FEATURES

22 Down with the Dams: Unchaining U.S. Rivers
As dam permits expire and environmental considerations grow stronger, some operators are choosing to tear down the dams. Oregon’s Marmot Dam serves as an experiment, showing what can happen when a large dam is removed from a river.
Jim O’Connor, Jon Major and Gordon Grant

29 The Impending Coastal Crisis
By 2050, more than half of the U.S. population will live within a day’s drive of a coastline or lakeshore. But with sea-level rise and increasing storm intensity and frequency, is that development such a good idea?
Nicholas K. Coch

34 Salinity in the Landscape: A Growing Problem in Australia
In Australia and many other arid climates around the world, salinity is a growing problem. Whether brought about by groundwater, irrigation, land-use practices or encroaching seawater, researchers are working to help combat the problem before it's too late and farmland — and food sources — are lost.
Pichu Rengasamy

NEWS

7 News Shorts
8 The answer is blowing in the wind
8 Switching to switchgrass
10 A fleshy fossil find
11 Afghanistan’s untapped wealth
12 Algae eat up mercury in Chinese lake
12 Battle over bones in China
13 Quake shakes lake
13 Pangea stayed put
14 Dust in the wind
15 A break between plate breakups?
16 Impact = heat?
17 Dunes: They’re electric
17 Sierra Leone wants more from mining
18 Ice where no ice should be
19 Plumbing the deep
20 Mineral resource of the month: vermiculite

VIEWS

58 A POLITICAL COMMENT ON...
Oil: Is Now the Time to Fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
Economics adds perspective to the discussion about whether President Bush’s plan to double the capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a good idea when oil prices are this high.
Benjamin A. Eisterhold and Michael E. Webber

59 A COMMENT ON...
Mining: A New Challenge for the Philippines
The Philippines holds some $90 million worth of minerals just waiting to be developed. However, a lot of issues remain before such development can occur.
CP David

60 GEOLOGIC COLUMN
Trash Talking
Several new books have the author thinking about trash — how much we produce and just where it all goes.
Fred Schwab

DEPARTMENTS

4 FROM THE EDITOR
5 LETTERS: Perspectives from readers
6 WHERE ON EARTH?

40 TRENDS & INNOVATIONS
Fantastic Fossilized Finds Fill Farmhouse
An amateur paleontologist has amassed such a collection of important dinosaur footprints in his Maryland farmhouse that his floorboards are caving in.
Mary Caperton Morton

42 EDUCATION & OUTREACH
Bringing the Mars Science Laboratory into the Classroom
A teacher has her students research and plan where NASA should land its next Mars rover. They picked the right sites before: Can they do it again?
Nicole Branan

44 GEOMEDIA
Exploration: A Longer Walk in the Woods
Books: Q&A with Sidney Perkowitz, author of Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World
Books: The Evolving Presentation of Evolution: Science, Evolution and Creationism

48 GEOMARKETPLACE
50 CLASSIFIEDS: Career opportunities

56 BENCHMARKS
March 1, 1872: Yellowstone National Park Established

57 DOWN TO EARTH WITH...
Documentary filmmaker, author, population geneticist Spencer Wells

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