By Eric Sorensen28 September 2016 VANCOUVER, Washington (WSU News) – Washington State University researchers say the world’s reservoirs are an underappreciated source of greenhouse gases, producing the equivalent of roughly 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide a year, or 1.3 percent of all greenhouse gases produced by humans. That’s more greenhouse gas production than all of […]
8 August 2016 (NASA) – Coastal waters and near-shore groundwater supplies along more than a fifth of coastlines in the contiguous United States are vulnerable to contamination from previously hidden underground transfers of water between the oceans and land, finds a new study by researchers at The Ohio State University, Columbus, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion […]
By Craig Welch19 August 2016 (National Geographic) – When sea lions suffered seizures and birds and porpoises started dying on the California coast last year, scientists weren’t entirely surprised. Toxic algae is known to harm marine mammals. But when researchers found enormous amounts of toxin in a pelican that had been slurping anchovies, they decided […]
27 July 2016 (NASA) – On 24 July 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a natural-color image (top) of a phytoplankton bloom in Hood Canal—a fjord in Washington’s Puget Sound. The second image shows a more detailed view of the bloom on July 27 as observed by the Operational […]
SPANISH FORK, Utah, 22 July 2016 (AP) – A huge toxic algae bloom in Utah has closed one of the largest freshwater lakes west of the Mississippi River, sickening more than 100 people and leaving farmers scrambling for clean water during some of the hottest days of the year. The bacteria commonly known as blue-green […]
By Kathryn Hansen6 July 2016 (NASA) – In early May 2016, an algae bloom grew to cover 85 square kilometers (33 square miles) of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. The conditions that gave rise to the bloom have persisted into July, and have been blamed for affecting water quality downstream all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. […]
By Carl Hiaasen8 July 2016 (Miami Herald) – They say a picture tells a thousand words. If it’s a picture of an algae-covered beach, it can also cancel thousands of hotel reservations. That’s the new dread in Florida, as photos and news videos of gunk-covered shorelines are making headlines all over the world. Why would […]
By Alexander L. Forrest13 June 2016 (The Conversation) – In an age of rapid global population growth, demand for safe, clean water is constantly increasing. In 2010 the United States alone used 355 billion gallons of water per day. Most of the available fresh water on Earth’s surface is found in lakes, streams and reservoirs, […]
[cf. MIT researchers predict ‘global economic collapse’ by 2030 – ‘We are not on a sustainable trajectory’ and The Limits to Growth at forty: Is collapse now inevitable?] By Nafeez Ahmed19 April 2016 (Insurge Intelligence) – A report commissioned on behalf of a cross-party group of British MPs authored by a former UK government advisor, […]
23 March 2016 (Desdemona Despair) – Back in 2011, Desdemona was asked by a local church to give a presentation on the condition of the world’s oceans (State of the Oceans 2011 video; pdf slide deck; PowerPoint). As part of the talk, Des wanted estimates for human disturbances to the great cycles of elements on […]
