In the wake of the 2011 drought, finding water is one of the most pressing issues that face West Texas cities. The city of San Angelo finds itself in the unique position of being a West Texas town with several lakes, but now only has 22 months' worth of water left. In an attempt to bring more water to the drought-stricken population, the city is constructing a $120 million pipeline to pump water 65 miles from the Hickory Aquifer -- widely known to have high levels of radium that makes the water radioactive. This report, and the two accompanying audio stories, examines the implications of the move, which San Angeloans hope will secure the city’s hydrological, economic, and political future. / text

Previous studies have suggested that advection from the Mexican Plateau (MP) may influence rainfall over Texas in spring and summer; generally air ascends over the cordillera and descends over the southern plains. The two mechanisms may link the northern Mexico drought to Texas drought. Observations and the Community Earth System Model are used in this study to describe the 2011 Texas-northern-Mexico drought and examine the role of the MP on the hydro-climate over the southern US, providing implications for the linkage between the MP and rainfall over Texas. A control run and three experimental runs were performed with prescribed sea surface temperatures and sea ice fractions. The results show that when the MP becomes dry, rainfall declines locally and downstream. During the spring, the dry air brought to Texas by prevailing westerly winds suppresses local convection; but dry air advection from the highlands has little influence on rainfall over Texas during the summer when Texas is no longer in the downstream areas. During the summer, a warmer MP draws moist air over the peripheral low elevation areas to the highlands; it bends the low-level jet towards the highlands and an anti-cyclonic flow anomaly forms over the southern US, which causes air to diverge and tends to reduce rainfall over the southern US. / text

In today's technological environment, there is constant competition for audience readership and viewership between various media outlets. News media provides a great deal of information to the general public through television, print, and web sources, especially in terms of agriculture. This study aimed to discover audience perceptions of two different natural disasters by examining the effects of photographic inclusion in print news articles including agricultural perceptions and content recall. Additionally, differences between self-perceived milk industry advocacy and a milk campaign story are also examined. Newspaper articles about the effects of the 2010-2011 drought in Texas and the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene were also used. Students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M University were surveyed in online pre and posttests. Student responses displayed a moderate relationship between photos and article content in regards to the Hurricane Irene article. A significant relationship was present between self-perceived non-advocates and their outlook on milk consumption and the dairy industry with the inclusion of photographs. There were differences seen between students who have family who work in agriculture, claim membership in an agriculture association, live on a farm or ranch, and were members of FFA as they viewed the drought article to be more positive than those who did not have these agricultural backgrounds. Furthermore, student responses show a relationship between the milk industry article in the pretest (photos included) and posttest (photos not included) by viewing the photos as positive, humorous, and shocking. This study found student perceptions of the two news articles related to the drought as well as the tropical storm to be the same regardless of photographic presence. This leads the researcher to conclude that photos had no effect on the overall perceptions of the news stories. However, students who received photographs did see a relationship between the photos associated with the flood article and the content presented in the story. This effect was not seen with the photographs of the drought story. Since the photos associated with the flood story were the original photos printed with the news story, it is probable to conclude that students properly associated photographic elements with that of the story's content.