Increasing awareness of the dangers ‘forever chemical’ road salts pose to our fresh water systems highlights the urgent importance of finding new approaches to de-icing our roads.
A farmer spreads fertilizer on a field in Berks County, Pa.
Harold Hoch/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images
Farmers are contending with huge spikes in fertilizer prices. The Biden administration is paying US companies to boost synthetic fertilizer production, but there are other, more sustainable options.
Children participate in a water fight in Lake Ontario in Mississauga, Ontario, during a heat wave on June 5, 2021.
Zou Zheng/Xinhua via Getty Images
Olusegun Dada, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD); Frédéric Ménard, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD); Pierre Morand, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD), and Rafael Almar, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)
Around the world, fragile coastal ecosystems are under intense pressure, and understanding and managing their complex interactions requires an integrated and interdisciplinary approach.
An increasing number of farmers in China are cutting back on fertilizer and pesticide use.
(Pexels)
This transformation provides lessons for the rest of world, for shifting away from chemical agriculture towards a healthier system for people and the planet.
Charter boat Capt. Dave Spangler holds a sample of algae from Maumee Bay in Lake Erie, Sept. 15, 2017.
AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File
Scientists are predicting major algae blooms in Lake Erie and large dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico this summer. Nutrient pollution from industrial corn farming is a major driver.
Drastic oxygen losses in the world’s oceans millions of years ago coincided with mass extinctions. Scientists see this as a warning about how climate change could affect oceans today.
Healthy aquatic vegetation in the Chesapeake Bay.
Cassie Gurbisz/University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Bill Dennison, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and Robert J. Orth, Virginia Institute of Marine Science
An ambitious plan to cut the flow of nutrients into the Chesapeake Bay has produced historic regrowth of underwater seagrasses. These results offer hope for other polluted water bodies.
Excess nutrients from farm fields cause widespread water pollution across the U.S. Bioreactors – essentially, ditches filled with wood chips – are emerging as a way to reduce nutrient pollution.
Climate change is warming Lake Tahoe and could alter its chemistry in harmful ways.
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Lakes contain most of the fresh water on Earth’s surface. Recent research at Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains shows that climate change could alter lake chemistry, threatening these sources.
Our thinly spread efforts to prop up the environment are failing and it is time for tough decisions about what we can realistically preserve.
Flickr/rexboggs5
Australian farmers take pride in their efficient and productive farming systems, competing in the global economy and without many of the large subsidies given to their counterparts in Europe and North…