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Categories: Geoscience: Environmental Issues
Published Using spiders as environmentally-friendly pest control
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Groups of spiders could be used as an environmentally-friendly way to protect crops against agricultural pests. That's according to new research which suggests that web-building groups of spiders can eat a devastating pest moth of commercially important crops like tomato and potato worldwide.
Published Engineered wood grows stronger while trapping carbon dioxide
(via sciencedaily.com) Scientists have figured out a way to engineer wood to trap carbon dioxide through a potentially scalable, energy-efficient process that also makes the material stronger for use in construction.
Published European summer droughts since 2015 were most severe over centuries -- but multi-year droughts also happened in the past
(via sciencedaily.com) The 2015--2018 summer droughts have been exceptional in large parts of Western and Central Europe over the last 400 years, in terms of the magnitude of drought conditions. This indicates an influence of human-made global warming. However, multi-year droughts have occurred frequently in the 17th and 18th century, although not as severe.
Published Scientists engineer a 'self-charging' electrostatic face mask for prolonged air filtration, reducing the environmental burden
(via sciencedaily.com) Researchers have engineered an electrostatic face mask that can 'self-charge' through the user's breathing and continuously replenish its electrostatic charge as the user wears and breathes through the mask. This significantly increase the filtering performance in prolonged use of the mask for up to 60 hours, compared to four hours for a conventional surgical mask. This also benefits the environment.
Published Keeping drivers safe with a road that can melt snow, ice on its own
(via sciencedaily.com) Slipping and sliding on snowy or icy roads is dangerous. Salt and sand help melt ice or provide traction, but excessive use is bad for the environment. And sometimes, a surprise storm can blow through before these materials can be applied. Now, researchers ave filled microcapsules with a chloride-free salt mixture that's added into asphalt before roads are paved, providing long-term snow melting capabilities in a real-world test.
Published From plastic waste to valuable nanomaterials
(via sciencedaily.com) Scientists create carbon nanotubes and other hybrid nanomaterials out of plastic waste using an energy-efficient, low-cost, low-emissions process that could also be profitable.
Published Add-on device makes home furnaces cleaner, safer and longer-lasting
(via sciencedaily.com) Natural gas furnaces not only heat your home, they also produce a lot of pollution. Even modern high-efficiency condensing furnaces produce significant amounts of corrosive acidic condensation and unhealthy levels of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and methane. These emissions are typically vented into the atmosphere and end up polluting our soil, water and air. Scientists have developed an affordable add-on technology that removes more than 99.9% of acidic gases and other emissions to produce an ultraclean natural gas furnace. This acidic gas reduction, or AGR, technology can also be added to other natural gas-driven equipment such as water heaters, commercial boilers and industrial furnaces.
Published Amazon mammals threatened by climate change
(via sciencedaily.com) Most land-based mammals in the Brazilian Amazon are threatened by climate change and the savannization of the region.
Published Before global warming, was the Earth cooling down or heating up?
(via sciencedaily.com) A review article addresses a conflict between models and evidence, known as the Holocene global temperature conundrum.
Published Microbes play a key role in unleashing 'forever chemicals' from recycled-waste fertilizer
(via sciencedaily.com) 'Forever chemicals' are everywhere -- water, soil, crops, animals, the blood of 97% of Americans -- researchers are trying to figure out how they got there. Their recent findings suggest that the microbes that help break down biodegradable materials and other waste are likely complicit in the release of the notorious per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) into the environment.
Published How to make hydrogen straight from seawater -- no desalination required
(via sciencedaily.com) Researchers have developed a cheaper and more energy-efficient way to make hydrogen directly from seawater, in a critical step towards a truly viable green hydrogen industry. The new method splits the seawater directly into hydrogen and oxygen -- skipping the need for desalination and its associated cost, energy consumption and carbon emissions.
Published Upsurge in rocket launches could impact the ozone layer
(via sciencedaily.com) Researchers have summarized the threats that future rocket launches would pose to Earth's protective ozone layer.
Published New technique maps large-scale impacts of fire-induced permafrost thaw in Alaska
(via sciencedaily.com) Researchers have developed a machine learning-based ensemble approach to quantify fire-induced thaw settlement across the entire Tanana Flats in Alaska, which encompasses more than 3 million acres. They linked airborne repeat lidar data to time-series Landsat products (satellite images) to delineate thaw settlement patterns across six large fires that have occurred since 2000. The six fires resulted in a loss of nearly 99,000 acres of evergreen forest from 2000 to 2014 among nearly 155,000 acres of fire-influenced forests with varying degrees of burn severity. This novel approach helped to explain about 65 percent of the variance in lidar-detected elevation change.
Published Acceleration of global sea level rise imminent past 1.8 degrees planetary warming
(via sciencedaily.com) A study shows that an irreversible loss of the ice sheets, and a corresponding acceleration of sea level rise, may be imminent if global temperature cannot be stabilized below 1.8 degrees Celsius.
Published Moisture the key to soils' ability to sequester carbon, research shows
(via sciencedaily.com) Soil is the Earth's second-biggest carbon storage locker after the ocean, and a research collaboration has shown that it's moisture, not temperature or mineral content, that's the key to how well the soil carbon warehouse works.
Published Microbes that co-operate contribute more carbon emissions
(via sciencedaily.com) Communities of microbes that work together release more carbon dioxide than competitive communities, contributing more to climate change.
Published New funding proposal aims to reduce bottlenecks on Upper Mississippi River
(via sciencedaily.com) New research proposes a funding model for a major rehabilitation of the 27 locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi. It relies on a collective investment from all -- or at least most -- of the shippers, along with government funding. The researcher's model shows the public-private partnership would pay off in the long run.
Published Record low sea ice cover in the Antarctic
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source There is currently less sea ice in the Antarctic than at any time in the forty years since the beginning of satellite observation: in early February 2023, only 2.20 million square kilometers of the Southern Ocean were covered with sea ice.
Published How does biodiversity change globally? Detecting accurate trends may be currently unfeasible
(via sciencedaily.com) Existing data are too biased to provide a reliable picture of the global average of local species richness trends.
Published New land creation on waterfronts increasing, study finds
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Humans are artificially expanding cities' coastlines by extending industrial ports and creating luxury residential waterfronts. Developers have added over 2,350 square kilometers of land (900 square miles, or about 40 Manhattans) to coastlines in major cities since 2000, according to a new study. The study reports the first global assessment of coastal land reclamation, which is the process of building new land or filling in coastal water bodies, including wetlands, to expand a coastline. The researchers used satellite imagery to analyze land changes in 135 cities with populations of at least 1 million, 106 of which have done some coastline expansion.