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Environmental News Network -- Know Your Environment
In the first ecosystem-wide study of changing sea depths at five large coral reef tracts in Florida, the Caribbean and Hawai’i, U.S. Geological Survey researchers found the sea floor is eroding in all five places, and the reefs cannot keep pace with sea level rise. As a result, coastal communities protected by the reefs are facing increased risks from storms, waves and erosion.
A trace gas present in the atmosphere in miniscule amounts is helping scientists answer one of the biggest questions out there: Has plant growth increased alongside rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
A unique international study has debunked the popular view that Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are in much better ecological shape than the rest of the world.
The study, published recently in PLOS Biology and involving an interdisciplinary group of 23 researchers, compared Antarctic biodiversity and its management with that of the rest of the world.
Consumer goods companies often rely on life-cycle assessments (LCA) to figure out the potential consequences of how they design products and source ingredients. This kind of assessment, while sophisticated, often lacks detail about how the products affect natural resources such as land, water and biodiversity.
A team of researchers from Stanford University and the University of Minnesota, in a partnership called the Natural Capital Project, along with researchers from Unilever’s Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre, developed a new kind of assessment to integrate these impacts in a more detailed way. They call it Land Use Change Improved Life Cycle Assessment, or LUCI-LCA. It’s designed to help researchers or companies more accurately predict impacts of new designs and sourcing.
The first tropical storm of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season formed 40 days before the official kick off of the season. Tropical Storm Arlene formed in the North Central Atlantic Ocean and NOAA's GOES-East satellite provided forecasters with a look at the storm, swirling far from land areas.
Humans began measurably and negatively impacting water quality in the Chesapeake Bay in the first half of the 19th century, according to a study of eastern oysters by researchers at The University of Alabama.
The work, published in Scientific Reports, show pollution’s effect appears a bit earlier than previously thought, but it generally confirms increasing deforestation and industrialization around the Bay led to water quality issues before the Civil War, which has been shown by other studies with different testing methods.
