As the city of Chicago has grown in population and industry since it was established more than 180 years ago, so has its need for clean water. Meeting that growing need has presented many challenges. Today, the Chicago Area Waterway System is a complicated network of modified rivers and canals which are used for navigation and shipping, residential and industrial wastewater management, recreation, and aesthetics.
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Chemical pollution in China: which metal poses the greatest risk to the Bohai region's freshwater ecosystem?
Professor Andrew Johnson and Dr Monika Jürgens, Environmental Scientists at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, contributed to a recent study looking at which metal presents the greatest risk to the freshwater ecosystem in the Bohai region of China. They explain more:
Thanks to support from the Natural Environment Research Council Newton Fund, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) has been collaborating with the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, in Beijing, China since the beginning of 2016 on the topic of chemical pollution in China.
Stanford study shows U.S. grasslands affected more by atmospheric dryness than precipitation
According to 33 years of remote sensing data, productivity of U.S. grasslands is more sensitive to dryness of the atmosphere than precipitation, important information for understanding how ecosystems will respond to climate change.
A new study showing dryness of the atmosphere affects U.S. grassland productivity more than rainfall could have important implications for predicting how plants will respond to warming climate conditions.
USGS Finds Elevated Levels of Arsenic, Radon, Methane in Some Private Wells in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania
Tests of 75 private drinking water wells in Lycoming County, in north-central Pennsylvania, found water from most of the sampled wells contained concentrations of radon that exceeded a proposed, nonbinding health standard for drinking water. Smaller percentages of the wells contained concentrations of arsenic or methane that exceed existing drinking water standards.
Imaging the Inner Workings of a Sodium–Metal Sulfide Battery for First Time
Understanding how the structural and chemical makeup of the material changes during the charge/discharge process could help scientists advance battery design for future energy storage needs
Sometimes understanding how a problem arises in the first place is key to finding its solution. For a team of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, taking this approach led them to the cause of degraded performance in an operating sodium-ion battery.
Flashy First Images Arrive from NOAA's GOES-16 Lightning Mapper
Detecting and predicting lightning just got a lot easier. The first images from a new instrument onboard NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite are giving NOAA National Weather Service forecasters richer information about lightning that will help them alert the public to dangerous weather.