Environment

Increasing production of second-generation biofuels – those made from non-food biomass such as switchgrass, biomass sorghum, and corn stover – would lessen our reliance on burning fossil fuels, which contributes to climate change. Several barriers have prevented the efficient conversion of that biomass. Lignin, a complex compound in cell walls, blocks access to plant carbohydrates…

Antarctica’s ice sheet spans close to twice the area of the contiguous United States, and its land boundary is buttressed by massive, floating ice shelves extending hundreds of miles out over the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean. When these ice shelves collapse into the ocean, they expose towering cliffs of ice along Antarctica’s edge.…

A team of engineers, agronomists and economists at Purdue University’s Center for Sustainable Food, Energy and Water Systems (SFEWS), supported by the National Science Foundation, are developing novel photovoltaic (PV) module designs for use on agricultural land to cogenerate electricity while growing food crops. The enabling insights from their modeling results were just published in…

Polystyrene persists in the environment for millennia, according to some international governmental agencies. This estimate is based on the amount of time required for microbes to break down the plastic. But now researchers have challenged this common assumption with the finding that sunlight can break down polystyrene over a much shorter time scale, from decades…

“When I found out, I took off running across the lab.” That’s how Kevin Cox, a postdoctoral associate at the Danforth Center, describes the moment he found out that he had received the Hanna H. Gray Fellowship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “It was definitely emotional. I had applied to this same fellowship a…

Chi Chen, a Boston University graduate researcher, and Ranga Myneni, a BU professor of earth and environment, are the lead and senior authors of a new paper in Nature Sustainability that reveals how humans are influencing the Earth’s plant and tree cover. On the surface, it may look like a no-brainer that “greening” of the planet would be…

The Arctic is melting faster than we thought it would. In fact, Arctic ice extent is at a record low. When that happens–when a natural system behaves differently than scientists expect–it’s time to take another look at how we understand the system. University of Utah mathematician Ken Golden and atmospheric scientist Court Strong study the patterns…

A better understanding of terrestrial flux dynamics will come from elucidating the integrated effects of climate and vegetation constraints on gross primary productivity (GPP), ecosystem respiration (ER), and net ecosystem productivity (NEP), according to Dr. Shutao Chen, Associate professor at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology. Dr. Chen and his team–a group of researchers…

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers are one step closer to understanding how life could potentially survive on Mars. The researcher team found that bacterium called Sulfurihydrogenibium yellowstonense or Sulfuri for short, controls the formation of ancient rock on Earth that looks like pasta and thrives in harsh environments that are similar to what is…

With climate change, the Arctic tundra is likely to become drier. Lakes may shrink in size and smaller lakes may even disappear according to a new Dartmouth study. In western Greenland, Kangerlussuaq experienced a 28 percent decrease in the number of smaller lakes (those less than 10,000 square meters) and a 20 percent decrease in…

The University of Texas at Austin team that led a twin satellite system launched in 2002 to take detailed measurements of the Earth, called the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), reports in the most recent issue of the journal Nature Climate Change on the contributions that their nearly two decades of data have made…

A University of Oklahoma-led interdisciplinary global study expands the understanding of activated sludge microbiomes for next-generation wastewater treatment and reuse systems enhanced by microbiome engineering. Wastewater treatment and reuse are critical to global health and sustaining a world population predicted to reach 10 billion by 2050. “In May 2014, we established a Global Water Microbiome…

For one scientist, engaging with the public is one of the more important—and rewarding—parts of her research. Mónica Ramírez-Andreotta, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science at the University of Arizona often works with ‘citizen scientists’—everyday members of the public—to conduct research near hazardous waste sites or in environmental…

Researchers are working to develop a 400-year long seasonal record of El Niño events using new machine learning techniques and coral cores. A team from the University of New South Wales has are utlizing cores drilled from coral to detect different types of El Niño events, demonstrating how the nature of these events has changed,…

The last place most people would expect to find fresh groundwater is tens to hundreds of kilometers offshore in the ocean. Yet not only is that exactly where freshwater can be found, in the ground of the continental shelf beneath the ocean, but simulations have shown that it could be a common occurrence across a…

Researchers say mercury buried in ancient rock provides the strongest evidence yet that volcanoes caused the biggest mass extinction in the history of the Earth. The extinction 252 million years ago was so dramatic and widespread that scientists call it “the Great Dying.” The catastrophe killed off more than 95 percent of life on Earth…

Hydrocarbons play key roles in atmospheric and biogeochemistry, the energy economy, and climate change. Most hydrocarbons form in anaerobic environments through high temperature or microbial decomposition of organic matter. Microorganisms can also “eat” hydrocarbons underground, preventing them from reaching the atmosphere. Using a new technique developed at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), an international team…