Ecosystems as Infrastructure: A New Way of Looking at Climate Resilience – Yale Environment 360
Landscape architect Kate Orff works on rebuilding natural systems to help communities and cities reduce their climate risks. Places with interwoven ecological systems, she says, are more resilient and better able both to respond to emergencies and adapt for the future….
Inside the Marshall Islands’ life-or-death plan to survive climate change – Grist Magazine
The Pacific island nation is seeking $35 billion to protect against sea-level rise and prevent a mass exodus…“We call it our national adaptation plan, but it is really our survival plan,” said John Silk, the foreign minister of the Republic of the Marshall Islands…
Plastic credits are supposed to support new cleanup projects. Do they? – Grist
Critics say they won’t work, for one of the same reasons carbon credits haven’t…
Long Story Shorts: How Do Invasive Species Take Over? – Hakai Institute
Invasive species start as strangers in a strange land but over time come to dominate their new homes. The ocean has played host to some of the most prolific of these infiltrations of our time. So just how are these marine invaders able to adapt and thrive in new neighborhoods?
The Fantastical Mind of Benjamin Von Wong – Jejune Magazine
Bringing an idea to life takes innovation, passion and a whole lot of patience. What’s more powerful is if the creation brings people to another world for just a moment and sparks a new notion in the viewers…Benjamin Von Wong is doing it as we speak. The Canadian-born artist is a big advocate for Ocean Plastics and has been creating art pieces to bring awareness to the most critical issue faced today — Pollution…
A disappearing island: ‘The water is destroying us, one house at a time’ – NPR
With nearly a third of its population living in coastal areas, and its heavy reliance on subsistence agriculture and fishing, Sierra Leone has been identified as one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change, despite having contributed just a tiny fraction of global CO2 emissions. With a GDP per capita of barely $2,000, it is also one of the least prepared to deal with those impacts….
We Traced the Forever Chemicals Getting Into Ocean Ecosystems – the Conversation
PFAS, the “forever chemicals” that have been raising health concerns across the country, are not just a problem in drinking water. As these chemicals leach out of failing septic systems and landfills and wash off airport runways and farm fields, they can end up in streams that ultimately discharge into ocean ecosystems where fish, dolphins, manatees, sharks and other marine species live…
Microplastic-eating plankton may be worsening crisis in oceans, say scientists – the Guardian
A type of zooplankton found in marine and fresh water can ingest and break down microplastics, scientists have discovered. But rather than providing a solution to the threat plastics pose to aquatic life, the tiny creatures known as rotifers could be accelerating the risk by splitting the particles into thousands of smaller and potentially more dangerous nanoplastics…
The World Is Running Out of Male Sea Turtles – Science Alert
Green sea turtles are already an endangered species, mainly due to humans hunting them, harvesting their eggs, degrading their habitats, or entangling them in garbage of some kind. But they also face another, more insidious threat from people: the loss of male hatchlings from the species…that this is partly caused by rising temperatures due to climate change – but a new study has now unveiled another human-caused problem driving this trend. Certain pollutants may promote feminization in sea turtles, explains lead author Arthur Barraza, a toxicologist with the Australian Rivers Institute at Griffith University…