Earth Wise

By Randy SimonScience Education Self-Improvement Natural Sciences Nature

Earth Wise episodes

October 11, 2019 Maple Syrup And Climate Change
According to a study recently published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management, scientists are predicting another casualty of climate change: the U.S. maple industry. By the year 2100, the maple syrup season in the United States may be less productive and arrive one month earlier than it has between 1950 and 2017.
Maple syrup production is impacted by two climate-sensitive factors:
sugar content and sap flow. Sugar
content is determined by the previous year’s carbohydrate stores. Sap flow depends on the freeze/thaw
cycle. Sap begins to flow in sugar
maples when winter nights dip below freezing and the days warm above freezing.
The researchers studied six sugar maple stands from Virginia to
Quebec, Canada over a six year period.
They created a model that predicted the timing of optimal sap flow based
on historical temperature data on freeze/thaw days, actual sap collection from
their field work, and monthly climate.
According to modeling projections, the maple syrup season is expected
to be, on average, one month earlier by the end of the century. States like Indiana and Virginia will barely
produce any sap. New Hampshire and Vermont
are likely to be least affected, but are still expected to experience a
decrease in production. In fact, most
areas of maple production in the United States are projected to see decreases
in production by the year 2100, while areas in northern Ontario and Quebec
should see moderate to large increases in production.
Currently, Canada is responsible for approximately 80% of global maple
syrup production while the U.S. produces 20%.
The shifting climate for optimal maple production will leave many scrambling
to find the sweet spot.
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Climate change study finds that maple syrup season may come earlier
Photo, posted March 24, 2019, courtesy of Paul VanDerWerf via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
2 min
October 10, 2019 Beavers And Biodiversity
Beavers are large, semi-aquatic rodents known best for their ability to construct dams, canals, and lodges (their homes). They are among the largest rodents in the world. With powerful jaws and strong teeth, beavers fell trees to use as building materials, often changing their environment in ways few other animals can. But in a good way. As it turns out, beavers are important for biodiversity.
According to new research from the
Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Stirling in Scotland,
reintroducing beavers to their native habitats is an important step towards
solving the freshwater biodiversity crisis.
Researchers surveyed water plants and
beetles in 20 wetlands in Sweden – 10 created by beavers and 10 that were not –
in order to understand what impact beavers might have on the variety of plant
and animal life around them.
The research team’s findings build on
previous work that has shown that beavers have an important impact on
biodiversity. This latest study
discovered that the number of species found only in beaver-built ponds was 50% higher than in other non
beaver-built wetlands in the same region.
Beavers are known to be profound engineers
of the environment. They use wood to build dams across rivers in order to form
ponds behind them. They do this to raise
the water level in order to avoid predators, like bears and wolves. But it
turns out many other plants and animals, like water plants and beetles, also
benefit from their work.
According to the research team,
reintroducing beavers to their native habitats should benefit the wider
biodiversity and be seen as an important step towards solving the freshwater
biodiversity crisis.
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Beaver reintroduction key to solving freshwater biodiversity crisis
Photo, posted October 2, 2014, courtesy of USFWS Midwest Region via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
2 min
October 09, 2019 Europe Is Warming Faster Than Predicted
A new study has found that Europe is warming faster than even climate models projected. The number of summer days with extreme heat in Europe has tripled since the 1950s, while the number of days with extreme cold has decreased by factors of two or three depending on the region.
According to climate scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology in Zurich, the climate trends are much larger than what would come
from natural variability and are a clear signal of climate change. Extremely hot days in Europe have become
hotter by an average of more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit while extremely cold
days have warmed by more than 5 degrees.
The research examined data from weather stations across Europe from 1950
to 2018. Over 90% of the stations
recorded increasing temperatures over time, a percentage much too high to be
purely from natural climate variability.
The results also showed that the region was warming even faster than
climate models projected.
The research results come after an extremely hot summer in
Europe. Southern France hit 114.8
degrees, a new record, in June. Germany,
the Netherlands, and Belgium all recorded all-time national temperature
highs. The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration recently announced that July was the hottest month
ever recorded.
European summers and winters will only grow hotter in the coming years
as climate change accelerates. The
rapidly increasing temperatures will impact cities and people that are
unprepared for them and pose real risks for residents in the coming
decades. Extreme heat is dangerous
because it stresses the human body, potentially leading to heat exhaustion or heat
stroke.
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Europe warming faster than expected due to climate change
Photo, posted July 30, 2011, courtesy of Marcel de Jong via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
2 min
October 08, 2019 Bananas In Danger
For a few years we have been talking about the precarious position of the global banana crop, which is almost entirely based upon a single cloned cultivar known as the Cavendish banana. The banana you buy in Rome is identical to the one in Rochester. And therein lies the danger: if a fungal blight can kill one banana shrub, it can kill them all.
For decades, a fungal disease known as Panama Disease Tropical Race 4
has been wreaking havoc on banana plantations in the Eastern Hemisphere. Even though it was first identified in
Taiwanese soil samples in the early 1990s, the destructive fungus remained
confined to Southeast Asia and Australia until it was confirmed in both the
Middle East and Africa in 2013. Experts continued
to fear its eventual appearance in Latin America, which is the epicenter of the
global banana export industry.
In August, Colombian agricultural authorities announced that
laboratory tests have positively identified the presence of Tropical Race 4 in
the Caribbean coastal region and declared a national state of emergency.
The infection of the banana plant does not produce bananas that are
unsafe for humans. What happens is that
the infected plants eventually stop bearing fruit.
Cavendish bananas are a prime example of the dangers of growing crops
with limited genetic diversity – known as monoculture. It leaves food systems dangerously vulnerable
to disease epidemics.
This has happened to the global banana crop before when the predecessor to the Cavendish banana – the Gros Michel – was mostly eradicated by another fungal outbreak. At the moment, there is no ready replacement banana to bail out the industry, but scientists are desperately trying to breed one. In the meantime, the world’s supply of bananas is in real danger.
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The banana is one step closer to disappearing
Photo, posted July 9, 2009, courtesy of Dabin Lambert via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
2 min
October 07, 2019 Removing Microplastics with Magnetism
A new method for removing microplastics from the oceans has emerged from, of all things, a science fair project. An Irish 18-year-old named Fionn Ferreira developed his project for the annual Google Science Fair and it won the grand prize of $50,000 in educational funding.
The teenager was walking on the beach in his hometown and ran across a
stone with oil and plastic stuck to it and became focused on the problem of
microplastics increasingly entering the environment.
His idea was to make use of ferrofluids, which are nontoxic magnetic
fluids made of oil and magnetite, which is an iron-based mineral. In the presence of water, the ferrofluids
attract microplastics because both have similar properties.
Ferreira added oil and magnetite to water and mixed in a solution of microplastic particles. When the microplastics latched onto the ferrofluids, he dipped a magnet into the solution several times and the magnet removed both substances, leaving clear water. After almost 1000 tests, he demonstrated the method to be 88% effective in removing a variety of microplastics from water; a result even better than his original hypothesis of an 85% removal rate.
Ferreira is planning to further his education at a prestigious
chemistry institute in the Netherlands starting in the fall.
According to a recent study, Americans eat, drink and breathe between
74,000 and 121,000 microplastic particles each year and, if they drink bottle
water only instead of tap water, an additional 90,000 particles. So, a science fair project that might provide
a way to get rid of most these things is definitely prize-worthy.
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Web Links
This Irish teenager may have a solution for a plastic-free ocean
Photo, posted April 25, 2016, courtesy of Boe Eide via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
2 min
October 04, 2019 Solar-Powered Desalination
Turning seawater into drinking water is an energy-intensive process and is therefore pretty expensive. Worldwide, one third of people don’t have reliable access to safe drinking water and they are the least able to afford expensive ways to get it. By 2025, half of the world’s population is expected to live in water-stressed areas.
At a newly-constructed facility in Kenya, a nonprofit company called
GivePower has built a desalination system that runs on solar power. The system started operating in the coastal
area of Kiunga in July 2018 and can create nearly 20,000 gallons of fresh
drinking water each day – enough for 25,000 people.
GivePower started in 2013 as a nonprofit branch of SolarCity, the
solar-panel company that ultimately merged with Tesla in 2016. However, GivePower spun off as a separate
enterprise shortly before that.
GivePower mostly focuses on building solar-energy systems to provide electricity across the developing world.
Desalination technology is not new, but it is notoriously energy-intensive because it requires high-power pumps. The GivePower system is integrated with a solar microgrid that makes use of Tesla batteries to store energy for when the sun is not shining.
Local residents pay about a quarter of one cent for every quart of
water from the system. The Kiunga
community has faced ongoing drought and before the GivePower system was
installed, was forced to drink from salt water wells, which present serious
health risks.
The GivePower system cost $500,000 to build and is expected to
generate $100,000 a year, to be eventually used to fund similar facilities in
other places.
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A solar-powered system can turn salt water into fresh drinking water for 25,000 people per day. It could help address the world’s looming water crisis.
Photo courtesy of GivePower.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
2 min
October 03, 2019 The ‘Biggest Ever’ Arctic Expedition
The Arctic is warming faster than any other region on Earth. In fact, it’s warming at a rate of almost twice the global average. And, since what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic, the world is already feeling the effects: rising sea levels, changes in climate and precipitation patterns, increasing severe weather events, and so on.
As a result, researchers from more than a dozen countries have
launched the biggest and most complex expedition ever attempted in the
Arctic. They plan to freeze Germany’s
largest research vessel, the Polarstern, into Arctic sea ice, where it will
remain trapped for twelve months. The
ship will drift with the sea ice as the sea ice drifts. The vessel will serve as a research
laboratory, hosting a rotating crew of 300 scientists. The ice, the ocean, the atmosphere, and even
the wildlife will all be sampled. This
year-long journey will give researchers their closest look at how the polar
climate and its fragile ecosystems are changing.
Led by the Alfred Wegener
Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, the
Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate project
(or MOSAiC) is expected to cost about $150 million.
One major goal of MOSAiC is to improve strikingly uncertain climate projections for the Arctic. Climate models disagree on how much more the Arctic will warm as the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere rises and sea ice shrinks. Some project a 5ºC rise by 2100 relative to the 1986-2005 average. Others predict a 10ºC increase.
Understanding the complex
processes occurring in the Arctic is essential for projecting the future impacts
of climate change.
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Climate scientists prepare for largest ever Arctic expedition
Climate change: Polarstern leaves for ‘biggest ever’ Arctic expedition
Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
2 min
October 02, 2019 New Membranes For Carbon Capture
Drastically reducing the amount of carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere is an essential goal in the effort to mitigate the effects of climate change. While the ultimate solution is to avoid combustion of fossil fuels by the use of clean alternative energy sources, that transition will take time – possibly more time than we have. As a result, there is a great deal of effort underway to develop techniques for capturing the carbon emitted by fossil fuel combustion and either recycling it or storing it.
There are multiple ways to capture carbon emissions, but the ultimate goal is to find a technique that is both inexpensive and scalable. One promising technique involves the use of high-performance membranes, which are filters that can specifically pick out CO2 from a mix of gases, such as those coming out of a factory smokestack.
Scientists at a Swiss laboratory have now developed a new class of
high-performance membranes that exceeds the targeted performance for carbon
capture by a significant margin. The
membranes are based on single-layer graphene with a selective layer thinner
than 20 nanometers – only about 40 atoms thick. The membranes are highly
tunable in terms of chemistry, meaning that they can be designed to capture
specific molecules.
The membranes are highly permeable – meaning that they don’t impede gas flow too much – but highly selective. The CO2/N2 separation factor is 22.5, which means that 22.5 times more nitrogen can get through the membrane than carbon dioxide.
The work is just at the laboratory stage at this point, but it is a
very promising step towards developing a practical scheme for keeping carbon
dioxide from escaping from power-plant and factory smokestacks.
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Next-gen membranes for carbon capture
Photo, posted December 28, 2010, courtesy of Emilian Robert Vicol via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
2 min
October 01, 2019 The Cost Of Rising Seas
Coastal cities in the United States are grappling with the need for extensive infrastructure projects to protect against rising seas and worsening storms. The cost of these projects will be enormous, and it is unclear how to pay to them.
Boston has many neighborhoods in low-lying areas, and it is estimated
that $2.4 billion will be needed to protect the city from flooding. The city abandoned plans to build a harbor
barrier that would have cost $6 to $12 billion because it was economically
unfeasible.
Charleston, South Caroline needs $2 billion to reduce flooding that occurs regularly during high tides. The Houston, Texas area needs $30 billion to provide protection against a 100-year flood. Hurricane Harvey caused $125 billion in damages in Texas in 2017. New York City is considering a $10 billion storm surge barrier and floodgates to shield parts of the city from rising waters.
Florida faces the greatest exposure to flooding with an estimated $76
billion in costs to address some of its problems.
At the federal level, multiple agencies represent potential funding sources, but none offer the kind of money required to address the need. This places a heavy burden on state and local governments. Various states have passed legislation related to shoreline resiliency and flood abatement, but relatively little funding has been approved. Some bond measures have passed, but the totals are small compared with what is needed.
Educating people about the costs of not doing anything or not doing
enough soon enough is essential. As
Hurricane Katrina demonstrated, not spending a large amount of money on
resilience can result in having to spend a colossal amount of money on
recovery.
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Who Will Pay for the Huge Costs of Holding Back Rising Seas?
Photo, posted December 26, 2013, courtesy of Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
2 min
September 30, 2019 Renewable Natural Gas
Small-scale biogas systems have collected methane from landfills, sewage plants, and farms for decades. Here in the US, biogas is finally catching up with modern techniques with the advent of third-party operators introducing more sophisticated technology to capture methane and pump it directly into pipelines.
Renewable methane or natural gas represents a significant mostly
unexploited source of energy. Examples
include the vast amounts methane generated by manure from some of the 2,300 hog
farms in eastern North Carolina, biodigesters that can turn clusters of large
California dairy farms into energy hubs, as well as diverting food waste from
landfills and transforming it into vehicle and heating fuels.
According to a 2014 EPA study, the U.S. could support at least 13,000
biogas facilities, fed by manure, landfill gas, and biosolids from sewage
treatment plants. Those facilities could
produce over 650 billion cubic feet of biogas per year – enough renewable
energy to power 3 million homes.
A study by the World Resources Institute estimated that the 50 million
tons of organic waste sent to landfills or incinerated every year in the U.S.
has the energy content of 6 billion gallons of diesel fuel, amounting to 15% of
all diesel consumed by heavy-duty trucks and buses.
Utilizing all that biogas could help lower greenhouse gas emissions from some of the most difficult sectors to decarbonize – transportation, industry, and heating buildings. In addition, ramped up renewable gas could keep organic waste out of landfills and prevent manure runoff into rivers and water supplies.
Renewable natural gas could be the next big thing in green energy.
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Could Renewable Natural Gas Be the Next Big Thing in Green Energy?
Photo, posted June 19, 2013, courtesy of Alan Levine via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
2 min

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From green business and new environmental legislation to how nature impacts our environment in ways never before considered, Earth Wise offers a look at our changing environment.