Water-conservation PSAs do a drip-drip-drip on Internet as drought recovery slowly begins

This summer's massive drought has infiltrated the national consciousness and now resonates within our video culture. YouTube has become inundated with public-service announcements about water conservation, Felicity Barringer of The New York Times reports. Making a video seems to be "the school project du jour," she writes, but others stand out.

"Often, contributions to the art form show someone cavalierly overusing water in the sink or shower and are supplemented by statistics about the amount of water wasted every year. One variant features water wardens — like the 'Saturday Night Live' comedians Horatio Sanz and Rachel Dratch — dropping in on the bathrooms and kitchens of unsuspecting water spendthrifts," Barringer reports. There is one featuring toddlers from France, and another from Malaysia. Some use music; "Sesame Street" characters assist on others.

This following comes from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro:



Here's another from Kennesaw State University in Georgia:

Student photo essay has 'poignant illustrations' of resource extraction, development in West

SAGE Magazine, a student-run environmental magazine at Yale Forestry School, recently ran a collection of photographs that amount to photo essay of the West, and High Country News has featured some of those photographs on its website. The photos were submitted by students and people living in the region, and "include beautiful wildlife photography and poignant illustrations of humans' relationship to the natural world," HCN says.

The photographs highlight issues surrounding natural gas extraction, climate change, wildfires, urban development and Superfund sites, and their impact on the vast rural landscapes of the American West. The above picture shows a helicopter battling a forest fire in Yellowstone National Park, which scientists think are increasing in frequency thanks to climate change. (Photo by Benjamin Goldfarb)