How a drought led to the rise of skateboarding in 1970s California
12 December 2023Why did professional skateboarding arise in southern California in the 1970s? Was it a coincidence, or was it a perfect storm of multiple factors?
Drought encouraged Attila’s Huns to attack the Roman empire, tree rings suggest
15 December 2022Hunnic peoples migrated westward across Eurasia, switched between farming and herding, and became violent raiders in response to severe drought in the Danube frontier provinces of the Roman empire, a new study argues.
Cambridge experts on UK drought and climate change
16 August 2022From pollinators to profits, food to fires, here's what Cambridge experts say about the impacts of water scarcity – and what it signals about our changing climate.
European summer droughts since 2015 unprecedented in past two millennia
15 March 2021Recent summer droughts in Europe are far more severe than anything in the past 2,100 years, according to a new study.
Scientists measure severity of drought during the Maya collapse
02 August 2018The severity of drought conditions during the demise of the Maya civilisation about 1,000 years ago has been quantified, representing another piece of evidence that could be used to solve the longstanding mystery of what caused the downfall of one of the ancient world’s great civilisations.
Opinion: Droughts and floods: India’s water crises demand more than grand projects
06 June 2016Bhaskar Vira (Department of Geography and University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute) discusses ways of dealing with the crisis affecting India’s water resources.
Opinion: Paying people to stay away is not always the best way to protect watersheds
24 December 2015Libby Blanchard and Bhaskar Vira from Cambridge's Department of Geography argue that we need to consider alternative approaches in order to protect watersheds.
Alternative ways of protecting urban water supplies must be considered in light of worsening droughts in the US, study claims
04 December 2015Alternative models of watershed protection that balance recreational use and land conservation must no longer be ignored to preserve water supplies against the effects of climate change, argues a new study. Researchers claim that the management of Salt Lake City’s Wasatch watershed in Utah provides a valuable example contradicting the dominant view presented in academic literature that informs many current conservation strategies.
Chinese cave ‘graffiti’ tells a 500-year story of climate change and impact on society
13 August 2015Unique inscriptions found in a cave in China, combined with chemical analysis of cave formations, show how droughts affected the local population over the past five centuries, and underline the importance of implementing strategies to deal with climate change in the coming years.
Decline of Bronze Age ‘megacities’ linked to climate change
27 February 2014Climate change may have contributed to the decline of a city-dwelling civilisation in Pakistan and India 4,100 years ago, according to new research.
