Enviro

Century-old sugar maples in Wisconsin. Five-hundred-year-old cedars in Oklahoma. Fifty-foot-wide oaks in Georgia. These trees grace our nation’s old-growth forests, and scientists say they hold unexplored mysteries from their roots to their rings. In an effort to steward these resources, on Earth Day 2022 the Biden Administration called upon the Department of Agriculture and the […]

April 25, 2023 – The University of Bristol-led research, published today in Nature Communications, shows that unprecedented heat extremes combined with socioeconomic vulnerability puts certain regions, such as Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, and Central America, most in peril. Countries yet to experience the most intense heatwaves are often especially susceptible, as adaptation measures are often only […]

RENO, Nev. – Asphalt pavement formulated with recycled plastic has successfully survived heavy truck traffic and the atmospheric rivers of the winter of 2022-23 after a section of Highway 99 in California flooded in January. “It’s a testament to the new technology,” Elie Hajj, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Nevada, […]

April 19, 2023 – As climate change causes ocean temperatures to rise, one of Greenland’s previously most stable glaciers is now retreating at an unprecedented rate, according to a new study.  Led by researchers at The Ohio State University, a team found that between 2018 and 2021, Steenstrup Glacier in Greenland has retreated about 5 […]

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee, Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries held a hearing on bills including the RESCUE Whales Act, the only one of four on the subcommittee’s agenda that would benefit wildlife and help combat the biodiversity and climate crises.  Introduced by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the bill would […]

April 18, 2023 – Leading up to the 13th anniversary of one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history — the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill — Oceana is calling on President Joe Biden to lead on climate change and honor his campaign promise to prevent new offshore oil and gas drilling in U.S. waters. In a new report released […]

American Rivers has named the Chilkat and Klehini Rivers among America’s Most Endangered Rivers®, pointing out the threats of a proposed copper and zinc mine that would likely result in contamination of nearby creeks that feed directly into the two rivers. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must enforce the Clean Water Act to ensure appropriate […]

A large mass of Sargassum ‘seaweed’ circling around the Gulf of Mexico may soon wash up along the US west coast near Florida – depending on the right combination of currents and wind. The bloom, which may likely be the largest ever recorded, is so large that it’s visible from space. Sargassum is a leafy, […]

New research reveals that ice being lost from glaciers that flow into lakes in the Himalayas has been significantly underestimated. This discovery has critical implications for predicting the demise of the region’s glaciers and for managing critical water resources. Glaciers in the Himalayas are part of the ‘third pole’, so-called because ice fields in high-mountain […]

Woods Hole, Mass. April 6, 2023 — A wax that is derived from a commonly grown marine microalga could be the next big thing in cosmetics and personal care products, thanks to a recent license agreement between the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Western Washington University (WWU)—which jointly own the patents—and Upwell Cosmetics, a start-up […]

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 […]