Enviro

BERKELEY, Calif.April 4, 2023 —The health and environmental harms of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are well-known, but a new peer-reviewed study calls into question their touted stain-fighting benefits. The study, published today in the AATCC Journal of Research, tested the performance of PFAS finishings on furniture fabrics and found that they had limited to no effectiveness, particularly […]

The McCloud River redband trout, or O. mykiss calisulat, is newly identified as its own distinct subspecies of rainbow trout in a study from the University of California, Davis. It is the first newly identified subspecies of Pacific trout since 2008 and the youngest rainbow trout subspecies by more than 100 years. The study, published […]

In West Antarctica, the 80-mile-wide stream of sliding ice at the heart of Thwaites Glacier is likely to creep outward over the next 20 years, a change that could speed up ice loss, new research finds. “It’s like a torrential river eating away at the riverbanks and widening in the process,” said senior study author […]

March 23, 2023 – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,National Alliance of Forest Owners (NAFO) and the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, Inc. (NCASI), announced today a memorandum of understanding which formalizes the Wildlife Conservation Initiative (WCI), a collaborative partnership focused on advancing the conservation of at-risk and listed species within private working […]

Significant flooding is ongoing in the western U.S., especially in California, following another series of strong Pacific storms that battered the region and piled on to an already historic snowpack. According to NOAA’s U.S. Spring Outlook, the abnormally wet winter will further improve drought across much of the western U.S. as the snowpack melts in […]

Irvine, Calif., — Carbon dioxide emissions from wildfires, which have been gradually increasing since 2000, spiked drastically to a record high in 2021, according to an international team of researchers led by Earth system scientists at the University of California, Irvine. Nearly half a gigaton of carbon (or 1.76 billion tons of CO2) was released from […]

Many communities in the United States underestimate how much sea level will rise in their area, according to a new study in Earth’s Future led by Andra Garner, a climate scientist at Rowan University. Garner and colleagues compiled a database of the most recent regional climate projections in 54 locations across the continental United States and Puerto Rico and […]

Yesterday, this letter was delivered to President Biden requesting an executive order protecting beaver on federally managed public lands. “In order to fully realize the wide array of social, ecological, and economic benefits that beavers provide to human and wild communities, the federal government must take bold and decisive action,” said Adam Bronstein of Western […]

NEW DELHI, February 22, 2023] Antibiotics used on livestock can impact microbes in the soil and negatively affect soil carbon, reducing resilience to climate change, claims a study conducted in India’s trans-Himalayan region. Maintaining soil organic carbon can mitigate against climate change, land degradation and global hunger, offsetting greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity, according to the Food […]

February 14, 2023 – A study published in Nature Communications by an international team of scientists shows that an irreversible loss of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, and a corresponding rapid acceleration of sea level rise, may be imminent if global temperature change cannot be stabilized below 1.8°C, relative to the preindustrial levels. Coastal populations […]

By Ricardo Muniz  |  Agência FAPESP – The number of active fires recorded in the Brazilian Amazon in August-September 2022 was the highest since 2010, according to an article published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Besides the record number of fires (74,398), the researchers found they were due not to extreme drought, as in 2010, […]

The number of unprovoked shark attacks worldwide decreased last year, tying with 2020 for the fewest number of reported incidents in the last 10 years. According to the University of Florida’s International Shark Attack File, there were a total of 57 unprovoked bites in 2022, most of which occurred in the United States and Australia. Of […]

WASHINGTON, February 2, 2023 — Conservation and wildlife advocacy groups are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Endangered Species Act this year, commemorating five decades of effective and crucial protection for imperiled animals and plants. Passed nearly unanimously by Congress and signed into law by Richard Nixon on Dec. 28, 1973, the […]

The new research, published in Pacific Conservation Biology, examined the environmental toll of firework displays by reviewing the ecological effects of Diwali festivities in India, Fourth of July celebrations across the United States of America, and other events in New Zealand and parts of Europe. Examples included fireworks in Spanish festivals impacting the breeding success of […]

Findings from a new paper published in Cat News have identified the first ever report of Pallas’s cat on Mount Everest, in the Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal. This groundbreaking finding is a result of the 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition, the most comprehensive single scientific expedition to the mountain in history.  From April 7 […]

January 26, 2023 – While the Amazon rainforest and the Tibetan Plateau sit on different sides of the globe, scientists now discovered that changes in the South American ecosystem can trigger changes in the vicinity of the Himalayas. Both are tipping elements, hence large-scale elements of the planetary machinery that are sensitive to global warming […]

Satellite imagery confirms an enormous iceberg, around five times the size of Malta, has finally calved from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf. The new berg, estimated to be around 1550 sq km and around 150 m thick, calved when the crack known as Chasm-1 fully extended northwards severing the west part of the ice shelf. This […]

January 23, 2023 – Over the last year, the world’s energy market has been highly volatile. The warmer-than-average winter in Europe helped avoid a gas crisis this year, but the forecast for the next winter is unclear as instabilities persist. More than 20% of global liquefied natural gas exports originate from a single port in […]

January 20, 2023 – In order to meet climate protection goals, renewable energies are booming – often wind power. More than 30,000 turbines have already been installed on the German mainland so far, and the industry is currently scrambling to locate increasingly rare suitable sites. Thus, forests are coming into focus as potential sites. A […]

January 18, 2023 – At high elevations of the Greenland Ice Sheet, the years 2001 to 2011 were 1.5 °C warmer than in the 20th century and represent the warmest decade in the last thousand years. A temperature reconstruction from ice cores of the past 1,000 years reveals that today’s warming in central-north Greenland is surprisingly […]