Category: 9. Environment

As the climate crisis deepens, extreme weather events are growing in frequency and severity, with droughts, floods and storms devastating crops, disrupting water supplies and taking a high toll on agricultural production. Humanity’s current food systems – which rely heavily on industrial agriculture and fossil fuel extraction – are contributing to many of the very…

Graphical abstract. Credit: Water Research (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2023.119802 Treating seawater with selected chemicals before desalination could reduce biofouling and lengthen the lifespan of filtration membranes. Identifying the components of membrane antiscalants that cause biofouling could help make seawater desalination a more sustainable source of fresh water. “Safe drinking water is a… Continue Reading News Source:…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Clouds are made up of individual, microscopic spheres of water, or hydrometeors, that change and interact with one another based on environmental conditions and the characteristics of the hydrometeor population, such as size and water phase: liquid, ice or vapor. Improved modeling of the effects of environmental conditions on hydrometeor populations…

The proportion of all debris collected by weight in kg from at-sea retrieval. Credit: Marine Pollution Bulletin (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2023.115013 Researchers probing one Canada’s most productive fishing regions have found the area off Nova Scotia’s southern tip is littered with bundles of snarled rope, drifting lobster pots and abandoned buoys that foul the marine environment…

Image of the affluent residential neighbourhood of Dubai Marina in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Credit: Shutterstock Climate change is a global problem. Its origin is less so, however, because we do not all contribute equally: the countries that suffer the most from the impacts of climate change are precisely those that are the least responsible.…

Credit: Motaykay, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons After a historic winter hit California with dozens of atmospheric rivers, the last line of defense protecting the Pacific from much of L.A.’s trash held strong. In the first storm season of a two-year pilot project, Ballona Creek Trash Interceptor 007 stopped nearly 155,000 pounds of…

Graphical abstract. Credit: Science of The Total Environment (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163747 Improved cookstoves, which are widely used for cooking in developing countries, produce twice as many harmful ultrafine air pollution particles (PM0.1) as conventional stoves, according to a new study from the University of Surrey. Researchers from Surrey’s Global Center for Clean Air Research… Continue…

Rhino expert John Payne worked with Sumatran rhinos in Malaysia from the 1970s until 2019, when the country’s last rhino died. With no rhinos left to care for, Payne has started working with other species, and recently published a book in which he argues the strategy to save Sumatran rhinos from extinction was flawed from…

Creating liquid biofuels from human waste shows promise as a way to meet one of alternative energy’s greatest challenges: reducing the transportation sector’s heavy carbon footprint. The good news is there is a steady supply stream where waste is treated. Humanity produces millions of tons of sewage sludge annually via wastewater treatment. Existing disposal methods…