Where do pesticides and their degradation products go once they enter the soil? And how long does it take them to get to groundwater or drainage systems? That depends on a number of factors, but researchers at Aarhus University have come a step closer to finding quick answers. For the first time ever, they have used visible/near-infrared spectroscopy to predict the transport of dissolved chemicals through intact soil. 

Even after being severely damaged by blast fishing and coral mining, coral reefs can be rehabilitated over large scales using a relatively inexpensive technique, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis, in partnership with Mars Symbioscience.

A new double-decker bus in the English city of Southampton will filter pollutants from the air as it drives, several news outlets reported. The diesel bus’s filtration system, which is attached to its roof, traps 99.5 percent of ultra-fine particles and releases clean air in its wake.

While most of nature is peacefully asleep during rigid Canadian winters, lakes are more than awake under their thick, icy covers.

With the smoke of summer wildfires still dimming skies over much of the West, NOAA has announced funding for development of an improved global map of smoke, dust and other aerosol particles that promises to help improve air quality monitoring and forecasting.

Outdoor air pollution is a major contributor to indoor air pollution -- but high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters used in the home significantly reduce fine-particulate matter in the air compared with non-HEPA air filters.

With the right public infrastructure investment, the United States could as much as double the amount of carbon dioxide emissions currently captured and stored worldwide within the next six years, according to an analysis by Princeton University researchers.

Microplastics have been found deep in the sand on beaches where sea turtles lay their eggs.

A new NASA-led study helps answer decades-old questions about the role of smoke and human-caused air pollution on clouds and rainfall. Looking specifically at deep convective clouds -- tall clouds like thunderclouds, formed by warm air rising -- the study shows that smoky air makes it harder for these clouds to grow. Pollution, on the other hand, energizes their growth, but only if the pollution isn't heavy. Extreme pollution is likely to shut down cloud growth.

"Health trumps politics,” said Iowa State Senator David Johnson before taking the stage at a raucous rally in Des Moines last winter to support strengthening the state’s water quality. In the marble rotunda of the state capitol, he rose to denounce the nitrogen and phosphates that have been flowing in ever-increasing quantities into Iowa’s public water supplies — and was cheered by the small crowd of family farmers, concerned mothers, and his new political allies, the legislature’s drastically outnumbered Democrats. Johnson had been one of the longest-serving Republicans in Iowa until he left the party to become an independent in 2016 after defying it  repeatedly on one of the most divisive issues in Iowa — the integrity of the state’s water.