Environment
press releases.

Environment21 May 2024

Conservation of nature’s strongholds needed to halt biodiversity loss

To achieve global biodiversity targets, conservationists and governments must prioritize the establishment and effective management of large, interconnected protected areas with high ecological integrity, John G. Robinson from the Wildlife Conservation Society, US, and colleagues argue in an essay publishing May 21st in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. The Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), signed at the 2022 Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal, recognized the importance of protecting large areas of natural habitat to maintain the resilience and integrity of ecosystems. To halt biodiversity ...

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Environment21 May 2024

Green infrastructure plans need to consider historical racial inequalities, say researchers

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Urban planners increasingly are interested in green infrastructure projects for the health and climate benefits they bring to cities. But without attention to historical development patterns and existing power structures, such projects may not benefit all residents equally and may exacerbate social and racial inequalities, says a group of researchers and practitioners of nature-based solutions for urban areas. The researchers outlined their recommendations for a justice-oriented approach to urban greening projects in a paper published in the journal ...

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Environment21 May 2024

Warming climate intensifies flash droughts worldwide

WASHINGTON — Sudden, severe dry spells known as flash droughts are rising in intensity around the world, with a notable exception in mountainous Central Asia, where flash drought extent is shrinking, according to new research. Heat and changes to precipitation patterns caused by a warming climate are driving these trends, the study found. Flash droughts arrive suddenly, within weeks, hitting communities that are often not prepared and causing lasting impact. They are an emerging concern for water and food security. The new study is the first to apply a systematic, quantitative approach to the global incidence of flash drought, mapping hotspots and ...

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Environment21 May 2024

DRI to host AWE+ wildfire summit

Today, DRI, one of our nation’s leading applied environmental research institutes, together with its Foundation, announced a new global initiative with the first in a series of summits. The event will be held at Encore Las Vegas from August 21-23, 2024. The AWE+ initiative will promote an Adaptable World Environment of strong, resilient communities in a climate shifting world. AWE+ 2024 - Wildfire Recovery and Resilience: Working Across Silos to Drive Solutions - is a global call-to-action for communities ...

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Environment20 May 2024

UC Irvine-led team uncovers ‘vigorous melting’ at Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier

Irvine, Calif., May 20, 2024 — A team of glaciologists led by researchers at the University of California, Irvine used high-resolution satellite radar data to find evidence of the intrusion of warm, high-pressure seawater many kilometers beneath the grounded ice of West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier. In a study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the UC Irvine-led team said that widespread contact between ocean water and the glacier – a process that is replicated throughout Antarctica and in Greenland – causes “vigorous melting” and may require a reassessment of ...

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Environment20 May 2024

Warm seawater speeding up melting of ‘Doomsday Glacier,’ scientists warn

EMBARGOED UNTIL 15:00 EDT MONDAY, MAY 20, 2024 For the first time, there is visible evidence showing that warm seawater is pumping underneath Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier—ominously nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier. An international team of scientists—including a researcher from the University of Waterloo—observed it using satellite imagery and warns that it could accelerate catastrophic sea level rise in 10 to 20 years. The intrusion of seawater causes the ice to continuously lift off the land and settle back down again. Ice melts intensely when it first touches seawater, ...

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Environment20 May 2024

The impacts of climate change on food production

A new peer-reviewed study from researchers at The University of Texas at Arlington; the University of Nevada, Reno; and Virginia Tech shows that climate change has led to decreased pollen production from plants and less pollen more diversity than previously thought, which could have a significant impact on food production. “This research is crucial as it examines the long-term impacts of climate change on plant-pollinator interactions,” said Behnaz Balmaki, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of research in biology at UTA. “This study investigates how shifts in flowering times and extreme weather events affect the availability of critical food ...

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Environment20 May 2024

Endangered migrating eagles impacted by Ukraine war

A new study reveals for the first time the impact of ongoing conflicts on the migration of an endangered bird species. Researchers from the University of East Anglia (UEA), the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and the Estonian University of Life Sciences compared the movement and migration of the Greater Spotted Eagle through Ukraine, before and shortly after it was invaded by Russia in February 2022. They were already studying the species when the war started, with the dangers faced by migratory birds usually related to disruptive weather or drought, changes in land use affecting traditional stopping-off ...

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Environment20 May 2024

Chemical Insights Research Institute partners with Duke University and the East-West Center to examine dust and ash from devastating Hawai’ian wildfires

ATLANTA - Chemical Insights Research Institute (CIRI) of UL Research Institutes applies cutting edge technologies to evaluate the toxicity of burn-impacted land areas affected by the August 2023 Lahaina wildfires. Created with CIRI research partners from Duke University and the East-West Center (EWC) in Hawai’i, the study known as Lahaina Environmental Assessment Project (LEAP), will collect and analyze residual dust, soil and ash samples from properties affected by the fires. These residues, including fine dust, ...

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Environment20 May 2024

Record low Antarctic sea ice ‘extremely unlikely’ without climate change

In 2023, Antarctic sea ice reached historically low levels, with over 2 million square kilometres less ice than usual during winter – equivalent to about ten times the size of the UK. This drastic reduction followed decades of steady growth in sea ice up to 2015, making the sudden decline even more surprising. Using a large climate dataset called CMIP6, BAS researchers investigated this unprecedented sea ice loss. They analysed data from 18 different climate models to understand the probability of such a significant reduction in sea ice and its connection to climate change. Lead author Rachel Diamond explained that while 2023's extreme ...

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Environment17 May 2024

Researchers confirm scale matters in determining vulnerability of freshwater fish to climate changes

The silver chub isn’t considered sensitive to climate change on a national scale, but context matters. For example, if climate change sensitivity is evaluated in only one region of the United States, the freshwater fish appears quite a bit more susceptible. “Relative to other species we looked at in the gulf region of the U.S., the silver chub occupied a pretty small geographic area,” said Samuel Silknetter, a Ph.D. student in biological sciences. “If we didn’t look at the climate sensitivity across multiple ...

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Environment17 May 2024

How heatwaves are affecting Arctic phytoplankton

The basis of the marine food web in the Arctic, the phytoplankton, responds to heatwaves much differently than to constantly elevated temperatures. This has been found by the first targeted experiments on the topic, which were recently conducted at the Alfred Wegener Institute’s AWIPEV Station. The phytoplankton’s behaviour primarily depends on the cooling phases after or between heatwaves, as shown in a study just released in the journal Science Advances. Heatwaves, which we’ve increasingly seen around the globe in recent years, are also becoming more and ...

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Environment17 May 2024

Differing values of nature can still lead to joined up goals for sustainability

Recognising and respecting the different ways nature is valued can enable better environmental decision-making, according to new research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA). International agreements such as the Sustainable Development Goals represent wide support for a sustainable future, living within planetary boundaries and ensuring a safer future for current and next generations. However, there remain huge disagreements about how to advance such goals, often resulting in marginalisation, conflict and inaction. The paper, published in the journal One Earth, ...

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Environment17 May 2024

UNC Greensboro researcher approved for NCInnovation grant funding for lithium refining research

UNC Greensboro researcher Hemali Rathnayake, Ph.D., has been approved for grant funding from NCInnovation to continue her work in developing a cost-effective and efficient lithium refining process for converting lithium into battery-grade lithium carbonate. The grant approval is conditioned on standard next steps, including executed grant agreements and formal notification to government partners. This funding is part of NCInnovation’s larger mission to unlock the innovative potential of North Carolina’s world-class universities. “From ...

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Environment16 May 2024

Wind farms can offset their emissions within two years, new study shows

After spinning for under two years, a wind farm can offset the carbon emissions generated across its entire 30-year lifespan, when compared to thermal power plants. That’s according to a new peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand – which also shows within six months a turbine can generate all the energy consumed across its life-cycle. The research uses data from the Harapaki onshore wind farm in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand – however the authors of the paper explain that their findings would be replicated across most, if not all, wind farms internationally. “The wind turbine technology employed in New Zealand ...

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Environment16 May 2024

What is the carbon footprint of a house in Japan?

Fukuoka, Japan—Researchers at Kyushu University have published a comprehensive analysis on the carbon footprint of constructing a wooden house in Japan. The study covered the total amount of emissions produced, taking into consideration the entire supply chain including the processing and transport of the raw materials that go into building a house. The team hopes that by identifying emission hot spots in the supply chain that go into building a house, policy makers can implement strategies to reduce its climate impact. Their analysis was published in the Journal of Environmental ...

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Environment15 May 2024

Carbon-capture batteries developed to store renewable energy, help climate

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are developing battery technologies to fight climate change in two ways, by expanding the use of renewable energy and capturing airborne carbon dioxide. This type of battery stores the renewable energy generated by solar panels or wind turbines. Utilizing this energy when wind and sunlight are unavailable requires an electrochemical reaction that, in ORNL’s new battery formulation, captures carbon dioxide from industrial emissions and converts it to value-added products. ORNL researchers recently created and tested two different formulations for batteries that ...

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Environment15 May 2024

A novel multifunctional catalyst turns methane into valuable hydrocarbons

Methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes significantly towards global warming, is also an important source of energy and an essential chemical resource. When used as a chemical feedstock, methane is typically converted into methanol first and then into hydrocarbons. However, this sequential conversion requires complex industrial setups. More importantly, since methane is a very stable molecule, its conversion into methanol requires tremendous amounts of energy when using conventional means, such ...

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Environment15 May 2024

Summers warm up faster than winters, fossil shells from Antwerp show

Niels de Winter, affiliated with the Department of Earth Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the AMGC research group at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, measured alongside colleagues from institutions such as the Institute for Natural Sciences in Brussels the chemical composition of fossil shells from Antwerp, Belgium. Those shells originate from molluscs such as oysters, cockles, and scallops found during the construction works of the Kieldrecht Lock. The molluscs lived lived during the Pliocene, approximately ...

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Environment15 May 2024

Climate change is most prominent threat to pollinators, CABI Reviews paper finds

A paper published in the CABI Reviews journal has found that climate change is the most prominent threat to pollinators – such as bumblebees, wasps, and butterflies – who are essential for biodiversity conservation, crop yields and food security. The research, which is entitled ‘What are the main reasons for the world-wide decline in pollinator populations?’, suggests that many of the threats to pollinators result from human activities. Pollinator populations are declining worldwide and 85% of flowering plant species and 87 of the leading global crops rely on pollinators for seed production. The decline of ...

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Environment15 May 2024

How will climate change affect the distribution of jellyfish and other gelatinous zooplankton in the Arctic Ocean?

Gelatinous zooplankton, including jellyfish and other diverse, nearly transparent organisms, play important roles in marine ecosystems. Climate change is expected to significantly alter their populations and distributions. New research published in Limnology and Oceanography examines their fate in the Arctic Ocean, one of the fastest warming oceans on Earth. Investigators coupled three-dimensional species distribution models with oceanographic variables from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6. The analyses allowed the team to identify gelatinous ...

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Environment15 May 2024

The case for sharing carbon storage risk

Even the most optimistic projections for the rapid build-out of solar, wind, and other low-carbon resources acknowledge that coal, natural gas, and other fossil fuels will dominate the world’s energy mix for decades to come. If the vast greenhouse gas emissions from burning these fossil fuels continue to enter the planet’s atmosphere, global warming will not be limited to sustainable levels. The capture and geologic sequestration of carbon emissions (CCS) offer a promising solution to the world’s carbon conundrum. Even with growing technological maturity ...

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Environment14 May 2024

How to ensure biodiversity data are FAIR, linked, open and future-proof? Policy makers and research funders receive expert recommendations from the BiCIKL project

Within the Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library (BiCIKL) project, 14 European institutions from ten countries, spent the last three years elaborating on services and high-tech digital tools, in order to improve the findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability (FAIR-ness) of various types of data about the world’s biodiversity. These types of data include peer-reviewed scientific literature, occurrence records, natural history collections, DNA data and more. By ensuring all those data are readily available and efficiently interlinked to each other, the project consortium’s intention is to provide better tools to the scientific community, ...

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Environment14 May 2024

90% of Floridians believe climate change is happening

The latest edition of Florida Atlantic University’s “Florida Climate Resilience Survey,” found that 90% of Floridians believe that climate change is happening. In comparison, a recent Yale University survey showed 72% of all Americans believe climate change is happening. The FAU survey includes questions on beliefs about climate change, experience with extreme weather events and support for climate-related policies. The Florida Climate Resilience Survey also shows belief in human-caused climate change has surged among Florida Independents while slipping among Republicans in the state since last fall. But despite these changes, the latest edition of the survey ...

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Environment14 May 2024

A bionanomachine for green chemistry

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have for the first time precisely characterised the enzyme styrene oxide isomerase, which can be used to produce valuable chemicals and drug precursors in an environmentally friendly manner. The study appears today in the journal Nature Chemistry. Enzymes are powerful biomolecules that can be used to produce many substances at ambient conditions. They enable “green” chemistry, which reduces environmental pollution resulting from processes used in synthetic chemistry. One such tool from nature has now been characterised in detail by ...

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