Cleaning up beaches could boost local economies in addition to preserving natural treasures and animal habitats.

In southern California’s Orange County alone, the economic benefits of beach cleanup could range from $13 per resident in a three-month period if debris were reduced by 25 percent to $42 per resident with a 75 percent drop in plastics and other trash along the oceanfront, according to a new study. That could mean up to a $46 million boost to the county’s economy in just one summer.

A University of Guelph researcher has discovered one of the factors behind nerve cell death in Parkinson’s disease, unlocking the potential for treatment to slow the progression of this fatal neurodegenerative disorder.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia have discovered a key gene for the synthesis of one of the world’s most abundant sulfur molecules.

Dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) is an important nutrient in marine environments with more than one billion tonnes produced annually by marine phytoplankton (microscopic plant-like cells), seaweed and bacteria.

Global levels of ethane and propane in the atmosphere have been underestimated by more than 50%, new research involving scientists at the University of York has revealed.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, temperatures are expected to rise between 2.5 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century. This warming is expected to contribute to rising sea levels and the melting of glaciers and permafrost, as well as other climate-related effects. Now, research from the University of Missouri suggests that even as rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere drive the climate toward warmer temperatures, the weather will remain predictable.

The arrangement of a city’s streets and buildings plays a crucial role in the local urban heat island effect, which causes cities to be hotter than their surroundings, researchers have found. The new finding could provide city planners and officials with new ways to influence those effects.

The interplay between surface-water salinity and climate change in Central New York is the subject of a recent paper by researchers in Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences.

The nights in the German federal states („Bundesländer“) has been getting brighter and brighter – but not everywhere at the same rate and with one peculiar exemption: light emissions from Thuringia decreased between 2012 and 2017. This is the result of a recent study by scientists Chris Kyba and Theres Küster from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences together with Helga Kuechly from “Luftbild – Umwelt – Planung, Potsdam”. Kyba and colleagues published the study in the International Journal of Sustainable Lighting IJSL. This week, they updated the maps by including the 2017 data from a satellite-born instrument.

Soil pathogen testing – critical to farming, but painstakingly slow and expensive – will soon be done accurately, quickly, inexpensively and onsite, thanks to research that Washington State University scientists are sharing.

Those long, intense plumes of moisture in the sky known as atmospheric rivers are a vital water source to communities along the U.S. West Coast. In their absence, desiccating droughts can develop. But in their presence, they can cause extreme rain and floods that can disrupt travel, cause landslides, and trigger infrastructure failures.