Feature Channels: Environmental Science

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Developing nations need greater visibility, acknowledgement and support for their research into the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to the authors of a major analysis of the past 15 years of worldwide research into SDGs.

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Defense of the United States is an undertaking that requires the help of experts from a wide array of obviously related disciplines — physics, engineering, computer science, political science and more. One discipline that might not immediately come to mind is plant ecophysiology. But the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Tala Awada is leading the way.

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Do whales increase the removal of carbon from the atmosphere? Despite some hope that this would be the case, a new study led by Griffith University and a team of global researchers has found the amount of potential carbon capture by whales is too little to meaningfully alter the course of climate change.

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Human influences have the potential to reduce the effectivity of communication in bees adding further stress to struggling colonies, according to new analysis.

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Night-time pollinators such as moths may visit just as many plants as bees, and should also be the focus of conservation and protection efforts, a new study from the University of Sheffield suggests.

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An innovative and sustainable chemistry developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory for capturing carbon dioxide from air has been licensed to Holocene, a Knoxville-based startup focused on designing and building plants that remove carbon dioxide from atmospheric air.

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Microbes are by far the most important factor in determining how much carbon is stored in the soil, according to a new study with implications for mitigating climate change and improving soil health for agriculture and food production.

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A recent study led by a researcher at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University found that the likelihood of extreme temperatures that could affect crop yields has increased significantly in wheat-producing regions of the U.S. and China.

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University of Cambridge architects are inviting visitors to the London Design Biennale to experience a prototype home constructed with flexible wooden partition walls which can be shifted to meet the changing needs of residents.

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Plastic made from cane sugar also threatens the environment. Researchers from the University of Gothenburg have found that perch change their behaviour when exposed to so-called bioplastic.

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For the first time ever, scientists have uncovered evidence that a species’ long-term adaptation to living in an extremely cold climate has led to the evolution of social behaviours including extended care by mothers, increased infant survival and the ability to live in large complex multilevel societies.

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The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, today announced the launch of the Berkeley Haas Sustainable Business Research Prize. The prize encourages serious research with timely, real-world business-practice applications among business school faculty around the world related to responsible business, sustainability, and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) issues.

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When firms make their environmental policies public, they can get favorable media coverage only if their narrative carefully articulates signals of conformity (actions aimed at complying with existing norms) and distinctiveness (the adoption of a recognizably uncommon behavior).

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Corn growers seeking to increase the amount of nitrogen taken up by their crop can adjust many aspects of fertilizer application, but recent studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign show those tweaks don’t do much to improve uptake efficiency from fertilizer. That’s because, the studies show, corn takes up the majority of its nitrogen – about 67% on average – from sources occurring naturally in soil, not from fertilizer.

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Malia Gehan, PhD, assistant member, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, was selected to be part of the Taylor Geospatial Institute’s inaugural class of TGI Fellows.  The program enables TGI member institutions to recruit and retain distinguished researchers in geospatial science fields, develop the next generation of scientific leaders and catalyze collaboration to accelerate the region’s development as a global geospatial center of excellence.

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Plastics transformed engineering in the past century, but they also transformed the environment in ways that will take millennia to repair. Washington University in St. Louis is leading a new effort to address the grand challenge of developing the next generation of high-performance, sustainably sourced and biodegradable plastics that advance engineering while also protecting the environment.

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A team led by Argonne has developed a new catalyst composed of elements abundant in the Earth. It could make possible the low-cost and energy-efficient production of hydrogen for use in transportation and industrial applications.

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Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Yale University are proposing a novel pathway through which coastal ecosystem restoration can permanently capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Seagrass and mangroves — known as blue carbon ecosystems — naturally capture carbon through photosynthesis, which converts carbon dioxide into living tissue.

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A detailed plan to transform product packaging and significantly cut plastic production and pollution has been developed by researchers.

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Insects use odor plumes — which travel like smoke and form when the wind blows odor molecules from their source — to track down sources such as flowers or pheromones. But wind tunnels are typically unable to replicate realistic outdoor wind conditions. In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, University of Nevada at Reno researchers decided to explore microscale wind conditions in various outdoor environments to better understand what flying insects might experience while tracking odor plumes.

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Chula President pledged to move ahead with greenhouse gas reduction on the Chulalongkorn University campus targeting Net Zero Greenhouse Gas Emission by 2050 and unveiled 5 pilot strategies for minimizing carbon dioxide emissions and also achieving campus sustainability.

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Among the approximately 2,000 known species of termites, some are ecosystem engineers. The mounds built by some genera, for example Amitermes, Macrotermes, Nasutitermes, and Odontotermes, reach up to eight meters high, making them some of the world’s largest biological structures.

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Polar fish experience lower mortality than tropical fish, allowing them to delay reproduction until later in life when they are larger and can produce more eggs, according to a study by Mariana Álvarez-Noriega at Monash University in Australia and colleagues, publishing May 25th in the open access journal PLOS Biology.

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Plants live across wide ranges of heat and cold and rain and drought, but they don’t fill their niches alone. Along with the animals and insects that live on and around a tree — pitching in now and then to aid pollination or pest control or seed dispersal — there are innumerable microbes in the soil (like various fungi that grow alongside tree roots). These microbes can blunt the normal stresses of life by helping trees draw in more nutrients and water or influencing the time they leaf out or flower to best match seasonal conditions.

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Animals using the most of efficient methods of searching for resources may well pay with their lives, scientists at the University of Bristol have discovered.

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Spiny mice in the genus Acomys look much like more familiar house mice in the genus Mus, although their coats do have stiff guard hairs that give them their name.

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Scientists have been worried about the potential harms of microplastics for years. These small plastic particles less than 5 mm in length have been found everywhere because of plastic pollution – from the Earth’s deep oceans to remote regions in Antarctica, and even the seafood we eat.

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Species known as marine habitat-forming species —gorgonians, corals, algae, seaweeds, marine phanerogams, etc.— are organisms that help generate and structure the underwater landscapes.

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A new report co-authored by George Peridas of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Benjamin Grove of the Clean Air Task Force examines the economic viability of carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects in California and finds that several classes of projects are viable today.

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A non-toxic method to prevent mice from devouring wheat crops has been shown to drastically reduce seed loss.

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Bees serve an important role in pollinating our gardens. However, homeowners looking to venture into beekeeping have a lot to think about long before any potential honey harvest. James M. Wilson, beekeeping expert for Virginia Tech and Virginia Cooperative Extension, has plenty of tips to offer about starting up and tending to a personal beehive.

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A new greenhouse gas budget shows coastal ecosystems globally are a net greenhouse gas sink for carbon dioxide (CO2) but emissions of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) counteract some of the CO2 uptake, according to international researchers led by Australia’s Southern Cross University.

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Researchers from Argonne and Northeastern University in Boston characterized reactions in all-solid-state lithium batteries.

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A new review of research suggests that the nature-based technology biochar – a carbon-rich material – could be an important tool to use in agriculture to help mitigate climate change.

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As a biogeochemist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Matthew Berens studies how carbon, nutrients and minerals move through water and soil. In this firsthand account, Berens describes recent fieldwork in Louisiana with colleagues to better understand coastal ecosystems.

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Acoustic signals can be effectively used for monitoring glacial runoff and provide a cheaper and more accessible alternative to existing methods.

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The grounds of the University of Northern Colorado received a welcome living, breathing facelift last week. As part of Arbor Day and Earth Day celebrations this year, students, faculty and staff picked up shovels and got their hands dirty planting 122 new trees across the university’s 250-acre campus.

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Curbside recycling provides a return on investment similar to or better than environmentally friendly strategies like transitioning to electric vehicles or purchasing green power, study shows