Earth Science 110 - Leslie Galarza

The speaker chose to discuss the history of Southern California rivers, particularly the Los Angeles River. They mentioned that the river was once natural but is now channelized with concrete. Only 10% of the river's water is used due to residential issues. The main problem is that 80% of rainfall is dumped into the ocean because there is no way to collect and reuse it. This, along with leaks and evaporation, has caused a shortage of water. The increasing population has further stressed the water supply. The topic is connected to climate change and the water cycle. Hello everyone. For my end of the year product topic, I decided to go with the history of the Southern California Rivers. The major rivers throughout Southern California are the Santa Clara River, the Los Angeles River, the San Diego River, the Santa Ana River, and the San Diego River. Where the Colorado River is the main source of income for these rivers. The river I will mostly speak about today is the L.A. River. The Los Angeles River runs approximately 51 miles through urban Los Angeles and sable neighborhood cities to the harbor and Pacific Ocean. The first 32 miles of the river follow through the city of Los Angeles. It was once a natural river that changed its course and flooded the area several times. Nature led to its concrete channelization beginning in 1993 and completed in 1996. 2024 is the city of Los Angeles. With residential issues, the river only provides 10% of water. So the big question here is why are we running out? Well, to start, many residents do not know that 80% of the rainfall gets dumped back into the ocean because there is no significant way to collect and reuse it. The problem with rainfall dumping is a realization of having to capture the rainfall. The water leaks and the evaporation in the water system are running incredibly low as of today. With the increase of the population, the city has now stressed the water supply even more. So what can we do to help? There are many things we can start doing to help, but yet we have not realized how to bring that in as a whole. With this topic, it is connected in our class because of climate change as we learned previously as well as the water cycle in our lecture notes.