In the first ecosystem-wide study of changing sea depths at five large coral reef tracts in Florida, the Caribbean and Hawai’i, U.S. Geological Survey researchers found the sea floor is eroding in all five places, and the reefs cannot keep pace with sea level rise. As a result, coastal communities protected by the reefs are facing increased risks from storms, waves and erosion.
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Consumer goods companies often rely on life-cycle assessments (LCA) to figure out the potential consequences of how they design products and source ingredients. This kind of assessment, while sophisticated, often lacks detail about how the products affect natural resources such as land, water and biodiversity.
A team of researchers from Stanford University and the University of Minnesota, in a partnership called the Natural Capital Project, along with researchers from Unilever’s Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre, developed a new kind of assessment to integrate these impacts in a more detailed way. They call it Land Use Change Improved Life Cycle Assessment, or LUCI-LCA. It’s designed to help researchers or companies more accurately predict impacts of new designs and sourcing.
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Humans began measurably and negatively impacting water quality in the Chesapeake Bay in the first half of the 19th century, according to a study of eastern oysters by researchers at The University of Alabama.
The work, published in Scientific Reports, show pollution’s effect appears a bit earlier than previously thought, but it generally confirms increasing deforestation and industrialization around the Bay led to water quality issues before the Civil War, which has been shown by other studies with different testing methods.
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With a single executive order issued at the end of March, the Trump administration launched a robust effort to roll back Obama-era climate policies designed to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Chief among those policies is the Clean Power Plan, which targets coal and natural gas-fired electric power plants that account for about 40 percent of the nation’s CO2 emissions. Private and public-sector investors may see the executive order as a green light to double down on relatively cheap fossil fuels and reduce holdings in more costly, climate-friendly, non-carbon generation technologies such as wind, solar and nuclear. But they may want to think twice before making such transactions.
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Some updates on current volcanic activity worldwide:
On April 13, Poás in Costa Rica had its largest explosive eruption in years. The explosion was mainly driven by waterheated at the summit crater lake/vent area, generating what is called a “phreatic” eruption. Although water turning to steam is the main player, these explosions can still produce plumes that reach over 1 kilometer (~3200 feet). This eruption at Poás did just that, with plumes 500-1000 meters tall. News reports also mentioned ash fall in the surrounding region, incandescent blocks suggesting magma relatively close to the surface, and boulders two meters wide being thrown from the lake vent. (They broke the floor at the Poas visitor’s center!) Passengers on a flight out of San Jose got quite a view of the eruption. You can watch video of the eruption that was captured by the webcam at Poás. The eruptions have continued, with another blast on April 18.
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