A look at our changing environment.
According to the United Nations and The World Bank, global hunger levels in 2021 surpassed the previous record set in 2020. The organizations also found that acute food insecurity – defined as when a person’s inability to consume adequate food puts their lives or livelihoods in immediate danger – could continue to worsen this year […]
The total amount of solar power generating capacity in the world has been growing rapidly. In 2008, there was a total of only 15 gigawatts installed world-wide. By 2012, the total was 100 gigawatts. As of this spring, there is now 1 terawatt – that’s 1,000 gigawatts – of solar power installed in the world. […]
Most plants and animals live in areas with specific climate conditions, such as rainfall patterns and temperature, that enable them to thrive. Any change in the climate of an area can affect the plants and animals living there, which in turn can impact the composition of the entire ecosystem. As such, the changing climate poses […]
The Outer Banks are a series of barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina that separate the Atlantic Ocean from the mainland. They are a very popular tourist destination featuring open-sea beaches, state parks, shipwreck diving sites, and historic locations such as Roanoke Island, the site of England’s first settlement in the New World. […]
Photosynthesis is the process by which plants use the energy from sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into biomass and ultimately the foods we and other organisms eat. Scientists at the University of California Riverside and the University of Delaware have found a way to create food from water and carbon dioxide without using […]
Marine protected areas are sections of the ocean where governments place limits on human activity. They are intended to provide long-term protection to important marine and coastal ecosystems. MPAs are important because they can protect depleted, threatened, rare, and endangered species and populations. In January 2020, the Republic of Palau in the western Pacific Ocean […]
Alaska is on a pace for a record fire season this year. As of mid-July, more than 2.7 million acres had burned, which is more than 10 times the total area burned in all of 2021. Alaskan fires have been spurred on by warm temperatures, a diminished snowpack, and an unusually large number of lightning […]
Mangrove forests play a vital role in the health of our planet. These coastal forests are the second most carbon rich ecosystems in the world. A patch of mangrove forest the size of a soccer field can store more than 1,000 tons of carbon. It does this by capturing carbon from the air and storing […]
Perovskites are semiconductors with a specific crystal structure. Their properties make them well suited for making solar cells. They can be manufactured at room temperature, using much less energy than it takes to make the silicon-based solar cells widely used today. As a result, perovskite solar panels would be cheaper and more sustainable to produce. […]
There is a thriving population of black sea urchins in bubbling volcanic vents off the coast of Ishia, a small island in the Gulf of Naples. The oceanic environment there is very acidic, high in carbon dioxide, and very warm. The environment represents a proxy for what is gradually happening to oceans around the world. […]
Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. A few well-known billionaires have taken rocket rides in recent years and at least a dozen companies are at the vanguard of what they are expecting to be a burgeoning industry. If space tourism truly takes off – pun intended – it could be a serious […]
The increased occurrence and intensity of heatwaves around the world is affecting most living things. Heatwaves can be lethal for warm-blooded animals – including people – but the behavioral and physiological effects of sub-lethal heat have not been extensively studied. Heat that doesn’t kill animals can still impact their ability to adapt and thrive as […]
Since the 1950s, more than nine billion tons of plastic have been produced, and 50% of that has been during the past 15 years. While there are some use cases for plastic that are important, it generally serves as the poster child of our throwaway culture. Plastic pollution can be found everywhere on earth, from […]
Pollinators, such as bees and bats, are vital for global food production. They provide an ecological service that’s necessary for the reproduction of nearly 75% of the world’s flowering plants, including more than two-thirds of global food crops. Bumblebees are among the most important plant pollinators. They pollinate many food crops, including apples, tomatoes, blueberries […]
The current state of plastic recycling is not very effective. Plastic recycling is only able to replace 15-20% of the fossil-fuel-derived raw material needed to produce society’s demand for plastic. Researchers at Chalmers University in Sweden have now demonstrated how the carbon content in mixed waste could be used to replace all of the fossil […]
The 2022 federal appropriations act, signed into law in March, directed the Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a cross-agency group to coordinate research on climate interventions, in partnership with NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Energy. The group is tasked with creating a research framework to “provide […]
The plight of the world’s coral reefs has been a growing environmental crisis for many years. Coral reefs provide sustenance and income to half a billion people, are major tourist attractions, protect coastlines, and are important centers of biodiversity. And because of the warming climate as well as other effects of human activity, more than […]
Phytoplankton, also known as microalgae, are the base of the marine food web and also play a key role in removing carbon dioxide from the air. They are eaten by primary consumers like zooplankton, small fish, and crustaceans. Phytoplankton, like land plants, absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use photosynthesis to grow. Then they […]
The growing use of electric vehicles as well as energy storage systems has created a major focus on the batteries for these applications. Lithium-ion batteries dominate these applications and the demand for the materials needed to manufacture them continues to grow. The raw materials for these batteries include not only lithium, but also can include […]
The earth’s atmosphere is a little over 0.04% carbon dioxide, currently about 420 parts per million. That’s more than it’s been in millions of years and is changing our climate. But these levels of CO2 are not enough to directly affect people. However, people are sensitive to the amount of carbon dioxide they are breathing. […]