Earth Wise

The Amazon rainforest is the biggest rainforest in the world, larger than the next two biggest combined.  It covers more than three million square miles, roughly the size of the lower 48 states.  The Amazon functions as a critical sink for carbon in the atmosphere. However, human activity has removed more than 10% of the […]

The ivory-billed woodpecker is or was the largest woodpecker in the United States. The last unassailable sighting of the bird was in 1944.  Since then, there have various reports of glimpses of the bird or of hearing its distinctive sounds.  But there has not been anything resembling proof that the bird still exists. Despite this, […]

We are at a relatively early stage of the electric car revolution.  EV sales are increasing rapidly, but they still comprise only a small fraction of the cars on American roads.  So, there is still lots of speculation and argument about how things will actually work when a large fraction of cars are electric.  But […]

Many animal populations around the world are struggling and people are mostly to blame.  Species are declining because of all sorts of things including changes in land and sea use, pollution, invasive species, and climate change. Like many animal species, plants are also struggling to adapt to a human-dominated world.  Plants provide the planet with […]

Biocrusts are complex ecosystems that form a thin layer on the surface of soils in arid and semiarid environments.  They are composed of variety of microbes including cyanobacteria, green algae, fungi, lichens, and mosses.  Biocrusts play a crucial role in maintaining soil health and ecosystem sustainability. Biocrusts are under assault from human activities including agriculture, […]

There have been offshore oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico for 85 years.  After all those decades of drilling, there are now more than 14,000 old, unplugged wells out in the water, and they are at risk of springing dangerous leaks and spills.  There are now more unplugged, non-producing wells than active wells in […]

Concrete is a mainstay of modern civilization.  The world produces more than 4 billion tons of it each year and the process requires high temperatures, mostly obtained by burning fossil fuels.  The chemical reactions that produce concrete also produce large amounts of carbon dioxide.  In all, cement production is responsible for about 8% of total […]

A new study by researchers at Yale University looks at the way bird morphology is changing in response to the warming climate.  As temperatures rise, birds’ bodies are growing smaller, but their wings are growing longer. In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists analyzed two independently collected […]

Like in many other places around the world, ocean warming has mostly destroyed the shallow-water reefs in the Galapagos Islands.  The islands are some of the most carefully protected places in the world, but they can’t escape the effects of a warming planet. Recently, however, scientists have discovered a healthy, sprawling coral reef hidden deep […]

In 2019 and 2020, wildfires burned 72,000 square miles in Australia, roughly the same area as the entire country of Syria. During the nine months when the fires raged, persistent and widespread plumes of smoke filled the atmosphere. These aerosols brightened a vast area of clouds above the subtropical Pacific Ocean.  Beneath these clouds, the […]