By Lyra Fontaine23 July 2014 (Minnesota Daily) – From 2007 to 2012, more than a quarter of southeastern Minnesota’s grassland disappeared as fertilized farmland expanded — a shift in land use that’s contaminating the region’s private drinking water wells. The switch from grass to crops — a trend across the Midwest that’s spurred by rising […]
By Mary Catherine O’Connor27 October 2014 (The Guardian) – Ecologist Mark Browne knew he’d found something big when, after months of tediously examining sediment along shorelines around the world, he noticed something no one had predicted: fibers. Everywhere. They were tiny and synthetic and he was finding them in the greatest concentration near sewage outflows. […]
By Laura Parker 15 July 2014 (National Geographic) – When marine ecologist Andres Cozar Cabañas and a team of researchers completed the first ever map of ocean trash, something didn’t quite add up. Their work, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, did find millions of pieces of plastic debris […]
By Mike Merritt and Tristan Stewart-Robertson13 October 2014 (The Scotsman) – Scottish otters are only living a third of the lifespan of those on mainland Europe because of poisoned seas, a leading expert on the species has warned. Zoologist Dr Paul Yoxon said chemicals in everyday products are accumulating in fish and shellfish on which […]
By Richard Martin16 October 2014 (The Atlantic) – Scotty Lucas is the former mayor of a town that no longer exists. This double obsolescence seems to faze him little, which is not all that surprising considering that he has outlived his wife, one of his children, and the town he spent most of his 81 […]
By Gary Chittim and Elizabeth Wiley21 October 2014 SEATTLE (KING 5 News) – The death of a baby southern resident orca is part of a trend that doesn’t bode well for survival of the endangered pods. On the same day the “L” pod thrilled whale watchers with a late season visit to the waters near […]
By David Fogarty20 October 2014 (mongabay.com) – Global miner BHP Billiton and Indonesian partner PT Adaro are developing what could become the single largest mine in Indonesia in terms of land area, with BHP owning 75 percent. The IndoMet mine complex in Central and East Kalimantan provinces on Borneo comprises seven coal concessions, which cover […]
By Kati Moore30 September 2014 DURHAM, N.C. (Duke Environment) – Pollution in urban and farm runoff in Hawaii is causing tumors in endangered sea turtles, a new study finds. The study, published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed open-access journal PeerJ, shows that nitrogen in the runoff ends up in algae that the turtles eat, promoting the […]
By Terry Wade; Editing by Clarence Fernandez2 Oct 2014 HOUSTON (Reuters) – BP Plc (BP.L) on Thursday asked a U.S. court to reconsider a September ruling that found the company “grossly negligent” for the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a finding that boosted its potential liabilities by about $18 billion. The motion […]
By Drew Sterwald September 2014 (Pinnacle) – Trees and creek banks stained black with petroleum. Lakes too polluted to fish. Villagers suffering skin and organ ailments associated with contaminated water. This was just part of the evidence Shauna Stoeger (’14, M.S., Forensic Studies) uncovered when she spent four months in remote Amazonian villages to investigate […]
