The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, extremely salty body of water in the southern end of California. It was formed from an inflow of water from the Colorado River in 1905 in the aftermath of a collapse of a canal during spring floods. At one time, it was a thriving tourist destination and site […]
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Earth Wise offers a look at our changing environment. Eco-friendly business practices, the latest environmental news, and how nature impacts our environment in ways never before considered.
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Recycling Solar Panels | Earth Wise
Solar panels generally have a useful life of around 20 to 25 years. The great majority of deployed panels have been installed fairly recently, so they have a long way to go. But the growth in solar technology dates back to the 1990s, so there are growing number of panels that have already or are […]
Wealth And Greenhouse Gas Emissions | Earth Wise
A new study led by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst has found that the wealthiest 10% of Americans are responsible for a staggering 40% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. The study, which was recently published in the journal PLOS Climate, is the first to link income, especially income derived from financial investments, […]
The Cost Of Invasive Species | Earth Wise
According to a new report published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for the United Nations, invasive species introduced to new ecosystems around the world are causing more than $423 billion in estimated losses to the global economy every year. These economic costs are incurred by harming nature, damaging food systems, […]
Lampshades And Indoor Air Pollution | Earth Wise
We mostly think of air pollution as an outdoor problem. Common sources of air pollution include emissions from vehicles, byproducts of manufacturing and power generation, and smoke from wildfires. What we don’t often spend a lot of time thinking about is indoor air quality. Indoor air pollution refers to harmful pollutants within buildings and structures, […]
The Captive Lion Problem | Earth Wise
In the 1990s, there was rapid growth in South Africa of the private wildlife industry. Large numbers of cattle, sheep, and goat ranchers replaced their domestic livestock with wild animals that wealthy hunters would pay lots of money to shoot. Lions were among the most prized targets for these people. Over time, hundreds of ranchers […]
A Groundwater Crisis | Earth Wise
The majority of U.S. drinking water systems rely on groundwater, as do America’s farms. Even though groundwater is a crucial resource for the country, there is no central oversight or even monitoring of its status across the country. The health of the country’s aquifers is difficult to gauge. The New York Times spent months amassing […]
Too Many Bison | Earth Wise
In the northern part of Yellowstone National Park, an historically large bison herd is hampering the comeback of quaking aspen trees, whose numbers were greatly diminished by decades of over-browsing by elk. Restoring the balance of ecosystems at Yellowstone is proving to be a complicated matter. Long ago, the bison population in the Great Plains […]
Deadly Heatwaves On The Rise | Earth Wise
The European heatwave in the summer of 2003 resulted in at least 30,000 deaths with more than 14,000 in France alone. At the time, such a heatwave was considered to be a once-in-a-hundred-year event. But the warming climate is dramatically changing the odds for deadly heatwaves. A new study by the ETH Institute in Zurich has […]
Grid-Scale Gravity Energy Storage | Earth Wise
As wind and solar energy play a growing part in our energy system, the need for grid-scale energy storage is growing as well. An historic form of energy storage and still the largest in installed capacity is pumped hydro storage, which makes use of the potential energy contained in having water sitting at a higher […]
Trouble For Emperor Penguins | Earth Wise
Emperor penguins are the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species. The loss of sea ice in Antarctica last year has led to unprecedented breeding failure in some emperor penguin colonies. In a study published by the British Antarctic Survey, researchers found that no chicks survived from four of the five known emperor penguin […]
Aphids And Monarchs | Earth Wise
Last year, the monarch butterfly was officially designated as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Estimates are that the overall population of the species has dropped between 20% and 90% over the past several decades. The migratory western population of monarchs is at the greatest risk of extinction, having declined by as […]
Better Plastic Recycling | Earth Wise
Many of us are careful to put our plastic trash into the appropriate recycling bins hoping that we are helping to stem the global tide of plastic waste. But many plastics are not recyclable at all and recycling those that are is not even always a good thing. Breaking down plastics can generate polluting microplastics […]
More Offshore Wind Proposed For New Jersey | Earth Wise
There have been three offshore wind projects previously approved by utility regulators in New Jersey. New Jersey is vying to become an East Coast leader in the fast-growing offshore wind industry and now developers have proposed four new projects off the New Jersey Shore. Two of the projects would be located far out to sea […]
Top Fish Predators And Climate Change | Earth Wise
Climate change is taking its toll on forests, farms, freshwater sources, and the economy, but ocean ecosystems remain the epicenter of global warming. In fact, oceans have absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions since the 1970s. As a result, many marine fish species are responding to ocean warming by […]
Lakes Are Shrinking | Earth Wise
A study by the University of Colorado Boulder has found that more than half of the world’s largest lakes have shrunk over the last three decades. This is a very big problem because about one-quarter of the Earth’s population lives in the basin of a drying lake. People depend on lakes for drinking water and […]
Planting Rocks To Capture Carbon | Earth Wise
Getting humanity to stop dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere continues to be very challenging regardless of how increasingly apparent the need to do so becomes. For this reason, climate change mitigation strategies increasingly include interventions in the form of removing carbon dioxide that is already there. There are a variety of ways to draw […]
Air Pollution And Insects | Earth Wise
Insects can be found in every environment on Earth and play critical roles in the planet’s ecosystems. Insects pollinate more than 80% of plants, including those that we eat and those that provide food and habitat for other species. Without insects, we wouldn’t have the rich biodiversity that supports life on earth today. But the […]
Saving Florida’s Corals | Earth Wise
When corals are exposed to extended periods of excess heat, they are subject to bleaching, which occurs when they expel the algae that live within their structure. Bleaching can lead to coral death. This summer, temperatures in the Florida Keys crossed the bleaching threshold in mid-June and remained above it for extended periods of time. […]
Protecting The Amazon Rainforest | Earth Wise
The Amazon rainforest absorbs one-fourth of all the carbon dioxide absorbed by the land of the Earth. It is by far the world’s largest rainforest, bigger than the next two largest – in the Congo Basin and Indonesia – combined. Nearly two-thirds of it is found in Brazil but the more than 2 million square […]