Wild dolphins are fast, smart and hard to study, but it is important to understand how human actions affect their health. So we are building a drone to sample hormones from the blowholes of dolphins.
To some Americans, the figures on Mount Rushmore are patriotic leaders; to others, they’re colonizers.
AP Photo/Stephen Groves
Fast-food restaurants can be comforting places, but when they saturate communities, they crowd out healthy food sources and leave residents less nourished.
A vast plume of Saharan dust blankets Havana, Cuba, June 24, 2020.
Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images
From June through October, it’s not unusual for huge Saharan dust plumes to blow across the Atlantic. They can darken skies but also bring calmer weather and electric sunsets. Here’s how they form.
This Arctic heat wave has been unusually long-lived. The darkest reds on this map of the Arctic are areas that were more than 14 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the spring of 2020 compared to the recent 15-year average.
Joshua Stevens/NASA Earth Observatory
The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as the planet as a whole, with serious consequences. Scientists have been warning about this for decades.
Much of India experiences both extreme heat and extreme air pollution, as seen in this photo of the Akshardham Hindu temple. Days with both are going to increase.
Sajjad Hussain/AFP via Getty Images
In South Asia, days with both extreme heat and extreme pollution are expected to increase 175% by 2050. Separately, the health effects are bad; together they will likely be worse.
Specimens like these at Dublin’s Natural History Museum contain valuable information about the evolution of pathogens and host organisms.
Kieran Guckian/Flickr
The COVID-019 pandemic has boosted use of disposable packaging and personal protective equipment, at the same time that many recycling programs are facing budget cuts. The upshot: More plastic trash.
Not all clouds are the same, and climate models have been predicting the wrong kinds of clouds over the Southern Ocean.
Kathryn Moore
Climate models have been overestimating how much sunlight hits the Southern Ocean. This is because the clouds there are different from clouds anywhere else. Bacterial DNA helped us understand why.
Protesters hold signs outside women’s fashion designer Eudon Choi in London during Fashion Week in 2017.
Elena Rostenova/www.shutterstock.com
The COVID-19 pandemic has cast a harsh light on global commerce in wildlife. But many accounts focus on demand from Asia, ignoring the role of US and European consumers.
A pump jack in the town of Signal Hill, California, which sits within the Long Beach Oil Field near the Port of Long Beach.
Frederick J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
A new study finds an association between living near active oil and gas wells in California and low birth-weight infants, adding to findings elsewhere on health risks from oil and gas production.
People have been rediscovering nature during the pandemic, but it’s not just good for public heath. Conservation also creates jobs.
Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
The Trump administration is rolling back environmental regulations, claiming it’s good for the economy. But research shows that conservation is better both for public health and for job creation.
Burning confiscated elephant ivory and animal horns in Myanmar’s first public display of action against the illegal wildlife trade, Oct. 4, 2018.
Ye Aung Thu/AFP via Getty Images
In the 1800s, Americans hunted many wild species near or into extinction. Then in the early 1900s, the US shifted from uncontrolled consumption of wildlife to conservation. Could Asia follow suit?
A derecho moves across central Kansas on July 3, 2005.
Jim Reed/Corbis via Getty Images
Hurricane and tornado winds spin in circles, but there’s another, equally dangerous storm type where winds barrel straight ahead. They’re called derechos, and are most common in summer.
Anatolian water frogs (Pelophylax spp) could become locally extinct in parts of Turkey due to over-harvesting as food.
Kerim Çiçek
Frogs are harvested as food by the millions every year. A new study shows that uncontrolled frog hunting could drive some populations to extinction by midcentury.
Compost awaiting distribution at the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District’s Rancho Las Virgenes compost facility, Calabasas, Calif.
Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Turning food scraps and yard trimmings into compost improves soil, making it easier for people to grow their own food. City composting programs spread those benefits more widely.
Aniel Arruebarenna, a team member from the Centro de Estudios Ambientales de Cienfuegos, prepares to collect flow measurements.
Joshua Brown/University of Vermont
There’s growing interest in making the US food system more resilient and flexible, but soil – the origin of nearly everything we eat – is often left out of the picture.
A restored prairie in southern Michigan.
Lars Brudvig
Restoring former prairies that have been plowed under for farming delivers land, wildlife and climate benefits. But a new study finds that the weather plays a surprising role.
Richard Byma from By-Acre farms in Sussex County, New Jersey, tends to his Holstein herd.
Neville Elder/Corbis via Getty Images)
Small-scale dairy farmers are struggling across the US – but in New Jersey they’ve developed a model that keeps their products and their customers local.
Johnnie Henry, president of the Navajo Nation’s Church Rock chapter house community center, hauls drinking water to neighbors in Gallup, N.M., May 7, 2020.
AP Photo/Morgan Lee
Many Native American tribes are reporting high COVID-19 infection rates. State and federal agencies are impeding tribes’ efforts to handle the pandemic themselves.
Maine’s Penobscot River flows freely where the Veazie Dam once stood. Dam removals have reopened the river to 12 native fish species.
Gregory Rec/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
Thousands of dams across the US are aging and overdue for maintenance. Taking them down can revive rivers, restore fish runs and create new opportunities for tourism and outdoor activities.
Artisanal small-scale gold mining polluted this stream and deforested sections of the Madre de Dios area of Peru.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Small-scale gold mining operations in developing countries are major sources of toxic mercury pollution, using techniques that haven’t changed much since the California Gold Rush 150 years ago.
Artist rendition of the National Western Center, a net-zero campus under construction in Denver to house multiple activities.
City and County of Denver | Mayor’s Office of the National Western Center
Net zero energy buildings produce at least as much energy as they use. Designing whole net zero campuses and communities takes the energy and climate benefits to a higher level.
Disasters, such as flooding in Michigan, can cause people to move, but not everyone has the means.
Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
Extreme weather events prompt people to move, a trend that could accelerate in a warming climate. But the ability to migrate internally in the US depends largely on economic status.