USDA Announces $50 Million for Gulf Of Mexico’s Restoration

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on Monday announced a vast, collaborative plan developed by a federal task force to restore the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Meanwhile, court battles are still fiercely going on between the different involved parties.

Fishing Community Against Mining Sea For Sand, India

Fishing community in the Kerala state, under the banner of the National Fishworkers Forum, has opposed finance minister K M Mani’s suggestion to mine sea sand for use in local construction, and sand exportation, mainly to Singapore.

Fukushima Earthquake Moved Seafloor Half a Football Field

New analysis released in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Science indicates that the March 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake that decimated Japan with a monster tsunami, altered the seafloor off the country’s eastern coast much more than scientists had thought.

Arctic settles into new phase: warmer, greener, and less ice

An international team of scientists who monitor the rapid changes in the Earth’s northern polar region say that the Arctic is entering a new state, one with warmer air and water temperatures, less summer sea ice and snow cover, and a changed ocean chemistry.

Cabanas Velhas, Algarve, Portugal; Carlos Loureiro

Cabanas Velhas, meaning old huts, is a small embayed beach located in the southern Algarve, about 20 km east of Cape St Vincent. Composed of pre-Ordovician shale and greywacke cliffs in the west and Jurassic to Miocene limestone and marlstone cliffs in the south, this rocky shoreline is punctuated by several embayed or pocket beaches.

Thawing permafrost vents gases to worsen warming

Massive amounts of greenhouse gases trapped below thawing permafrost will likely seep into the air over the next several decades, accelerating and amplifying global warming and coastal erosion, scientists warn.