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Categories: Biology: Marine, Geoscience: Environmental Issues

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Researchers have created environmentally-friendly, high-efficiency photovoltaic cells that harness ambient light to power internet of Things (IoT) devices.

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A new look at climate data shows that, by the end of the century, the heaviest days of rain and snowfall across much of North America will likely release 20 to 30 percent more moisture than they do now. Much of the increased precipitation will occur in winter, potentially exacerbating flooding in regions such as the upper Midwest and the west coast. Researchers also found that heavy precipitation days historically experienced once in a century will become more frequent -- as often as once every 30 or 40 years in the Pacific Northwest and southeastern United States.

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They've been called 'dream' plastics: polyhydroxyalkanoates, or PHAs. Already the basis of a fledgling industry, they're a class of polymers naturally created by living microorganisms, or synthetically produced from biorenewable feedstocks. They're biodegradable in the ambient environment, including oceans and soil.

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A new, inexpensive technology can limit the buildup of algae on the walls of photobioreactors that can help convert carbon dioxide into useful products. Reducing this fouling avoids costly cleanouts and allows more photosynthesis to happen within tanks.

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'Flash droughts' have become more frequent due to human-caused climate change and this trend is predicted to accelerate in a warmer future, according to new research.

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A new study, which used 44 years of data, shows that as the globe has warmed, altering the timing and amount of snow cover, snowshoe hares' winter transformation may be out of sync with the color of the background environment; this may actually put them at a greater disadvantage.

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A research team assesses neighborhood-scale NO2 exposure using a European satellite. High-rise apartment complexes are a significant source of emissions that should be considered in the development of clean air policies.

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Researchers have developed an electronic patch that can be applied to the leaves of plants to monitor crops for different pathogens -- such as viral and fungal infections -- and stresses such as drought or salinity. In testing, the researchers found the patch was able to detect a viral infection in tomatoes more than a week before growers would be able to detect any visible symptoms of disease.

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Single-use hard plastics are all around us: utensils, party decorations and food containers, to name a few examples. These items pile up in landfills, and many biodegradable versions stick around for months, requiring industrial composting systems to fully degrade. Now, researchers have created a sturdy, lightweight material that disintegrates on-demand -- and they made it from sugar and wood-derived powders.

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Soil stores more carbon than plants and the atmosphere combined, and soil microbes are largely responsible for putting it there. However, the increasing frequency and severity of drought, such as those that have been impacting California, could disrupt this delicate ecosystem. Microbial ecologists warn that soil health and future greenhouse gas levels could be impacted if soil microbes adapt to drought faster than plants do.

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Can humans endure long-term living in deep space? The answer is a lukewarm maybe, according to a new theory describing the complexity of maintaining gravity and oxygen, obtaining water, developing agriculture and handling waste far from Earth.

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Six decades of river gage data gathered from nine rivers in Alaska highlight the cumulative and consequential impacts of climate change for local communities and ecosystems in the Arctic.

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Researchers develop a computational model of stormwater piping to study storm geysers. They used this model to understand why storm geysers form, what conditions tend to make them worse, and what city planners can do to prevent them from occurring. The authors say the best cure for a storm geyser is bigger pipes; however, that advice is little help to cities with existing pipeline infrastructure. In these systems, the focus must be on minimizing the potential damage by reducing the height of the geysers, the volume of expelled water, or the resulting damage to the pipeline.

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The amount of dissolved oxygen in a river is a matter of life or death for the plants and animals living within it, but this oxygen concentration varies drastically from one river to another, depending on their unique temperature, light and flow. To better understand which factor has the greatest impact on the concentration of dissolved oxygen, researchers used a deep learning model to analyze data from hundreds of rivers across the United States.

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Research shows flooding events in the province have doubled in the last century.

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Oceanographers discovered warm, chemically distinct liquid shooting up from the seafloor about 50 miles off Newport. They named the unique underwater spring 'Pythia's Oasis.' Observations suggest the spring is sourced from water 2.5 miles beneath the seafloor at the plate boundary, regulating stress on the offshore subduction zone fault.

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An interdisciplinary team of researchers is advocating for convergent research that integrates the fields of biogeography and behavioral ecology to more rapidly respond to challenges associated with climate change and biodiversity loss.

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A new study shows that if U.S. nuclear power plants are retired, the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas to fill the energy gap could cause more than 5,000 premature deaths.

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Nitrogen is such a crucial nutrient for plants that vast quantities of nitrogen-containing fertilizers are spread on farmlands worldwide. However, excess nitrogen in the soil and in drainage run-off into lakes and rivers causes serious ecological imbalances. A recent study has uncovered the regulatory mechanisms at work when plants utilize nitrogenous fertilizers in their roots, a positive step in the quest to generate crops that require less fertilizer while still producing the yields needed to feed the world.

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Tobacco plants have been engineered to manufacture an alluring perfume of insect sex pheromones, which could be used to confuse would-be pests looking for love and reduce the need for harmful pesticides.