Environment
press releases.

Environment13 Oct 2023

Sustainability presents huge opportunities for business and financial institutions

Why does sustainability matter for businesses and financial institutions? For centuries, competitive markets have been drivers for growth and improvement of quality of life. It is paramount to ensure these markets are compatible with sustainability and can adequately mitigate and adapt to climate change. These changes require a significant amount of capital, and knowledgeable investment and business professionals to deploy it Sustainability: Business and Investment Implications explores the opportunities and challenges presented by sustainability, the energy transition and the decarbonization of the economy. Over the past years, the United Nations and global ...

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Environment13 Oct 2023

Exploring the genetic potential of eggplant's wild relatives for sustainable agriculture

In the pursuit of sustainable agriculture, enhancing nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in crops stands as a primary objective. With the prolific use of nitrogen (N) fertilizers since the 20th century, agricultural productivity has seen remarkable growth. However, excessive use of N fertilizers has resulted in serious environmental threats and energy consumption. Crop wild relatives (CWR) provide valuable genetic resources to address this issue through breeding programs. Wild relatives of eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) are classified into primary (GP1), ...

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Environment13 Oct 2023

New South American site reveals extraordinary fossils from the end of the age of the dinosaurs

Release No. 23-35 Contact: Justin Samuel +1-303-357-1026 jsamuel@geosociety.org Contributed by Emily Zawacki Pittsburgh, Pa., USA: The discovery of a spectacular fossil site in Argentina is helping shed new light on life at the end of the Cretaceous, the time period just before the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. New research presented this Monday at the Geological Society of America’s GSA Connects 2023 meeting by Matthew Lamanna, a paleontologist and the principal dinosaur researcher at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, describes exciting fossil finds from a site known as the Cañadón Tomás Quarry ...

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Environment13 Oct 2023

Caution, ocelot crossing: special wildlife exits on busy roads help protect endangered cat

The Texas ocelot (Leopardus pardalis albescens) is endangered due to historic hunting, habitat loss, inbreeding, and traffic collisions. Today, only between 50 and 80 ocelots remain in the US, exclusively in Willacy and Cameron counties in southern Texas. These two populations are isolated from the larger one in northwestern Mexico by highways and urban development. “Here we show that a range of species, including middle-sized carnivores such as bobcats and coyotes, successfully use wildlife exits, a new type of mitigation structure specifically designed for the US endangered ...

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Environment12 Oct 2023

Boom-and-bust cycles in grey whale population associated with changing Arctic ecosystem

Even highly mobile, large, and long-lived species are sensitive to dynamic and changing conditions as the Arctic warms. A new study reports that population swings in eastern North Pacific grey whales – some of which have resulted in recent mass mortality events – are driven by changing prey biomass and ice cover in the Arctic. Climate change is driving rapid change in Arctic ecosystems, including the highly productive shallow basins of the Pacific Arctic, which are critical marine areas that support seasonal foraging opportunities for various migratory marine species. While climate impacts affect lower-trophic level and short-lived species most directly, ...

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Environment12 Oct 2023

Gray whales experience major population swings as a result of Arctic conditions, research shows

NEWPORT, Ore. – Dynamic and changing Arctic Ocean conditions likely caused three major mortality events in the eastern North Pacific gray whale population since the 1980s, a new study has found. During each of these die-offs, including one that began in 2019 and is ongoing, the gray whale population was reduced by up to 25% over just a few years, said Joshua Stewart, an assistant professor with Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute and the study’s lead author. “These are extreme population swings that we did not expect to see in a large, long-lived species like gray whales,” Stewart said. “When the availability ...

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Environment12 Oct 2023

Around the globe, climate adaptation lacks coordination

Viewed globally, it is above all individuals and households that are pursuing adaptation to the impacts of climate change; systematic networking of the various groups affected is lacking. This is the conclusion reached by an international team of experts from Universität Hamburg’s Cluster of Excellence for climate research (CLICCS) and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU). Their meta-study was just released in the journal Nature Climate Change. For their meta-study, the 30 authors analyzed more than 1,400 academic studies on climate change adaptation. By doing so, they offer the first global overview of which groups of actors are pursuing adaptation – and ...

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Environment12 Oct 2023

Flagship individuals can boost conservation

“Flagship” individual animals like Cecil the lion or Freya the walrus can boost conservation, new research suggests. Much-loved species like pandas and polar bears are widely used in conservation campaigns. However, a new study argues that individual animals or plants can also be used as flagships, with enormous potential to raise awareness and mobilise public support. The recent outcry over the felling of the “Sycamore Gap” tree in the UK demonstrates the power of individual plants or animals in public opinion. “Flagship individuals typically share some common characteristics,” ...

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Environment12 Oct 2023

New center addresses global climate change impacts on water, other resources

Jordan ranks second among countries with the lowest access to water and is expected to reach water insecurity by 2030. Within the country, the most water deprived communities live in the Northeast region of Mafraq’s Azraq Basin which is also home to approximately 120,000 resettled Syrian refugees who are dependent on water resources. A new three-year program called the Global Center on Climate Change, Water, Energy, Food, and Health Systems, led by the University of California San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human ...

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Environment12 Oct 2023

Inferring wildfire intensity from quartz luminescence

Pittsburgh, Pa., USA: On 8 June 2020, the Mangum Fire ignited 16 miles north of the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. By the time it was mostly contained, about a month later, the fire had burned over 70,000 acres of land. April Phinney, a M.Sc. candidate at Utah State University, immediately started drafting a burn intensity map based on remote sensing data. Six months later, she set boots on the burned ground and started collecting soil samples, hoping they would contain quartz grains. This research ...

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Environment12 Oct 2023

Toward a global scientific consensus: identifying vulnerable marine ecosystems through imagery

The scientific community is taking a significant step towards establishing a consensus on the designation of Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) from imagery data, as highlighted in the new article titled "Towards a scientific community consensus on designating Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems from imagery," authored by Dr. Amy R. Baco and colleagues, and published in PeerJ Life & Environment. “Many scientists around the world were working independently on a similar question: Given the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) regulations for deep-sea Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems ...

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Environment12 Oct 2023

UTSA study could remove carbon emissions from atmosphere

Zachary Tonzetich, an associate professor in the UTSA College of Sciences’ chemistry department, is part of a duo that has been awarded a one-year, $100,000 grant from The Welch Foundation for a project that could remove carbon emissions from the atmosphere. Tonzetich and his research collaborator Anthony Cozzolino, an associate professor in Texas Tech University’s chemistry department, were the recipients of a WelchX pilot grant this past August. The WelchX program brings together leading chemistry researchers from across Texas to address challenging issues that are ...

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Environment12 Oct 2023

New research shows why hunting for the cheapest plane ticket is a waste of your time

Buy your ticket on a Tuesday. Search in your browser’s incognito mode. Use a VPN to pretend you live in Suriname. “There are so many hacks out there for finding cheaper airline tickets,” says Olivia Natan, an assistant professor of marketing at the Haas School of Business. “But our data shows many of these beliefs are wrong.” With four colleagues—Ali Hortaçsu and Timothy Schwieg from the University of Chicago, Kevin Williams from Yale, and Hayden Parsley from the University of Texas at Austin—Natan looked deeply into the structure and processes behind how ...

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Environment12 Oct 2023

TikTok may help farmers cultivate empathy around climate change

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Farmers are used to growing crops and producing other goods, but a new study led by Penn State researchers suggests the social media platform TikTok may help them cultivate something new: empathy around the issue of climate change. The researchers published their work in the Journal of Rural Studies. The team, who analyzed responses to climate change TikToks posted by farmers, found that many people responded to the videos with warmth and compassion, signaling emotional empathy. However, the researchers also found that the videos were not as successful at triggering cognitive empathy ...

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Environment12 Oct 2023

Flooding that closed Alaska's Dalton Highway also caused widespread ground sinking

The massive 2015 flooding of the Sagavanirktok River in northern Alaska had immediate impacts, including closure of the Dalton Highway for several days, but it also contributed to longer-term ground subsidence in the permafrost-rich region. That’s the finding by assistant professor Simon Zwieback at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute in a study published Sept. 27 by the journal Permafrost and Periglacial Processes. Zwieback is the paper’s lead author. UAF scientists Mikhail Kanevskiy, Donald Walker, Vladimir ...

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Environment11 Oct 2023

Rivers may not recover from drought for years

Lack of rainfall is not the only measure of drought. New UC Riverside research shows that despite a series of storms, the impact of drought can persist in streams and rivers for up to 3.5 years. There are two measures of drought in streams. One measure is the total water level, which is impacted by snowmelt and rainfall. Many researchers examine this measurement. Another measure is baseflow, which is the portion of streamflow fed by groundwater. Fewer researchers examine baseflow droughts, and there was not previously an accurate way to measure them. Because baseflow is strongly tied to groundwater, and because the ...

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Environment11 Oct 2023

Tens of thousands of endangered sharks and rays caught off Congo

Tens of thousands of endangered sharks and rays are caught by small-scale fisheries off the Republic of the Congo each year, new research shows. Scientists surveyed fish brought ashore at Songolo, which is home to more than 60% of the country's “artisanal” fishers (small boats, small engines, hand-hauled lines and nets). In three years, the team – led by the University of Exeter in partnership with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Congo Program and the Republic of the Congo’s fisheries department – recorded more than 73,000 sharks and rays landed. Most were juveniles, and 98% of individuals were of species listed as vulnerable, ...

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Environment11 Oct 2023

Bouldering in south-central Madagascar: a new “rock-climbing” gecko species of the genus Paroedura

Named after its habitat preference, Paroedura manongavato, from the Malagasy words “manonga” (to climb) and “vato” (rock), is a bouldering expert. Part of its “home range” is also very well-known to rock climbers for its massive granitic domes. “Its description represents another step into the crux (in climbing jargon, the most difficult section of a bouldering problem) of resolving the taxonomy of the recently revised P. bastardi group, where the new species belongs, and reaching a total of 25 described species in this genus, ...

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Environment11 Oct 2023

Early Cambrian microfossils preserve introvert musculature of cycloneuralians

An international research team led by Prof. ZHANG Huaqiao from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) has reported the discovery of extraordinary early Cambrian (ca. 535 million years ago, or Ma) microfossils preserving the introvert musculature of cycloneuralians, a group of animals that include roundworms, horsehair worms, mud dragons, and many other creatures. The discovery added fleshy insights into early Cambrian cycloneuralians, which are closely related to arthropods, the most successful animals on Earth. The ...

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Environment10 Oct 2023

Syracuse paleoclimatologists use ancient sediment to explore future climate in Africa

In September 2023, extreme rains struck South Africa’s Western Cape province, flooding villages and leaving a trail of destruction. The catastrophic devastation is just one recent example in a string of extreme weather events that are growing more common around the world. Fueled by rising sea surface temperatures from global warming, torrential storms are increasing both in frequency and magnitude. Concurrently, global warming is also producing the opposite effect in other instances, as a mega-drought recently threatened the water supply of Cape Town in southwestern Africa to the point where residents were at risk of running out of water. This one-two punch of weather extremes ...

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Environment10 Oct 2023

New study offers improved strategy for social media communications during wildfires

In the last 20 years, disasters have claimed more than a million lives and caused nearly $3 trillion in economic losses worldwide, according to the United Nations. Disaster relief organizations (DROs) mobilize critical resources to help impacted communities, and they use social media to distribute information rapidly and broadly. Many DROs post content via multiple accounts within a single platform to represent both national and local levels. Specifically examining wildfires in collaboration with the Canadian Red Cross (CRC), new research from the University of Notre Dame contradicts ...

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Environment10 Oct 2023

Titanium oxide material can remove toxic dyes from wastewater

Discharged in large quantities by textile, cosmetic, ink, paper and other manufacturers, dyes carry high-toxicity and can bring potential carcinogens to wastewater. It’s a major concern for wastewater treatment—but researchers in Drexel University’s College of Engineering may have found a solution, using a tiny nanofilament. A study lead Michel Barsoum, Ph.D., Distinguished University professor in the College of Engineering, and his team, including researchers from Drexel’s College of Arts and Sciences, found that a ...

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Environment10 Oct 2023

Monitoring African copper and cobalt mining emissions from space

Emissions associated with mining operations in Africa’s Copperbelt can be quantified from space, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Mining for copper and cobalt in Africa has rapidly increased, the latter in response to growing global demand for electric vehicles, laptops, smartphones, and other devices that rely on lithium-ion batteries, the vast majority of which contain cobalt. The new study is published in Geophysical Research Letters, ...

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Environment10 Oct 2023

Are we running out of water? Water security threatened by droughts and heatwaves worldwide

Increased demand for water due to global population growth, coupled with the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, endangers our water security. Nonetheless, little is known about the relationship of water use by sectors and the occurrence of drought-heatwave events, particularly at the large scale. To unveil this issue, a group of researchers from the Department of Physical Geography from Utrecht University evaluated the responses of sectoral water use during droughts, heatwaves and compound (combined) events at a global scale. The study published in Environmental Research Letters shows that stronger sectoral water use responses are found for heatwaves compared to ...

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Environment9 Oct 2023

Tropical ecosystems more reliant on emerging aquatic insects, study finds, potentially putting them at greater risk

A team of researchers from Queen Mary University of London and the University of Campinas in Brazil has found that tropical forest ecosystems are more reliant on aquatic insects than temperate forest ecosystems and are therefore more vulnerable to disruptions to the links between land and water. The study, published in the journal Ecology Letters, is the first to directly compare the interconnections between land and water in tropical and temperate environments via the emergence of aquatic insects. The researchers used a technique called stable isotope analysis to trace ...

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