Feature Channels: Environmental Science

• share
• favorite_border

New research from Ryerson University reveals that oceans and lakes could make an enormous contribution to global energy production.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists study the effects of grazing management practices on sediment, phosphorus, and harmful bacteria deposits into pasture streams.

• share
• favorite_border

Darden School of Business Professor Andrea Larson's new textbook, Sustainability, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, is now available online at Flat World Knowledge.

• share
• favorite_border

The Texas Tech study found only 8 to 9 percent coverage of oil on the shells of fertilized mallard duck eggs resulted in a 50 percent mortality rate. However, scientists also reported the amount of time the oil remained at sea and exposed to weather had a significant effect on its toxicity to the fertilized duck eggs.

• share
• favorite_border

More than a year after leading a statewide academic task force to help the Gulf Coast region respond to the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Florida State University researchers are now working to understand the longer-term environmental and economic consequences of the disaster. Though the spill was officially contained one year ago, the story is far from over. About 4.9 million barrels of oil were dumped into the Gulf of Mexico, and FSU research faculty hope to better understand the repercussions. These experts are available to answer media questions and provide historical perspective on this ongoing story.

• share
• favorite_border

The wildfires currently raging in the southwestern United States bring issues of land management into the public eye. Land management actions, such as prescribed fire, grazing, herbicides, felling trees, and mowing, can restore native plants and reduce wildfire. However, the public’s view of land management and their trust in land management agencies can pose another obstacle.

• share
• favorite_border

A new Baylor University study has found that some bird species in the desert southwest are less affected, and in some cases positively influenced, by widespread fire through their habitat. In fact, the Baylor researchers say that fire actually helps some bird species because of the habitat that is formed after a fire is positive for the bird’s prey needs.

• share
• favorite_border

Quantum dots made from cadmium and selenium degrade in soil, unleashing toxic cadmium and selenium ions into their surroundings, a University at Buffalo study has found.

• share
• favorite_border

With a pull of the trigger, cleaning up at Ithaca College is getting a whole lot more environmentally friendly. Since the start of 2011, the college’s facilities maintenance staff has been terminating germs with the Ionator.

• share
• favorite_border

Six tips to combat hay fever misery.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from Texas A&M University have returned from a trip to examine the scope and size of this year’s “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico and have measured it currently to be about 3,300 square miles, or roughly the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, but some researchers anticipate it becoming much larger.

• share
• favorite_border

“Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth,” a review paper that will be published on July 15, 2011, in the journal Science, concludes that the decline of large predators and herbivores in all regions of the world is causing substantial changes to Earth’s terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems.

• share
• favorite_border

Large, marine-calving glaciers have the ability not only to shrink rapidly in response to global warming, but to grow at a remarkable pace during periods of global cooling, according to University at Buffalo geologists working in Greenland.

• share
• favorite_border

The amount of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere by forests could be quadrupled in 100 years by harvesting regularly and using the wood in place of steel and concrete that devour fossil fuels during manufacturing, producing carbon dioxide.

• share
• favorite_border

A Kansas State University geographer is part of a research team out to prove what environmental scientists have suspected for years: Increasing the production of soybean and biofuel crops in Brazil increases deforestation in the Amazon. Although this cause-and-effect finding seems fairly straightforward, the issue of deforestation in the Amazon is more complex and more devastating than previously believed.

• share
• favorite_border

Preliminary temperatures taken from satellite measurements of the Earth's atmosphere reveal that global temperatures continue to rise.

• share
• favorite_border

The Wildlife Conservation Society has discovered a surprisingly healthy population of rare snow leopards living in the mountainous reaches of northeastern Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor, according to a new study.

• share
• favorite_border

Although considered an environmentally sound disposal method, applying sewage sludge to agricultural lands may leave harmful metals in the soil.

• share
• favorite_border

Weed Science is a journal of the Weed Science Society of America, a non-profit professional society that promotes research, education, and extension outreach activities related to weeds; provides science-based information to the public and policy makers; and fosters awareness of weeds and their impacts on managed and natural ecosystems.

• share
• favorite_border

This month, scientists from 11 institutions will drill cores into the stratified layers of Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin to search for clues to a massive release of carbon dioxide from 55 million years ago. The pioneering study may yield a better understanding of current and future global climate change.

• share
• favorite_border

The continued growth of cropland and loss of natural habitat have increasingly simplified agricultural landscapes in the Midwest. A Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) study concluded that this simplification is associated with increased crop pest abundance and insecticide use, consequences that could be tempered by perennial bioenergy crops.

• share
• favorite_border

A link between chemicals called phthalates and thyroid hormone levels was confirmed by the University of Michigan in the first large-scale and nationally representative study of phthalates and BPA in relation to thyroid function in humans.

• share
• favorite_border

Research will test the ability to inject CO2 into coal seams that cannot be mined, as well as the potential to enhance the coalbed methane recovery.

• share
• favorite_border

Since the beginning of May, architecture students from Dalhousie University have been working away at a structure in Cheverie, Nova Scotia designed to accommodate a camera obscura which will make a projection of the tide moving the water in and out of the Bay of Fundy.

• share
• favorite_border

How deep is the ocean’s capacity to buffer against climate change? As one of the planet’s largest single carbon absorbers, the ocean takes up roughly one-third of all human carbon emissions, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and its associated global changes.

• share
• favorite_border

An estimated two billion people in the developing world heat and cook with a biomass fuel such as wood, but the practice exposes people – especially women – to large doses of small-particle air pollution, which can cause premature death and lung disease.

• share
• favorite_border

The University of Utah will be the first location in the U.S. to install a new solar power product called Solar Ivy, for its wall-climbing appearance, thanks to a student funded initiative to make the U a more sustainable campus.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientific evidence is mounting in support of a significant increase in cancer mortality and malformations occurring in specific areas of the Campania Region of Southern Italy, where improper waste management and illegal waste trafficking have been repeatedly documented, according to “Wasting lives: the effects of toxic waste exposure on health. The case of Campania, Southern Italy” published in Cancer Biology & Therapy.

• share
• favorite_border

Summers on the Great Plains are usually characterized by a lack of water. But flooding in several states has reversed that trend -- and it might not be the last of the high waters for 2011, according to a Kansas State University geography expert.

• share
• favorite_border

Research at SUNY-ESF tests the use of food waste to nourish fish in an urban food production system.

• share
• favorite_border

The Hoopa Valley Tribe, in cooperation with the Wildlife Conservation Society and the University of Massachusetts, reported a 73-percent decline in the density of fishers—a house-cat sized member of the weasel family and candidate for endangered species listing—on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in NW California between 1998 and 2005.

• share
• favorite_border

Long-term exposure to air pollution can lead to physical changes in the brain, as well as learning and memory problems and even depression, new research in mice suggests.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists develop model to assess the impact agroforestry windbreaks have on farming operations.

• share
• favorite_border

The discovery that a bacterial species in the Australian Tammar wallaby gut is responsible for keeping the animal’s methane emissions relatively low suggests a potential new strategy may exist to try to reduce methane emissions from livestock, according to a new study.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have found that areas near commercial airports sometimes experience a small but measurable increase in rain and snow when aircraft take off and land under certain atmospheric conditions.

• share
• favorite_border

Advances in DNA 'fingerprinting' and other genetic techniques led by Adelaide researchers are making it harder for illegal loggers to get away with destroying protected rainforests.

• share
• favorite_border

In a study of 31 Boston offices, polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants now banned internationally by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants were detected in every office tested. The research, published online June 30 ahead of print in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), links concentrations of PBDEs in office dust with levels of the chemicals on the hands of the offices’ occupants.

• share
• favorite_border

Software shows where invaders are spreading from their point of origin.

• share
• favorite_border

Mukul Sharma, a professor in The University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering and an international expert on hydraulic fracturing, presented June 27 on the facts and myths, the knowns and unknowns and the concerns – both real and perceived – surrounding the gas extraction process.

• share
• favorite_border

Four Mid-Atlantic States will offer one of the nation’s most generous programs to replace old, polluting trucks – short-haul “drays”. It doubles an EPA cash-for-clunkers-style effort with public and private money. "We no longer want our ports to be the place where old trucks go to die," says University of Maryland’s Joanne Throwe, program coordinator.

• share
• favorite_border

Some areas of the southern United States are suffering from the longest dry spell since 1887 and a new Baylor University study shows that could prove problematic for aquatic organisms.

• share
• favorite_border

Agroforestry management can improve yields and reduce environmental costs.

• share
• favorite_border

A new survey conducted by WCS scientists, supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), reveals that large mammals, including Asiatic black bears, gray wolves, markhor goats, and leopard cats are surviving in parts of Afghanistan after years of conflict.

• share
• favorite_border

Development of disease resistance among Chesapeake Bay oysters calls for a shift in oyster-restoration strategies within the Bay and its tributaries. That’s according to a new study by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

• share
• favorite_border

Computer science researchers at the University of Arkansas and University of San Francisco have developed an automated energy-management system that monitors energy generation and consumption in off-grid and grid-tied homes that use solar energy or wind power.

• share
• favorite_border

The University of Maryland and the Municipal League are teaming up to assist communities plan and implement green, sustainable practices that may help them cope with tight budgets. The program guides communities through steps ultimately earning them a “Sustainability Certification” – which may eventually earn them preferences in funding.

• share
• favorite_border

Psychosocial stress appears to enhance the lung-damaging effects of traffic-related pollution (TRP) in children, according to new research from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles.

• share
• favorite_border

This season’s massive Arizona fires making headlines around the globe have destroyed dozens of structures and burned nearly three-quarters of a million acres. They also are contributing to global warming, scientists say, by upsetting the carbon balance while they are burning and for years to come.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax and Stanford University in California concluded a two year study called “Tracking apex marine predator movements in a dynamic ocean” published in the science journal Nature released June 22.

• share
• favorite_border

Nature can have its own solutions to offer against invasive plant species. In the case of the weed cogongrass, woody vegetation at the forest’s edge may stop its progress. By catching seeds blowing in the wind, shrubs can prevent or lessen the impact of an invasion of weeds that will strangle native plants.