Earthweek : A Diary of the Planet (March 1, 2013)

United Meteor Defense
A Russian official isproposing a unified international monitoring system to prevent Earth from being struck by a catastrophic blast from space.  Following the destructive meteor breakup over southern Russia on Feb. 15.  Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev assigned a deputy, Dmitry Rogozin, to find ways to prevent far worse disasters.  Rogozin had proposed in 2011 an "international initiative" to prevent such threats by harnessing the "intellectual and technological efforts of industrial nations."  Anti-missle and aerospace defense technologies in use today are mostly ground-based and designed to detect incoming objects launched from the ground, rather than those coming from space, Rogozin said.  He proposes a network structured under the umbrella of the United Nations to detect and deflect meteors or asteroids before they reach the planet.
Tropical Cyclones
At least 23 people were killed and thousands of others were made homeless when powerful Cyclone Haruna slammed into a remote stretch of Madagascar's southwestern coast on Feb. 22.
* Category 2 Cyclone Rusty roared into a remote stretch of northwestern Australia, vering eastward just before making landfall and sparing Port Hedland.
Earthquakes
Residents of East Timor ran into the streets in panic as a 5.7 magnitude temblor struck the tiny country from an epicenter just offshore and beneath the Timor Sea.
* Earth movements were also felt in Vanuatu, Hong Kong and adjacent Guangdong province, central Japan, northern India, Haiti and Arkansas.
Water Improvidence
Groundwater beneath the cradle of civilization is being pumped out much faster than it is being replenished, according to new satellite measurements.  The trend could eventually lead to even more tensions in a region that is already home to some of the most bitter and protracted conflicts in the world.  A study of space-based observations finds that the freshwater reserves in the Tigris and Euphrates river basinss in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran are being depleted faster than anywhere else on Earth, other than in India.  /Agriculture in the alluvial plain near the mouths of those two rivers has sustained cultures such as that of Sumeria and cities like Babylon since the dawn of recorded history.  Using information collected by NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, researchers were able to estimate the overall groundwater depletion.  They say between 2003 and 2010, there was a net loss of 35 cubic miles of water.  The scientists from NOAA, NASA and the University of California, Irvine say that is roughly equivalent to all the water in the Dead Sea simply disappearing.
Peruvian Rumblings
Residents around southern Peru's rumbling Sabancaya volcano evacuated due to tremors from the mountain that damaged some of their homes.  National defense officials say about 80 homes sustained damage from the strongest of more than 500 tremors that jolted the area on Feb. 22 and 23.  The 20,000-foot volcano has been spewing intermittent smoke trails since Jan. 15.  Sabancaya, which means "tongue of fire" in the native Quechua language, was dormant for 200 years before roaring back to life in the 1980s and 1990s.  It has produced only small eruptions since that time.
Missing Monarchs
New Zealand's gardeners and wildlife experts wonder where the country's iconic monarch butterflies have gone this summer.  They have failed to return after a cold and tough winter dampened their breeding grounds on the South Island.  "We've heard from many monarch lovers in Canterbury and Otago that the monarchs haven't returned this summer...... and it's something that's got us baffled," says Jacqui Knight, secretary of the Monarch Butterfly NZ.  Trust.  While related to their North American counterparts, New Zealand monarchs don't migrate vast distances.  They adapt to local conditions, often winteering along the coast where temperaturesseldom fall below 50 degress.
Mouse Paratroopers
In shat is likely to be remembered as one of the strangest pest control policies ever pursued, the U.S. territory of Guam has decided to combat the island's ongoing snake infestation by parachuting painkiller-laced dead baby mice into the jungle canopy.  For over 60 years, officials have been waging war against the brown tree snake, an invasive species that has killed off much of Guam's native bird population, and which some experts fear may spread to Hawaii.  If all goes according to plan, infant mice corpes, wearing small parachutes and laced with the pain reliever acetaminophen, will be flung from helicopters flying over the jungle.  Acetaminophen is deadly to snakes.  Officials hope that the rodent paratroopers will then become entangled in the foilage where the overpopulated reptiles will find and devour them.  The airdrop is slated to begin in April or May.