If you live and work in the Washington, DC area, this year’s number one Most Endangered River may hit closer to home than you might think. The Potomac River provides drinking water for more than five million people in Maryland, Virginia and the District.
The area of the globe covered by wetlands (swamps, marshes, lakes, etc.) has dropped by 6 percent in 15 years. This decline is particularly severe in tropical and subtropical regions, and in areas that have experienced the largest increases in population in recent decades.
Being in a hospital is tough enough without having to worry about how the building will hold up during an earthquake. Now, veterans in Memphis, Tenn., can rest assured knowing that their medical center, even though it is located in the most active earthquake zone in the Eastern United States, has the most sophisticated seismic structural monitoring system in the country.
Average fuel economy (window-sticker values) of cars, light trucks, minivans and SUVs purchased in April was 23.9 mpg, down from 24.1 in March, but the same as in February. Despite the drop, fuel economy is up 3.8 mpg (or 19 percent) from October 2007, the first month of monitoring by UMTRI researchers Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle.
When the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, 2010, residents feared that their Gulf of Mexico shores would be inundated with oil. And while many wetland habitats and wildlife were oiled during the three-month leak, the environmental damage to coastal Louisiana was less than many expected, in part because much of the crude never made it to the coast.
Three research teams affiliated with Iowa State University’s Bioeconomy Institute have won Iowa Energy Center grants to help them combine biorenewable technologies for better production of fuels and chemicals.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today announced the extension of a public process exploring the expansion of incentives for voluntary partnerships with private landowners and other land stewards to help conserve imperiled wildlife.
The city of Unalaska, Alaska, will undertake a major upgrade of its municipal sewage treatment plant under a settlement of a Clean Water Act enforcement action filed against the city and the state of Alaska by the Department of Justice on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Every spring and summer, millions of Americans dread the trip to the park or the playground and will do anything to avoid activities that trigger outdoor allergies.
Sculpted by chemistry graduate student Longzhu Shen (MCS'12), the latest installation at CMU's ArtPark Lab uses environmentally friendly lighting to illustrate the fluctuation of carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere over the past 800,000 years.
The Central Park Conservancy, an internationally recognized leader in park management and restoration, has been awarded a $500,000 grant from Alcoa Foundation and an in-kind donation of aluminum valued at $140,000 from Alcoa Recycling to design a sustainable waste management system to increase recycling and make trash removal in the Park more efficient.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has determined that the systems used at gas station pumps to capture harmful gasoline vapors while refueling cars can be phased out. Modern vehicles are equipped to capture those emissions
Carbon nanotubes, which consist of atom-thick sheets of carbon rolled into cylinders, have captured scientific attention in recent decades because of their high strength, potential high conductivity and light weight. But producing nanotubes in bulk for specialized applications was often limited by difficulties in controlling the growth process as well as dispersing and sorting the produced nanotubes.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is seeking project proposals to reduce land-based trash at the source, thus preventing trash from entering coastal runoff and becoming marine debris.
It was all too evident during the Dust Bowl what a disastrous impact wind can have on dry, unprotected topsoil. Now a new study has uncovered a less obvious, but still troubling, effect of wind: Not only can it carry away soil particles, but also the beneficial microbes that help build soil, detoxify contaminants and recycle nutrients.
A 100-fold upsurge in human-produced plastic garbage in the ocean is altering habitats in the marine environment, according to a new study led by a graduate student researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
Two University of Texas at Austin faculty members have won Moncrief Grand Challenge Faculty Awards to develop computer models for algae-based fuel production and improve the security of coastal waters.
Toyota unveiled Monday what it says is the first all-electric sports utility vehicle (SUV) on the market, a version of its popular RAV4 with a top range of 100 miles and minimum six-hour charge time.
Changes in the speed that ice travels in more than 200 outlet glaciers indicates that Greenland's contribution to rising sea level in the 21st century might be significantly less than the upper limits some scientists thought possible, a new study shows.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a draft underground injection control (UIC) program permitting guidance for class II wells that use diesel fuels during hydraulic fracturing activities.