In a study funded by the U.S. EPA and administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, biologists at Virginia Commonwealth University measured the nutrient removal capacity of the Eastern oyster.
In a collaborative study the USDA-ARS Water Management Research Unit and Colorado State University, soil samples were analyzed to determine the extent of atrzine degradation in northeastern Colorado.
An international research team working with NIST scientists has suggested for the first time that mercury cycling in the flora and fauna of the Arctic may be linked to the amount of ice cover present.
Encroaching woody plants such as the eastern redcedar are affecting many privately owned grasslands in the Midwestern United States. The attitudes and behaviors of private landowners to redcedar expansion are essential to preserving the remaining tallgrass prairie. Landowners must join forces to identify management strategies that will minimize this threat to grassland ecosystems. However, the owners’ attitudes toward taking steps to manage the restoration of the grasslands may affect efforts to preserve the prairie.
A new Australian company has been established to produce commercial quantities of clean, "green" fuels from algae.
The year 2010 finished in a photo finish with 1998 for the warmest year in the 32-year satellite temperature record. 2010 was only 0.013 C cooler than 1998, an amount that is not statistically significant.
An international team of lung experts has new evidence from a study in shantytowns near Lima, Peru, that teens living immediately next to a busy roadway have increased risk of allergies and asthma. The odds can go up by 30 percent for developing allergies to dust mites, pet hairs and mold, and can double for having actual asthma symptoms, such as wheezing and using medications to help them breathe.
Canada's national parks have seen many changes in the 100 years they have been around. Our national parks and Canadians' connections to them have helped shaped Canada's national identity.
The magnitude of climate change during Earth’s deep past suggests that future temperatures may eventually rise far more than projected if society continues its pace of emitting greenhouse gases, a new analysis concludes. Building on recent research, the study examines the relationship between global temperatures and high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere tens of millions of years ago.
Nature has a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde relationship with mercury, but researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have made a discovery that ultimately could help explain the split personality.
New results from a Baylor University study show that different behaviors and strategies lead some families to cope better and emerge stronger after a weather-related event.
A straightforward new way to calculate, compile, and graphically present solar radiation measurements in a format that is accessible to decision makers and the general public has been developed by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and is described in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy.
In the vast ocean where an essential nutrient—iron—is scarce, a marine bacterium that launches the ocean food web survives by using a remarkable biochemical trick: It recycles iron.
They share a first name and a passion for oceanography, but beginning in late January, professors Deborah Bronk and Deborah Steinberg of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science will be polar opposites—literally. Bronk is scheduled to arrive in Barrow Alaska on January 25th to lead a team studying the Arctic coastal ecosystem. Steinberg will be leading her own team into their fourth week of shipboard research in the waters off the Antarctic Peninsula.
A new mobile application provides users with simplified access to vast libraries of images and information that up until now were tapped mainly by earth and environmental scientists. The EarthObserver App, for the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, displays natural features and forces on land, undersea and in the air. Created at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, it works on an intuitive level with touches of the fingers, drawing on dozens of frequently updated databases from institutions throughout the world.
Inexpensive igloo-shaped, pollution-eating devices nicknamed “Poo-Gloos” can clean up sewage just as effectively as multimillion-dollar treatment facilities for towns outgrowing their waste-treatment lagoons, according to a new study.
Alexander Graham Bell once said that when one door closes another one opens, and the open doors of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Data Library and Archives are making it possible to help preserve the voluminous archives of GLOBEC, a study of Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics, which closed at the end of 2009.
Maryland’s smart growth program made barely discernible progress in the past decade concludes a new report from the University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth. "The state made a significant effort to encourage development in designated areas, but the smart growth tools in place are apparently inadequate,” says researcher Gerrit Knaap.
The amount of dust in the Earth’s atmosphere doubled since the beginning of the 20th century and the dramatic increase is influencing climate and ecology around the world, according to a new study led by Natalie Mahowald, Cornell associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences.
An international team of scientists has released data indicating that greenhouse gas uptake by continents is less than previously thought because of methane emissions from freshwater areas.
The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling will release its complete, final report on January 11. American University faculty experts are available to provide commentary on the spill and related topics.
NSF International, an independent public health organization that tests and certifies a wide range of plumbing and drinking water treatment products, strongly supports the passage of the Reduction of Lead in Drinking Water Act on January 4th, which significantly reduces the amount of lead allowed in plumbing products that contact drinking water.
An interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is turning a comprehensive lens on Madison’s water in all its forms — in the lakes, streets, faucets, ground and atmosphere — thanks to the National Science Foundation.
For every four to five reported cases of mesothelioma worldwide, at least one case goes unreported, according to estimates published online January 6 ahead of print in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). This study is the first to provide a global estimate of unreported mesothelioma cases based on the collective experience of countries with available data on asbestos use and the disease.
Encouraging new evidence suggests that the bulk of the world’s fisheries – including small-scale, often non-industrialized fisheries on which millions of people depend for food – could be sustained using community-based co-management.
A study funded by the USDA – Agriculture Research Service has tested cattle grazing on degraded soil to determine if the activity would have any effect on restoring depleted nutrients.
For Boston, 2010 was the hottest year since at least 1872, according to the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University. Four other cities in New England also had their all-time hottest year. In all, 23 of the 35 cities monitored saw the average temperature for 2010 rank among the 10 hottest years on record.
University of Utah researchers developed a new concept in water treatment: an electrobiochemical reactor in which a low electrical voltage is applied to microbes to help them quickly and efficiently remove pollutants from mining, industrial and agricultural wastewater.
Research supports what Cape Cod cranberry growers already suspected: The traditional “flow-through” bogs have a negative impact on stream quality compared with modern bogs.
When engineers restore rivers, one Kansas State University professor hopes they'll keep a smaller engineer in mind: the North American beaver.
With “green” on the mind from holiday trees, wreaths, and garlands, here’s a package of ideas for keeping “green” — as in sustainable, eco-friendly — in your life throughout 2011 and beyond. They are gems on sustainability hand-picked from almost 38,000 scientific reports published in 2010 in the American Chemical Society’s 38 peer-reviewed scientific journals and its weekly newsmagazine, Chemical & Engineering News.
A new study finds that microscopic particles of dust, emitted into the atmosphere when dirt breaks apart, follow similar fragment patterns as broken glass and other brittle objects. The research suggests there are several times more dust particles in the atmosphere than previously believed, since shattered dirt appears to produce an unexpectedly high number of large dust fragments. The finding has implications for understanding future climate change because dust plays a significant role in controlling the amount of solar energy in the atmosphere.
A new study of sea-level trends by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science brings both good and bad news to localities concerned with coastal inundation and flooding along the shores of Chesapeake Bay.
November 2010 came in as the third warmest November in the 32-year satellite temperature record, but still warmer than November 1998. From January through November, that leaves 2010 only 0.012 C (0.022° F) cooler than 1998, which was the warmest year in the satellite record.
A Kansas State University professor is part of a national research team that discovered that streams and rivers produce three times more greenhouse gas emissions than estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Researchers from the University of Washington say the Mariana crow, a forest crow living on Rota Island in the western Pacific Ocean, will go extinct in 75 years. The extinction could happen almost twice as soon as previously believed.
Increasingly, Americans are choosing packaged, processed foods over a healthier diet. And our foxes, raccoons, and opossums, too, are now consuming fast food of a different variety, finding leftovers from drive-thrus rather than chasing down mice, rats, and birds. The rapid spread of urbanization has humans and animal species living closer together and interacting more than ever before. This is evidenced by kit foxes in urban environments eating the same things as humans—particularly corn syrup.
A mathematically driven evolutionary snapshot of woody plants in four similar climates shows that genetic diversity is more sensitive to extinctions and loss of habitat them than long thought.
Scientists expect the Arctic Ocean to be ice-free in summer by century’s end. Now a trio of researchers say losing this continent-sized natural barrier between species such as bears, whales and seals, could mean extinction of some rare marine mammals and the loss of many adaptive gene combinations.
In a study funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a team of scientists from the University of Kentucky determined that earthworms could absorb copper nanoparticles present in soil. The manufacturing of nanomaterials has been steadily on the rise in the medical, industrial, and scientific fields.
New research indicates that if humans reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly in the next decade or two, enough Arctic ice is likely to remain intact during late summer and early autumn for polar bears to survive.
Jeff Wells, a conservation scientists and visiting fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is warning that reindeer, the beloved animals of Christmas lore, are in severe decline thanks to global warming and industrial development in their boreal forest homes.
An effort to increase biofuel production has led scientists to discover genes in yeast that improve their tolerance to ethanol, allowing the production of more ethanol from the same amount of nutrients. This study shows how genetically altered yeast cells survive higher ethanol concentrations, addressing a bottleneck in the production of ethanol from cellulosic material (nonfood plant sources) in quantities that could compete economically with fossil fuels.
Novel metal catalysts might be able to turn greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide into liquid fuels without producing more carbon waste in the process.
The United States is being invaded and the “aliens” coming into our country are exotic plant species—weeds, that is.
Locke Island is a small island in a bend of the Columbia River in eastern Washington that plays a special role in the culture of local Indian tribes. Recently, it has begun eroding away at an alarming rate. The island is part of the Hanford Reservation managed by the Department of Energy. So the DOE has turned to a team of Vanderbilt researchers to identify the cause of the increase in erosion.
Creating a trading market giving farmers financial incentives for using best fertilizer practices can benefit water quality, help fight climate change, and raise farmer income, finds a new study by the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research. Md. is one of a handful of states considering both fertilizer and CO2 markets.
An experimental combustion facility at Washington University in St. Louis will be used to study the burning of coal with oxygen rather than with air, which contains large amounts of nitrogen. Oxy-coal combustion makes carbon capture and sequestration much easier by raising the carbon dioxide concentration in exhaust gases from 15 percent to 95 percent.
CSB Board Will Hear Testimony on how Offshore Drilling is Managed and Regulated in Other Countries
The cyanobacteria are famous for releasing the oxygen that made Earth the hospitable planet we know today, but some strains also have hidden talent for producing hydrogen gas. Washington University in St. Louis currently holds the gas-producing record for these versatile microbes.
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