Environment
press releases.

Environment25 Apr 2024

First-of-its-kind study definitively shows that conservation actions are effective at halting and reversing biodiversity loss

A new study published online today, April 25, in the scientific journal Science provides the strongest evidence to date that not only is nature conservation successful, but that scaling conservation interventions up would be transformational for halting and reversing biodiversity loss—a crisis that can lead to ecosystem collapses and a planet less able to support life—and reducing the effects of climate change. The findings of this first-ever comprehensive meta-analysis of the impact of conservation action ...

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Environment25 Apr 2024

Climate change could become the main driver of biodiversity decline by mid-century

Global biodiversity has declined between 2% and 11% during the 20th century due to land-use change alone, according to a large multi-model study published in Science. The projections show that climate change could become the main driver of biodiversity decline by the mid-21st century. Land-use change is considered the largest driver of biodiversity change, according to the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). However, scientists are divided over how much biodiversity has changed in past decades. To better answer this question, an international team of researchers modeled the impacts of land-use change ...

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Environment25 Apr 2024

Voluntary corporate emissions targets not enough to create real climate action

Companies’ emissions reduction targets should not be the sole measure of corporate climate ambition, according to a new perspective paper. Relying on emissions can favour more established companies and hinder innovation, say the authors, who suggest updating regulations to improve corporate climate action. The paper, published today in Science, is by an international team led by Utrecht University, which includes Imperial College London researchers. Lead author of the study Dr Yann Robiou Du Pont, from the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht ...

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Environment25 Apr 2024

Curiosity promotes biodiversity

Exploratory behavior is one of the fundamental personality traits of animals – and these traits influence their probability of survival, among other things. For example, curious individuals can inhabit different areas in their habitats compared to more cautious conspecifics. At the same time, however, they expose themselves to a greater risk of being discovered and eaten. Exploratory behavior as a factor in evolution The cichlids of Africa’s Lake Tanganyika exhibit extraordinary diversity in terms ...

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Environment25 Apr 2024

Warming Arctic reduces dust levels in parts of the planet

Climate change is a global phenomenon, but its impacts are felt at a very local level. Take, for example, dust. Dust can have a huge impact on local air quality, food security, energy supply and public health. Yet, little is known about how global climate change is impacting dust levels. Previous studies have found that dust levels are actually decreasing across India, particularly northern India, the Persian Gulf Coast and much of the Middle East, but the reason has remained unclear. Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) are working to understand how ...

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Environment25 Apr 2024

Estimating emissions potential of decommissioned gas wells from shale samples

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Extracting natural gas from shale formations can provide an abundant, lower-carbon footprint fossil fuel, but also creates concerns over increased methane emissions. A team led by Penn State researchers has developed a new tool that can estimate the emission potential of shale wells after they are no longer active. The findings, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, revealed that methane begins diffusing from the shale formation after a well is decommissioned and that this represents a notable source of methane ...

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Environment25 Apr 2024

ASC scientists released long-term data of ground solar-induced fluorescence to improve understanding of canopy-level photosynthesis

In recent years, the scientific community has increasingly turned its attention to sustainable agriculture, aiming to maximize crop yield while minimizing environmental impact. A crucial aspect of this research involves understanding the fundamental processes of plant photosynthesis and how they can be monitored at scale. One promising method for assessing photosynthetic activity is through the measurement of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence, a byproduct of photosynthesis that can be detected ...

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Environment25 Apr 2024

Extreme long-term research shows: Herring arrives earlier in the Wadden Sea due to climate change

Due to the changing climate, young herring arrive in the Wadden Sea earlier and earlier in spring. That is shown in a new publication by NIOZ ecologists Mark Rademaker, Myron Peck and Anieke van Leeuwen, in this month's journal Global Change Biology. "The fact that we were able to demonstrate this, was only due to very consistently, for more than 60 years, and continuously sampling the fish every spring and every fall with exactly the same fyke every time", Rademaker says. "Recognizing this kind of change requires extreme precision ...

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Environment25 Apr 2024

Plastic food packaging contains harmful substances

Plastic is a very complex material that can contain many different chemicals, some of which can be harmful. This is also true for plastic food packaging. “We found as many as 9936 different chemicals in a single plastic product used as food packaging,” said Martin Wagner, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU’s) Department of Biology. Wagner has been working with chemicals in plastic products for several years. He is part of a research group at NTNU that ...

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Environment25 Apr 2024

Political ‘color’ affects pollution control spending in the US

A new study led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) shows how firms in the United States behave differently depending on the political party in charge - even if they do not change policies. The researchers, from UEA in the UK and Colorado School of Mines in the US, investigated the implications of changes in energy companies’ behaviour in response to the outcome of gubernatorial elections, which take place to elect state governors. Using elections where the outcome is very close to see how unpredictable changes in the ruling party affect things, they focused on the behaviour of ...

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Environment25 Apr 2024

Climate change is multiplying the threat caused by antimicrobial resistance

*Please mention the ESCMID Global Congress (formerly ECCMID) Barcelona, 27-30 April) if using this material* Climate change is multiplying the threat caused by antimicrobial resistance (AMR), amplifying its growing risk through increasing global temperatures, greenhouse gas emissions and rising sea levels. This warning along will be given in a new evidence review at this year’s ESCMID Global Congress (formerly ECCMID) (27-30 April), by Professor Sabiha Essack, South African Research Chair in Antibiotic Resistance and One ...

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Environment24 Apr 2024

New research confirms plastic production is directly linked to plastic pollution

APRIL 24, 2024 – A research paper published today in Science Advances reveals a direct correlation between plastic production and plastic pollution, such that every 1% increase in plastic production is associated with a 1% increase in plastic pollution in the environment. The study finds that fast-moving consumer goods companies disproportionately contribute to the problem more than household and retail companies. The study marks the first robust quantification of the global relationship between plastic production and pollution. The research, led by scientists ...

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Environment24 Apr 2024

Can climate change accelerate transmission of malaria? Pioneering research sheds light on impacts of temperature

In 2022, an estimated 249 million malaria cases killed 608,000 people in 85 countries worldwide including the United States, according to the World Health Organization. Malaria continues to pose a considerable public health risk in tropical and subtropical areas, where it impacts human health and economic progress. Despite concerns about the potential impact of climate change on increasing malaria risk, there is still limited understanding of how temperature affects malaria transmission – until now. Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease caused by a parasite that spreads from bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. If left untreated in humans, malaria can cause severe symptoms, ...

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Environment24 Apr 2024

Postpartum depression after adolescent stress shows a dysregulated HPA axis: a cross-species translational study

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Adverse life events are a known and predominant risk factor for postpartum depression in women after delivery of their baby. Furthermore, the postpartum depression in women who have experienced adverse life events tends to be refractory to treatment. In a study using a mouse model and human subjects, researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Johns Hopkins Medicine show that stress from adolescent social isolation in mice elicits a prolonged elevation of corticosterone levels and glucocorticoid signaling, which in turn results ...

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Environment24 Apr 2024

Modeling broader effects of wildfires in Siberia

As wildfires in Siberia become more common, global climate modeling estimates significant impacts on climate, air quality, health, and economies in East Asia and across the northern hemisphere. The global effects of increasing wildfires in Siberia have been modeled by researchers at Hokkaido University and colleagues at the University of Tokyo and Kyushu University. The results, published in the journal Earth’s Future, suggest significant and widespread effects on air quality, climate, health, and economics under the most extreme wildfire scenarios. The authors performed global numerical simulation experiments to evaluate how the increased intensity of wildfires ...

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Environment24 Apr 2024

Single-walled carbon nanotubes doped with ‘nitrogen’ enhance the performance of secondary battery anode

Dr. Han Joong Tark and student researcher Lee Do Geun at the Nano Hybrid Technology Research Center of Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute(KERI) have developed a new manufacturing technique for "silicon/nitrogen-doped carbon composite anode materials." These materials aim to enhance the capacity and stability of lithium-ion battery anodes. Silicon, despite offering significantly higher energy density compared to graphite (a common anode material), suffers from a major drawback: it expands 3-4 times during charging and discharging, leading to performance degradation. To address this issue, researchers are blending ...

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Environment24 Apr 2024

Novel Au-BiFeO3 nanostructures for efficient and sustainable degradation of pollutants

The need for sustainable and environment-friendly solutions has accelerated the global demand for green and renewable technologies. In this regard, semiconductor photocatalysts have emerged as an attractive solution, owing to their potential in mitigating pollutants and harnessing solar energy efficiently. Photocatalysts are materials that initiate chemical reactions when exposed to light. Despite their progress, commonly used photocatalysts suffer from reduced photocatalytic activity and a narrow operation range within the visible ...

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Environment24 Apr 2024

Securing competitiveness of energy-intensive industries through relocation: The pulling power of renewables

“Our new study shows that renewable-scarce countries like parts of the EU, Japan and South Korea could save between 18 to 38 percent in production costs”, explains Philipp Verpoort, scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and lead author of the study published in Nature Energy. “They could do so by relocating their production of industrial basic materials like green steel and chemicals based on green hydrogen to countries where renewable energy is cheap.” The use of renewable electricity and green hydrogen is ...

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Environment24 Apr 2024

Will future hurricanes compromise New England forests’ ability to store and sequester carbon?

Nature-based climate solutions can help mitigate climate change, especially in forested regions capable of storing and sequestering vast amounts of carbon. New research published in Global Change Biology indicates that a single hurricane in New England, one of the most heavily forested regions in the United States, can down 4.6–9.4% of the total aboveground forest carbon, an amount much greater than the carbon sequestered annually by New England’s forests. The work revealed that emissions from hurricanes are not instantaneous—it takes approximately 19 years for downed carbon to become a net emission, and 100 years for 90% of the downed carbon ...

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Environment24 Apr 2024

Towards sustainable food systems: global initiatives and innovations

Contemporary food systems were originally developed to tackle challenges of the mid-20th century, aiming to supply abundant, efficient, non-perishable starchy calories to accommodate the expanding global population. Although substantial progress has been made in global food security over the past several decades, there still exist large populations experiencing hunger worldwide. Currently, global hunger primarily refers to insufficient calorie intake. Hidden hunger is the presence of multiple micronutrient in the absence of an energy-deficit diet. Hidden hunger, particularly the inadequate consumption of high-quality protein, ...

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Environment24 Apr 2024

Coral identified as oldest bioluminescent organism, suggesting a new model of ancient ecology

An international team of researchers, led by Danielle DeLeo from the Smithsonian Institution, has identified eight organisms with previously unknown luminosity. Using genetic findings from these organisms and previous studies, they estimated that coral bioluminescence originated about 540 million years ago in the Cambrian period, making them the earliest bioluminescent organisms. During this period, they shared the oceans with invertebrates with light-sensitive eyes, hinting that interspecies interactions occurred involving light. They published their findings in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. While shallow-water ...

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Environment24 Apr 2024

Critical minerals recovery from electronic waste

RICHLAND, Wash.—There’s some irony in the fact that devices that seem indispensable to modern life—mobile phones, personal computers, and anything battery-powered—depend entirely on minerals extracted from mining, one of the most ancient of human industries. Once their usefulness is spent, we typically return these objects to the Earth in landfills, by the millions. But what if we could “mine” electronic waste (e-waste), recovering the useful minerals contained within them, instead of throwing them away? A clever method of recovering valuable minerals from e-waste, developed by a research team at the Department ...

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Environment23 Apr 2024

Rensselaer researcher finds that frog species evolved rapidly in response to road salts

When we think of evolution, we think of a process that happens over hundreds or thousands of years. In research recently published, a team led by Rick Relyea, Ph.D., professor of biological sciences and David M. Darrin ’40 Senior Endowed Chair at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, found a species of frog that has evolved over the course of merely 25 years. The adaptation was spurred on by something many assume is innocuous: salt. “We’ve been applying de-icing salts to reduce car accidents in snowy and icy conditions in the United States for 80 years, and we currently apply four times more road salt than we did ...

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Environment23 Apr 2024

Marine plankton communities changed long before extinctions

For hundreds of millions of years, the oceans have teemed with single-celled organisms called foraminifera, hard-shelled, microscopic creatures at the bottom of the food chain. The fossil record of these primordial specks offers clues into future changes in global biodiversity, related to our warming climate. Using a high-resolution global dataset of planktonic foraminifera fossils that’s among the richest biological archives available to science, researchers have found that major environmental stress events leading to mass extinctions are reliably preceded by subtle changes in how a biological ...

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Environment23 Apr 2024

Marginalized communities developed 'disaster subculture' when living through extreme climate events, study finds

LAWRENCE — Locations around the globe are experiencing climate disasters on a regular basis. But some of the most marginalized populations experience disasters so often it has come to be normalized. A new study from the University of Kansas found residents of one Seoul, South Korea, neighborhood have grown so accustomed to living through extreme climate events they have developed a “disaster subculture” that challenges both views of reality and how social agencies can help. Joonmo Kang, assistant professor ...

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