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Geothermal energy may be safe

August 4, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Trump Administration is outwardly hostile to renewable energy, especially solar and wind power. Federal support for these energy sources that are by far the most rapidly growing energy sources across the globe is being gutted while fossil fuels are being propped up.

There is also renewed enthusiasm for nuclear power and, somewhat surprisingly, geothermal heat. Geothermal is a renewable and clean energy source that has long been mostly overlooked and underfunded. The main reasons are its expense and the fact that its large-scale use is unproven.

Historically, geothermal energy has relied upon naturally occurring features such as hot springs and shallow underground heat sources. However, technological breakthroughs that began in 2013 have led to enhanced geothermal systems, or EGS. EGS makes use of the fact that if you drill deep enough into the earth pretty much anywhere, you will encounter substantial amounts of heat. EGS plants pump water three miles down or more where it encounters rock that reaches over 500 degrees. The piping hot water is then brought to the surface where it spins turbines to generate electricity.

Several companies are developing EGS in the U.S. financed by tech companies seeking power for their AI activities, the Defense Department, and even by fossil fuel companies who use comparable drilling technology for fracking.

The so-called Big Beautiful Bill passed by Congress in July that eliminates tax credits for wind and solar energy preserves tax credits for geothermal projects.

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Why U.S. Geothermal May Advance, Despite Political Headwinds

Photo, posted September 30, 2019, courtesy of Stephen D Strowes via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Antarctic greening

November 6, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Antarctic Peninsula, like other polar regions, is warming faster than the rest of the world. Ocean heatwaves and ice loss are becoming more common and more severe.

New research by the universities of Exeter and Hertfordshire in the UK along with the British Antarctic Survey used satellite data to assess how much the Antarctic Peninsula has been greening in response to climate change. The Antarctic Peninsula is an 800-mile extension of Antarctica toward the southern tip of South America.

The study found that the area of vegetation cover across the Peninsula increased from less than one square kilometer in 1986 to almost 12 square kilometers in 2021. This greening trend accelerated by more than 30% in the period 2016-2021 relative to the entire 1986-2021 period.

An earlier study also showed that the rates of plant growth on the Antarctic Peninsula has increased dramatically in recent decades. The landscape is almost entirely dominated by snow, ice, and rock, with only a tiny fraction supporting plant life. The plants found on the Peninsula – mostly mosses – grow in some of the harshest conditions on earth. But that tiny fraction has greatly increased, showing that this isolated wilderness is being altered by climate change.

The sensitivity of the Antarctic Peninsula’s vegetation to the changing climate is evident and as warming continues, there could be fundamental changes to the biology and landscape of this unique and vulnerable region.

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Antarctic ‘greening’ at dramatic rate

Photo, posted June 2, 2018, courtesy of Murray Foubister via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Slow-moving landslides

October 17, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Landslides are mass movements of rock, earth, or debris down a slope. They can be initiated by rainfall, snowmelt, changes in water level, erosion by streams, earthquakes, volcanic activity, or by various human activities. Most landslides we hear about are sudden events that can cause all sorts of calamities. But not all landslides are rapid occurrences. There are also slow-moving landslides.

A new study by the University of Potsdam in Germany has found that as urban centers in mountainous regions grow, more people are building homes on steeper slopes prone to slow-moving landslides. Slow-moving landslides can move as little as one millimeter a year and up to as much as three meters per year. Locations with slow-moving landslides can seem safe to settle on; in some cases, the movement itself can be inconspicuous or even completely undetected.

Slow slides can gradually produce damage in houses and other infrastructure and there can also be sudden acceleration from heavy rain or other influences.

The study compiled a new database of nearly 8,000 slow-moving landslides with areas of at least 25 acres located in regions classified as “mountain risk.” Of the landslides documented, 563 are inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people. The densest settlements on slow-moving landslides are in northwestern South America and southeastern Africa.

In all regions of the study, urban center expansion was associated with an increase in exposure to slow-moving landslides. As cities expand in mountainous areas, people are moving into unsafe areas, but poorer populations may have few other options.

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Slow-moving landslides a growing, but ignored, threat to mountain communities

Photo, posted March 4, 2015, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Storing carbon underground and abandoned wells

April 18, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Using government support in the form of subsidies and tax credits, energy companies and others are planning to capture millions of tons of industrial carbon dioxide emissions and pipe the greenhouse gas into underground storage. It is a strategy enthusiastically supported by the fossil fuel industry because it allows them to keep burning the stuff.

There are currently 69 projects being reviewed by federal and state regulators seeking to store CO2 underground. The sorts of places where carbon dioxide can be injected are geologic zones containing porous rock formations which, in no way coincidentally, are the same places where oil and gas deposits are found. As a result, these places are studded with abandoned wells that have accumulated over the past century.

In Louisiana, there are about 120,000 abandoned wells that overlie geological zones that could store carbon dioxide. Environmental watchdog groups have identified numerous abandoned wells within a few miles of proposed storage sites.

The problem is that abandoned wells leak – even ones that have been plugged – and many haven’t been. The question is how much leakage will occur and what will be the consequences of the leakage. In Texas, pumping oilfield wastewater into abandoned wells has led to geysers of toxic water, artificial saline lakes, and earthquakes.

Underground carbon dioxide sequestering on a scale large enough to really matter will have to extend to very large areas. For example, injecting 100 million tons per year could create a pressurized zone as large as 100 miles. How large a problem this might create from abandoned wells in the zone is not at all clear but cannot be ignored.

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Companies Are Poised to Inject Millions of Tons of Carbon Underground. Will It Stay Put?

Photo, posted December 3, 2023, courtesy of Jason Woodhead via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Groundwater loss

December 21, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Groundwater is the water found underground in the cracks and spaces in soil, sand, and rock. It is held in aquifers and bubbles up naturally into springs, streams, and rivers, but also is pumped out for use by people. Groundwater provides almost half the drinking water in the U.S. and is a main source of water for agriculture.

The world’s supply of groundwater is steadily declining. The combination of climate change and human population growth is increasingly diminishing groundwater.

A study by the Desert Research Institute published in the journal Nature Communications has mapped the global permanent loss of aquifer storage capacity for the first time. Computer modeling with advanced machine learning techniques has provided a detailed picture of the world’s groundwater situation.

The study found that global aquifer storage capacity is disappearing at a rate of 10 miles a year, about the size of 7,000 Great Pyramids of Giza. The loss of groundwater storage is permanent, forever reducing the amount of water that can be captured and stored because the pumping of groundwater can cause the ground surface above to sink, collapsing the space where water can be stored.

About 75% of this subsidence is occurring over cropland and urban regions. The United States, China, and Iran account for most of the global groundwater storage loss but many other places in the Middle East and Asia are experiencing significant groundwater withdrawal as well.

Most regions of the world do not have monitoring programs for groundwater pumping. The study underscores the need to better understand this issue on a global scale and take appropriate action before it is too late.

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Scientists Map Loss of Groundwater Storage Around the World

Photo, posted August 7, 2015, courtesy of NRCS Oregon via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Enhanced Geothermal Energy | Earth Wise

October 17, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Steam produced by underground heat is an excellent source of clean energy. In a few fortunate places around the world – notably Iceland and New Zealand – people have been using this source of power for more than a century. In the U.S., a few places in the West have access to geothermal energy, and thus it provides roughly half-a-percent of the total U.S. power supply.

There is no shortage of underground heat but tapping into it is not so easy. Enhanced geothermal energy refers to drilling down to where the rock is hot and injecting water to be heated and thereby provide steam that is then used to generate electricity. According to the Department of Energy, there is enough energy in the rocks below the surface of the US to power the entire country five times over.

Recently, in northern Nevada, a company called Fervo Energy successfully operated an enhanced geothermal system called Project Red that generated 3.5 megawatts of clean electricity, the largest enhanced geothermal plant ever demonstrated.

There are now multiple start-up companies pursuing enhanced geothermal energy and the reason is somewhat ironic. Much of the research and development needed for new geothermal technologies has already been done by the oil and gas industry for their own purposes – notably fracking. Those industries have gotten extremely skilled at drilling into rock and such skills are what are needed for enhanced geothermal technology.

Enhanced geothermal faces some of the same challenges as drilling for gas, such as intensive water use and potential triggering of earthquakes. There are also issues related to permitting. But the urgent need for more sources of clean energy has made enhanced geothermal energy a potentially very valuable addition to our energy portfolio.

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Enhanced Geothermal Could Be A Missing Piece Of America’s Climate Puzzle

Photo, posted October 12, 2022, courtesy of David Stanley via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Heatwaves And Alpine Mountain Climbing | Earth Wise

August 25, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

From June to August, there were persistent heat waves affecting parts of Europe that caused wildfires, evacuations, and heat-related deaths. Nearly 12,000 people died from heat stroke or other causes associated with the high temperatures. The highest temperature recorded during this period was 116.6 degrees F in Pinhao, Portugal on July 14th. The RAF base in Coningsby, Lincolnshire recorded a temperature over 104 degrees on July 19th, the highest ever recorded in the United Kingdom.

Among the effects of the multiple European heatwaves has been the cancellation of climbing tours up some of the most iconic peaks in the Alps, including Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn. The high temperatures and rapidly melting glaciers have made the climbing routes too dangerous. Overall, climbing cancellations occurred on about a dozen peaks, including the Jungfrau in Switzerland, which cancelled tours for the first time in a century.

In previous years, during warm summers, some of these climbing routes were closed in August, but the glaciers were already in a condition that usually only happens at the end of summer or even later.

The combination of heat and glacier melt can be treacherous. In July, 11 people were killed at Italy’s Marmolada glacier by falling ice and rock.

Glacial melt in the Alps is rapidly accelerating. The Forni Glacier, the largest valley glacier in Italy, has retreated two miles since 1860 and its area has shrunk by half. Forecasts are that it will retain only 20% of its current volume by 2050 and may disappear entirely by the end of the century. Half of the 4,000 glaciers in the Alps are expected to disappear by 2050.

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European Heat Waves Force Closure of Classic Climbing Routes in Alps

Photo, posted September 4, 2020, courtesy of Dmitry Djouce via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Permafrost Thaw | Earth Wise

March 18, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

We’ve talked about permafrost before. It is the frozen soil, rock, or sediment piled up in the Arctic that has been there at least for two years but, for the most part, for millennia or even over a million years. Permafrost holds the carbon-filled remains of vegetation and animals that froze before they could start decomposing. Estimates are that there are nearly 2,000 billion tons of carbon trapped in Arctic permafrost. To put that in perspective, annual global carbon emissions are less than 40 billion tons.

Keeping all that carbon frozen plays a critical role in preventing the planet from rapidly heating. The ongoing warming of the Arctic is causing the subsurface ground to thaw and release long-held carbon to the atmosphere.

Scientists from Europe and the US are working together to better track permafrost carbon dynamics. They are trying to understand the mechanisms that lead to abrupt thaws in the permafrost that have taken place in some locations. These rapid thawing events are not well understood. Researchers are also studying the effects of the increasingly frequent wildfires in the Arctic on the permafrost.

Researchers are using satellites to better understand the effects climate change is having on the Arctic environment and how these changes, in turn, are adding to the climate crisis. Permafrost cannot be directly observed from space, so that its presence has to be inferred from measurements like land-surface temperature and soil moisture readings. Terrestrial observations are also necessary for understanding how greenhouse gases – both CO2 and methane – are being emitted from the Arctic.

Thawing permafrost is a ticking timebomb for the environment that demands the growing attention of the scientific community.

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Permafrost thaw: it’s complicated

Photo, posted January 24, 2014, courtesy of Brandt Meixell / USGS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Arctic Communities And Permafrost Thaw | Earth Wise

December 16, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Permafrost is frozen soil, rock or sediment that can be as much as a few thousand feet thick. To qualify as permafrost , the material has to have been at or below the freezing point of water for two or more years. Most of it is located in high latitudes in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Permafrost covers nearly a quarter of the exposed land in the Northern Hemisphere.

Permafrost contains enormous amounts of carbon in the form of frozen soil that includes remnants of plants and animals, in some cases that have been there for more than 20,000 years.

The Arctic region has been warming faster than any place else on earth and thawing permafrost is already unleashing methane and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, adding to the global temperature rise.

Apart from the impact on the global climate, thawing permafrost is making the ground unstable and is causing serious problems for local communities.

Recent research using satellite observations provides an overview of the Arctic to identify communities and infrastructure that will be at risk over the next 30 years.

Using high-resolution data from the Copernicus Sentinel satellite missions along with ground-based data going back to 1997, researchers modeled the permafrost ground temperature trends and extrapolated them out to 2050. The results were that 55% of the infrastructure currently located on permafrost and within 60 miles of the Arctic coastline – infrastructure on which many communities rely – is likely to be affected.

Most human activity in the Arctic takes place along permafrost coasts. Permafrost thaw is exposing these coasts to rapid change that threatens biodiversity and puts pressure on communities.

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Satellites pinpoint communities at risk of permafrost thaw

Photo, posted January 24, 2014, courtesy of Brandt Meixell / USGS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Metals In Western Water Supplies | Earth Wise

October 29, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A new study published by the University of Colorado Boulder looked at the problem of rivers being contaminated by acid rock drainage. Rocks that include sulfide-based minerals, such as pyrite, oxidize when exposed to air and water. The resulting chemical reaction produces sulfuric acid which, when present in water, dissolves metals like lead, cadmium, and zinc. The recent study found that rare earth elements are also leached out of rock by this process.

Rock drainage occurs naturally throughout the western United States, but historic mines that disturbed large amounts of rocks and soil have dramatically increased this process and have led to growing downstream water pollution. Upwards of forty percent of the headwaters of major rivers in the West are contaminated by some form of acid mine or rock drainage.

The warming climate has brought longer summers and less snow in winters. Longer, lower stream flows make it easier for metals to leach into watersheds and concentrate the metals that would otherwise be diluted by snowmelt.

Rare earth elements are essential components of many high-tech devices such as computers, hard drives, and cell phones. There is not a long history of studying the hazards they might represent when they enter the environment.

The study looked at the Snake River watershed in Colorado and found that increasing amounts of rare earth elements are entering Colorado water supplies. Concentrations of rare earth elements are not ordinarily monitored and there are no water quality standards set for them.

According to the researchers, once rare earth elements get into water, they tend to stay there. Traditional treatment processes don’t remove them. It is a growing problem that needs to be addressed.

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Rare earth elements and old mines spell trouble for Western water supplies

Photo, posted October 27, 2007, courtesy of Dion Gillard via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Caribbean Coral Reefs Under Siege | Earth Wise

January 4, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Coral reefs around the world have been suffering from warming seas and increasing acidification, both a result of human activity. In the Caribbean, a new threat has emerged in the form of invasive algae.

New research published in Scientific Reports explains how an aggressive, crust-like alga is overgrowing shallow reefs and taking the place of coral that was damaged by powerful storms that exposed areas of the undersea rock where corals grew.

Researchers from Oxford University, the Carnegie Institution, and California State University Northridge have been studying these peyssonnelid algal crusts, or PACs, for several years in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The PAC has been out-competing coral larvae for surface space and then growing over the existing reef architecture, greatly damaging delicate reef ecosystems.

New corals actually prefer to settle on crusty surfaces created by a different type of algae called crustose algae, or CCA. CCA acts as guideposts for coral larvae by producing biochemical signals as part of a microbial community that entice baby coral to affix itself.

In contrast, the destructive PAC algae exclude coral settlement. The researchers determined that the microbial community associated with PAC algae is deployed to deter grazing from fish and other marine creatures. Unfortunately, it also deters coral.

Fragile coral ecosystems are already under assault by environmental pollution and global warming. Now, in the aftermath of powerful hurricanes like Irma and Maria, algal crusts are taking over reef communities and posing an existential threat to Caribbean corals.

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An unusual microbiome characterises a spatially-aggressive crustose alga rapidly overgrowing shallow Caribbean reefs

Photo, posted January 11, 2015, courtesy of Falco Ermert via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

More Carbon Dioxide From Thawing Permafrost | Earth Wise

July 30, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Arctic is warming much faster than the rest of the planet. Stories about the loss of polar ice and hundred-degree temperatures in Siberia have become commonplace. One of the most troubling aspects of the warming Arctic is the thawing of permafrost. Permafrost is ground that remains frozen for at least two years; some of it has been frozen for tens or hundreds or even thousands of years. Found under a layer of soil, permafrost is composed of rock, soil, sediments, and varying amounts of ice. It stores the carbon-based remains of plants and animals that froze before they could decompose. Permafrost covers almost a quarter of North America, but it is starting to thaw.

Scientists estimate that there are more than 16,000 billion tons of carbon locked away in Arctic permafrost, which is almost double the amount of carbon that is currently in the atmosphere. Climate models predict that the warming of the Arctic could lead to 5 to 15% of that carbon to be emitted as carbon dioxide by the year 2,100, which would be enough to raise global temperatures by 0.3 to 0.4 degrees Celsius.

New research has increased this estimate because it includes a key pathway for CO2 to enter the atmosphere that earlier models ignored. When carbon from thawing permafrost escapes into Arctic lakes and rivers, it is oxidized by ultraviolet and visible light and it then escapes into the atmosphere as CO2. This process is known as photomineralization and is estimated to raise permafrost-related CO2 emissions by 14%.

Recent studies project that with every 1-degree Celsius increase in temperature, 1.5 million square miles of permafrost could be lost through thawing.

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Climate Models Underestimate CO2 Emissions from Permafrost by 14 Percent, Study Finds

Photo, posted July 7, 2014, courtesy of NPS Climate Change via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Saving The Arctic Permafrost | Earth Wise

April 17, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Permafrost is frozen ground – a combination of soil, rock, sand, and ice – that remains at or below freezing for at least two consecutive years. Approximately 25% of the land in the Northern Hemisphere meets this criterion, the majority of which can be found in northern Russia, Canada, Alaska, Iceland, and Scandinavia.

But as a result of the changing climate, these permafrost soils in the Arctic are beginning to thaw. As they thaw, large quantities of greenhouse gases could be released, further accelerating climate change.

A new study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports explores an unconventional countermeasure: resettling massive herds of large herbivores. According to researchers from the University of Hamburg in Germany, herds of horses, bison, and reindeer could be used to significantly slow the loss of permafrost soils.

During Arctic winters, the air temperature is often much colder than the permafrost. Thick layers of snow can insulate the ground from the frigid air, keeping the permafrost warm (relatively speaking). But when the snow cover is scattered and compressed by the hooves of grazing animals, the insulating effect is reduced, which intensifies the freezing of the permafrost.

If climate change continues unchecked, the research team expects permafrost temperatures to rise 3.8-degrees Celsius. This would result in half of the world’s permafrost thawing by the year 2100. But in contrast, researchers found that the permafrost would only warm by 2.1 degrees Celsius with the resettled animals. This 44% reduction in permafrost temperature would preserve 80% of the existing permafrost by 2100.

Natural manipulations of ecosystems could have tremendous results.

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How horses can save the permafrost

Photo, posted July 17, 2012, courtesy of Kitty Terwolbeck via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Turning CO2 Into Rock

January 6, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As the world continues to struggle to find ways to reduce carbon emissions, there is increasing attention being paid to so-called negative emission technologies (NET), which remove and permanently sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The University of Victoria in British Columbia has brought together an international team of experts to explore the possibilities of permanently and safely sequestering CO2 as rock beneath the ocean floor. The Solid Carbon Project seeks to extract carbon dioxide directly from the air and then, using deep-ocean technology powered by offshore solar and wind energy, inject it into sub-seafloor basalt, where it would mineralize into solid carbonate rock.

When CO2 is injected into porous basalt, a type of volcanic rock, it reacts relatively quickly with minerals to form solid carbonate, thereby permanently removing it from the atmosphere. Because 90% of the planet’s basalt is located beneath the ocean floor, the deep ocean is the place to do this kind of carbon sequestration.

The team includes experts in ocean science, carbon mineralization, renewable energy, engineering design, and oil-and-gas drilling/injection operations. Other experts are focusing on the social and legal implications of the NET technology.

Over the next four years, the Solid Carbon Project will assess the integration of multiple existing technologies that will be needed to successfully develop this kind of carbon storage. One of these is the direct air capture technology itself, which will need to be adapted to a renewable energy-powered offshore platform. The best outcome technologies explored by the project will be selected for a real-world demonstration at Ocean Networks Canada’s observatory site, 9,000 feet underwater in the Cascadia Basin, off the coast of British Columbia.

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A rock-solid solution for CO2

Photo courtesy of the University of Victoria.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Smarter Prospecting

November 18, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The global demand for copper and gold continues to grow. Copper is widely used in building materials, plumbing, and electronics. Gold is still highly valued for jewelry and coinage, but nearly a third of the world’s gold is now used in electronics.

Both of these metals are getting increasingly difficult to find as many of the known sources have been exhausted. Companies spend millions of dollars drilling deeper and deeper in search of new deposits.

It costs about $400 to drill one meter into rock and it is not uncommon to drill to depths of one to two kilometers. So, it can cost nearly a million dollars to drill a hole that has no guarantee of success. Given that ore deposits are tiny compared with the totality of the search space, prospecting for these metals is very much like looking for a needle in a haystack.

A researcher at the University of South Australia has developed a suite of geochemical tools to more accurately target valuable mineral deposits and thereby save drilling companies millions of dollars. The goal is to have drilling for valuable minerals be faster, cheaper and more environmentally friendly.

By mapping out where key chemical elements are found in greater concentrations, the new suite of tools greatly increases the chances of finding an ore deposit at a target site and thereby greatly improve the return on investment for exploration companies. The tools have been successfully tested at an iron oxide-copper-gold deposit in the north of South Australia, leading to a four-fold increase in the known footprint of their ore body. Finding economically viable enriched ore sites can generate both revenues and jobs.

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Prospecting for gold just got a lot easier (and cheaper)

Photo, posted April 21, 2005, courtesy of Adam via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Degraded Permafrost In The Arctic

July 11, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Permafrost is defined as rock or soil that has been at or below the freezing point of water for two or more years. Most of it is located in high latitudes in and around the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Permafrost covers nearly a quarter of the exposed land in the Northern Hemisphere.

Permafrost can contain many different materials including bedrock, sediment, organic matter, water and ice. Because of the presence of organic matter, permafrost is potentially the source of significant methane emissions if it thaws and the trapped biomass begins to rot.

A recent study looked at the results of 30 years of aerial surveys and extensive ground mapping of an area of Canada’s high Arctic polar desert known as the Eureka Sound Lowlands. This area has an extremely cold climate and the permafrost there is over 1/3 of a mile thick. It has long been assumed that this landscape was stable.

Research led by McGill University in Montreal has found that this is not the case. The increases in summer air temperatures seen in recent years are initiating widespread changes in the landscape.

A particular landform known as a retrogressive thaw slump that forms when ice within permafrost melts and the land slips down is widely occurring in the area. The absence of vegetation and layers of organic soil in these polar deserts make permafrost in the area particularly vulnerable to increases in summer air temperatures.

The research indicates that despite the cold polar desert conditions that characterize much of the high Arctic, the interaction between ice-rich permafrost systems and climate factors is complex and the links between global warming and permafrost degradation are not well understood.

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Widespread permafrost degradation seen in high Arctic terrain

Photo, posted August 11, 2018, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Rare Earths From Mining Waste

May 3, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The 17 rare earth elements have become important parts of much of modern technology. Despite their name, most of these elements are relatively plentiful in the earth’s crust, but because of their geochemical properties they are typically dispersed and not often found concentrated in minerals. As a result, economically exploitable ore deposits are uncommon. There are no significant sources in the U.S.

Rare earths play important roles in high-performance magnets, electric motors in vehicles, wind turbines, microphones and speakers, and in portable electronics like cell phones. As these applications become ever larger, the need for additional sources of rare earths increases.

Researchers at Idaho National Laboratory and Rutgers University have studied a method for extracting rare-earth elements from mining waste that could greatly increase the world’s supply of these valuable materials.

It turns out that large amounts of rare earths exist in phosphogypsum, a waste product from producing phosphoric acid from phosphate rock. The U.S. alone mined 28 million tons of phosphate rock in 2017. (Phosphoric acid is used in the production of fertilizers and other products).

The researchers estimate that more than a billion tons of phosphogypsum waste sits in piles at storage sites across the U.S. alone. World-wide, about 100,000 tons of rare earth elements per year end up in phosphogypsum waste. This compares to the total current world-wide production of rare earth oxides of 126,000 tons.

The researchers studied methods for extracting the elements from the waste. A method utilizing a common environmental bacterium showed great promise.

There are concerns about residual radioactivity and other environmental issues in dealing with the waste material, but the world’s supply of rare earth elements might become much greater based on this research.

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Critical Materials: Researchers Eye Huge Supply of Rare-Earth Elements from Mining Waste

Photo, posted June 19, 2015, courtesy of David Stanley via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Making Coal To Fight Climate Change

April 19, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Coal is the most harmful fossil fuel for the environment and, furthermore, for human health. Its use has stubbornly persisted because it is so plentiful and, therefore, cheap. As a result, a big part of efforts to fight climate change is finding a way to remove the carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere by the combustion of coal.

Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia have developed a remarkable technology that in effect reverses the process that has led to soaring CO2 levels in the atmosphere. They have found a way to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into coal, after which it can be stored cheaply and safely underground.

Most previous carbon capture and storage technologies have focused on compressing carbon dioxide gas into a liquid form and then pumping it into rock formations. Such techniques are rather expensive, require lots of energy, and pose risks that the liquid CO2 could escape from its underground storage sites. More recently, research on solid metal catalysts has led to the possibility of turning CO2 into solid carbon, but most of these reactions require very high temperatures and use a lot of energy.

The new technique developed at RMIT uses a new class of catalysts based on metal alloys. With a small jolt of electricity applied at room temperature, CO2 can be converted into solid carbon – basically, coal.

If this technique can be industrialized economically, it would be like turning back the clock by taking carbon dioxide that entered the atmosphere by the combustion of coal and turning it back into coal and putting it back underground. It seems like excellent environmental justice.

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