Sewage spill from Hurricane Michael causes Florida fish kills – “It was horrible down here. You couldn’t hardly breathe. It smells like pure crap.”

By Terray Sylvester 18 October 2018 APALACHICOLA, Florida (Reuters) – A sewage spill from a Florida wastewater plant during Hurricane Michael into a river feeding environmentally fragile Apalachicola Bay is suspected of causing mass fish kills downstream, state officials said on Thursday.Experts say the discharge of 80,000 gallons of partially treated sewage into the Apalachicola […]

Miami freshwater supply threatened by sea level rise and salination – “People will hang on with their fingernails to keep what they’ve got. But who’s going to move here? And that’s what’s going to kill us.”

By Christopher Flavelle 29 August 2018 (Bloomberg Businessweek) – One morning in June, Douglas Yoder climbed into a white government SUV on the edge of Miami and headed northwest, away from the glittering coastline and into the maze of water infrastructure that makes this city possible. He drove past drainage canals that sever backyards and […]

Photo gallery: Winners of the Environmental Photographer of the Year award for 2018

24 September 2018 (Daily Mail) – The competition is run annually by the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management. “Not in My Forest” by Calvin Ke, taken in Malaysia in 2018, received a Highly Commended award. He saw this southern pig-tailed macaque clutching a discarded bottle, examining and tasting it before sinking into this […]

Wetlands need to move inland in fight against global warming

13 September 2018 (University of Southampton) – A new global study involving researchers from the University of Southampton suggests coastal wetlands, such as those on the South Coast of England, can survive rising sea levels and continue to provide natural defence from flooding if they are able to migrate further inland.Coastal wetlands, which include saltmarshes, […]

Salting the earth: North Dakota farmers struggle with a toxic byproduct of the oil boom

By Likhitha Butchireddygari 11 August 2018 (NBC News) – Daryl Peterson’s farm has been in his family for as long as he’s been alive. His father passed down the 2,500-acre spread, just a few miles from the Canadian border in Antler, North Dakota, nearly 50 years ago. He and his brother Larry have been farming […]

How climate change in Bangladesh impacts women and girls

By Kareeda Kabir 16 July 2018 (Teen Vogue) – When people think about the impact of climate change, many consider the physical damage: homes destroyed, communities forced to start over, maybe even a number of bodies discovered after an intense weather event. But sometimes forgotten are the social consequences the physical destruction leaves in its […]

As Colombia expands its palm oil sector, scientists worry about wildlife

By Taran Volckhausen 21 June 2018 (Mongabay) – The large-scale expansion of oil palm has been a major driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss in many areas of the tropics. In Malaysia and Indonesia, where 85 percent of the world’s oil palm is cultivated, rampant industry growth over the past several decades has replaced rainforest […]

The people of Cape Town are running out of water — and they’re not alone

By Amal Ahmed 17 March 2018 (Popular Science) – Day Zero: that’s the ominous label officials in Cape Town have bestowed on the day that water will run out. A three year drought in the region drained reservoirs faster than expected. They were full at the start of 2014, but estimates from the end of […]

Peatlands, already dwindling, could face further losses – “There is a tremendous amount of peatland in Southeast Asia, but almost all of it has been deforested”

By David Chandler 12 June 2017 (MIT News) – Tropical peat swamp forests, which once occupied large swaths of Southeast Asia and other areas, provided a significant “sink” that helped remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But such forests have been disappearing fast due to clear-cutting and drainage projects making way for plantations. Now, research […]

Shrinking Sagar Island struggles to stay afloat as sea level rises – “We have made nature very angry”

By Soumya Sarkar8 March 2017 (The Third Pole) – “The water rushed in at night,” recalls Madan Mohan Pal of Hendalketki in Sagar Island. “By the morning, the entire village was under water. When the flood receded, the land was so saline that we could grow nothing for the next two years.” Although Pal has […]

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