In 2020, University of California (UC), Santa Barbara, scientist David Valentine used a deep-sea robot to confirm that the largest dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) maker in the U.S. had dumped tens of thousands of barrels of the toxic pesticide off the Los Angeles coast. “Holy crap. This is real,” Valentine told the Los Angeles Times of his […]
It may seem like good conservation practice to bolster threatened and key commercial populations of native fish by breeding them in captivity and releasing them into the wild. In fact, it has been standard practice for natural resource managers and fisheries for 150 years, according to a press release from the University of North Carolina […]
Mountain forests are important habitats for many species, but a new study has found that habitat loss in these areas has been rapidly accelerating since 2000. In that time, more than 78.1 million hectares (approximately 193 million acres) of mountain forests have been lost, equaling an area greater than the size of Texas. A team […]
The Battery Data Genome (BDG) project aims to compile as much technical data about renewable batteries as possible. Similar to the Human Genome Project (HGP), the BDG is led by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Argonne and Idaho Laboratories as well as researchers in Europe. The process would capture data about batteries from battery […]
Decisions made this decade will largely determine whether world leaders can limit global warming to 1.5 or two degrees Celsius of warming below pre-industrial levels and avoid the increasingly more drastic impacts of the climate crisis. That’s one key takeaway from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Synthesis Report of the findings gathered in […]
The Arctic sea ice extent for the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2023 is the fifth lowest on record. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) announced Wednesday that the Arctic sea ice likely reached its maximum extent on March 6 at 5.64 million square miles. That’s 398,000 square miles below the average maximum for […]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge first published the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in 1798, but, with the world running out of fresh water, the lines, “Water, water, every where, / Ne any drop to drink,” feel timely. Today, the planet is facing an unprecedented water crisis, with global freshwater demand predicted to exceed supply […]
Could floating solar panels be the energy source of the future? That’s what one team of researchers was determined to find out. As it turns out, floating solar panels covering portions of water reservoirs could provide enough energy to power thousands of cities around the world, according to a new study. The study, published in […]
Like something out of a classic sci-fi film, marine scientists are tracking a giant seaweed blob approaching Florida’s Gulf Coast. The 5,000-mile-wide swarm of seaweed — which scientists say could be the biggest in history — is so large it can be seen from space. The colossal seaweed mat was caused by a huge sargassum […]