column 'How to Build a Life' in your inbox, sign up here.
Miami Herald
a day ago
- Miami Herald
Killer Whales Attack Boat Again
Two French sailors were rescued off the coast of northern Spain after their boat was rammed by orcas. They were taken safely to shore by the Spanish coastguard after the killer whales attacked their boat's rudder around two miles from the town of Deba, near Bilbao, according to several local media reports. A pod of orcas made headlines in 2023 for their repeated attacks off the Strait of Gibraltar at Spain's southern tip. Rescuers have said orca attacks like this are uncommon in the Basque region, close to France, where they had never before been called to assist in such circumstances. This has sparked questions about whether this is a one-off or the start of more attacks. The recurrence of these encounters is raising questions about animal behavior, the risks for boaters, and the future of human-orca interactions in a rapidly changing sea environment. Newsweek has contacted the Spanish coastguard, via email, for comment. On July 21 two French sailors were rescued off the coast of Deba, in Spain's Basque Country after their 10-meter yacht lost steering following an encounter with two killer whales, said the sources, including Cadena SER. According to the Spanish maritime safety agency Salvamento Marítimo, the sailors issued a distress call when their rudder was broken, leaving them adrift, though they did not take on water. The rescue vessel Salvamar Orión towed them safely to the port of Getaria. Researchers and sailors have reported a pattern of orcas approaching from behind and targeting boat rudders. If the vessel is immobilized, the whales often lose interest. British wildlife conservation professor Volker Deecke warned British sailors to be cautious, especially in orca hotspots like the "orca alley" of the Strait of Gibraltar. "For some unknown reason, the killer whales have developed a penchant for breaking the rudders of sailboats and once they have achieved this, they leave the boat alone," he told The Telegraph. Orcas have been causing problems for years in the Strait of Gibraltar and around the Iberian coast, but these attacks have intensified and spread in recent years. Data shows the attacks peaking in 2022 and making headlines in 2023 but have been common since 2020. Captain Dan Kriz, who has been ambushed at least twice by the same pod of orcas, previously told Newsweek: "There is not much one can do. They are very powerful and smart … First time, we could hear them communicating under the boat. This time, they were quiet, and it didn't take them that long to destroy both rudders. Looks like they knew exactly what they are doing. They didn't touch anything else." Biologist Alfredo López Fernandez, from the University of Aveiro in Portugal and a representative of the Grupo de Trabajo Orca Atlántica (Atlantic Orca Working Group), previously told LiveScience: "The orcas are doing this on purpose, of course, we don't know the origin or the motivation, but defensive behavior based on trauma, as the origin of all this, gains more strength for us every day." Spanish authorities continue to monitor incidents, issue advisories during peak activity periods from May to August, and advocate boaters' compliance with best-practice guidelines to avoid escalating confrontations. Scientists remain divided on the causes behind this pattern, proposing theories from learned behavior due to trauma, playful social learning, or even practice for hunting. Both researchers and conservationists continue to emphasize the importance of protecting the endangered orca subpopulation while safeguarding sailors. Increased surveillance, further study, and public education campaigns are anticipated as both communities seek sustainable coexistence. Related Articles Viewers in Awe at What Man Spots on Relaxing Stroll Along Vancouver BayKiller Whales Caught Harvesting Organs From Largest Fish in the SeaOrca Matriarch Seen Throwing Dolphin Into Air During HuntOrca Ship Attacks Spark New Danger Map and Safety Guidelines 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
