Blog Action Day: Is there enough water for both tomatoes and fish?

“The question becomes can you have fish and tomatoes on the same table?” asked John Sabo, an Arizona State University associate professor and the lead author of a study released today that finds that climate change and growing human demands for water are shortening food chains and eliminating some top predators like large-bodied fish . “Our results suggest that drying a river to provide water for agriculture and other uses may reduce the production of river-caught fish, a particularly important source of protein in the developing world.” [right, the Colorado River runs dry on the U.S./Mexico border 2 miles below the Morelos Dam. Credit, Pete McBride, USGS]

[over 5400 bloggers are talking about Water today as the 2010 Blog Action Day topic]

The Role of Discharge Variation in Scaling of Drainage Area and Food Chain Length in Rivers
John L. Sabo, Jacques. C. Finlay, Theodore Kennedy, David M. Post, Published Online October 14, 2010, Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1196005

[taken from the USGS news release]