stabilize

Green grout for stabilizing buildings

March 31, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

We are all familiar with the grout that is used for tiles in our homes. We are less familiar with grout that is used to stabilize the soil beneath buildings. Grouting is a process of ground improvement by injecting materials that can fill voids and cracks, strengthen and increase the bearing capacity of soil, and reduce permeability.

Traditional grouting methods have environmental downsides. Most often, silica-based chemical grouts are used, and they are produced through energy-intensive processes that contribute substantially to carbon dioxide emissions. As is the case for all materials and practices of the construction industry, developing sustainable, low-emission alternatives to conventional grouting materials has become an important priority.

Researchers from the Shibaura Institute of Technology in Japan have developed an innovative new grout material called Colloidal Silica Recovered from Geothermal Fluids. This grout material enhances soil stabilization and simultaneously reduces the environmental impact of geothermal energy harvesting.

Geothermal energy production generates large amounts of silica-rich waste fluids which creates challenges for its maintenance and disposal. The new grout repurposes this waste material thereby transforming an industrial byproduct into a valuable construction material.

The new grout material is particularly valuable in earthquake-prone regions, where soil stabilization is essential in preventing structural damage during seismic events. In addition, the grout’s superior water-sealing properties makes it ideal for underground construction projects like tunnels, subways, and basements. The new grout in an important step for the construction industry’s efforts to achieve carbon neutrality.

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From Waste to Wonder: Revolutionary Green Grout for Sustainable Construction Practices

Photo, posted July 8, 2011, courtesy of MTA Construction & Development Mega Projects via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

The impact of climate change on agriculture

October 18, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Agriculture is a major part of the climate problem and remains one of the hardest human activities to decarbonize. Agriculture is responsible for approximately 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

On farms around the world, excess fertilizer gets broken down by microbes in the soil, releasing nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

According to a sweeping global research review recently published in the journal Science, greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture are now 18 times higher than they were in the 1960s.

The research, which was co-written by professors at the University of Minnesota with more than 20 experts around the world, also reveals the likelihood of an emergent feedback loop between climate and agriculture. As the changing climate puts more pressure on the global food supply, agriculture will, out of necessity, adopt practices that may exacerbate its environmental impact. Without changes in agriculture, this feedback loop could make it impossible to achieve the Paris Climate Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The research identifies several agricultural practices that could improve efficiency and stabilize our food supply in the decades to come, including precision farming, perennial crop integration, agrivoltaics, nitrogen fixation, and novel genome editing.

Finding ways to reduce the warming impact of agriculture while maintaining high crop yields are essential to both mitigating climate change and protecting our food supply from its impacts.

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Impact of Climate Change on Agriculture Suggests Even Greater Challenges to the Environment, Global Food Supply and Public Health

Photo, posted October 16, 2010, courtesy of Timlewisnm via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

More mosquitoes in a warming climate

January 26, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Over millions of years, Earth’s climate has warmed up and cooled down many times. However, today the planet is warming much faster than it ever has over human history. According to scientists, the warming is primarily the result of increased anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, human activities are responsible for nearly all of the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions over the last 150 years.

According to a new study published in the journal Ecology, the warming climate may soon mean more mosquitoes. A research team, led by scientists from Virginia Commonwealth University, found that rising temperatures, often linked to climate change, can make predators of mosquito larvae less effective at controlling mosquito populations. According to researchers, these warmer temperatures accelerate the development time of larvae, which leads to a smaller window of time in which predators like dragonflies could eat them. As a result, twice as many mosquito larvae could make it to adulthood in the study area.

Predators help stabilize ecosystems and food webs. The study looked at predator-prey interactions between dragonfly nymphs and mosquito larvae. In the study of Belle Isle along the James River in Richmond, Virginia, the research team found that warmer pools had more aquatic rock pool mosquito larvae – even when their predators that naturally control the populations were present.

While this species of mosquito is not an important disease vector, the researchers emphasize that these findings likely apply to other mosquito species that do act as vectors for diseases, such as West Nile or Zika virus.

The changing climate is creating the perfect environment for mosquitoes to thrive.

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Hotter weather caused by climate change could mean more mosquitos, according to VCU-led study

Photo, posted June 20, 2014, courtesy of John Tann via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Global Warming Could Stabilize | Earth Wise

February 19, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The world has been heading toward climate disaster with the effects of greenhouse gas-induced warming looming larger and larger. But recent analysis published in Nature Climate Change offers hope that rapidly eliminating emissions could stabilize global temperatures just within a couple of decades.

For quite some time, it has been assumed that further global warming would be locked in for generations regardless of the extent of emissions reductions going forward. This conclusion was based on having a certain carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere which would linger for hundreds of years even if emissions were reduced.

Recent analysis takes into account the dynamism of the Earth’s natural systems which could actually reduce atmospheric CO₂ content because of the huge carbon absorption capacity of oceans, wetlands, and forests. The key requirement is to drastically reduce emissions so that these natural systems can take over.

More than 100 countries have pledged to get to net zero emissions by 2050. That means they will emit no more carbon dioxide than is removed from the atmosphere by such actions as restoring forests. The UK, Japan, and the European Union are among the countries that have set this zero target, and the United States is joining the club.

Climate models show that a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius over that of the pre-industrial period would lead to global calamities that include punishing heatwaves, flooding, and mass displacement of people. The world has already heated up by 1.1 degrees and governments have committed to restrain the rise to less than 1.5 degrees under the Paris Climate Agreement.

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Global Warming Could Stabilize Faster than Originally Thought If Nations Achieve Net Zero

Photo, posted September 10, 2017, courtesy of Ron Cogswell via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Carbon Capture As Big Business

December 26, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Removing greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere is an essential part of the overall effort to achieve zero net carbon emissions and stabilize the climate. Since we have not been able to reduce emissions fast enough to do the job, it is important to find ways to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

There are many ways to do it, but they tend to be rather expensive and, so far, the need to mitigate climate change does not seem to provide sufficient incentive. A new study by researchers at UCLA, the University of Oxford, and five other institutions, analyzed the possibility of creating a large global industry based on capturing carbon dioxide and turning it into commercial products.

The study investigated the potential future scale and cost of 10 different ways to use carbon dioxide, including in fuels and chemicals, plastics, building materials, soil management, and forestry. The study looked at processes using carbon dioxide captured from waste products that are produced by burning fossil fuels as well as by simply capturing it directly from the atmosphere. The study also looked at processes that use carbon dioxide captured biologically by photosynthesis.

The conclusions of the study were that on average each of the ten utilization pathways could use about half a billion tons of carbon dioxide that would otherwise escape into the atmosphere. Thus, theoretically, these various pathways could take more than five billion tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Currently, fossil fuel combustion emits about 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide.

The authors of the study stress that there is no silver bullet in the fight against climate change. It will require multiple approaches – including CO2 removal for industrial use – to make real progress

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Carbon dioxide capture and use could become big business

Photo, posted September 18, 2015, courtesy of Tony Webster via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.