Turkey’s Dam-Building Spree Continues, At Steep Ecological Cost
Nearly 90 miles of the historic Tigris River will soon be turned into a vast reservoir as Turkey completes the massive Ilisu Dam. While the government touts the project as a source of carbon-free electricity, it will displace 80,000 people and threaten a host of species.
Erosion Washes Away Australian Beach, Leaving Towering Sand Cliffs Along Shoreline
Beach on Australia’s southeastern coast is washing away at an alarming rate, leaving dangerous sand cliffs along the shoreline and causing a childcare center to be torn down.
The biggest source of microplastics in California coastal waters? Car tires
According to a study from the San Francisco Bay Microplastics Project, the biggest source of microplastic pollution in California’s coastal waters may come from car tires.
Simple changes in intensity of weather events ‘could be lethal’
Faced with extreme weather events and unprecedented environmental change, animals and plants are scrambling to catch up, with mixed results. A new model helps to predict the types of changes that could drive a given species to extinction.
Ocean cleanup device successfully collects plastic for first time
A huge floating device designed by Dutch scientists to clean up an island of rubbish in the Pacific Ocean that is three times the size of France has successfully picked up plastic from the high seas for the first time.
A whale found dead, 3 others euthanized on South Carolina beach
Biologists will perform necropsies on one whale that died and three that were euthanized after becoming stranded on a South Carolina beach.
315 billion-tonne iceberg breaks off Antarctica
The Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica has just produced its biggest iceberg in more than 50 years.
We know they aren’t feeding’: fears for polar bears over shrinking Arctic ice
This year’s annual minimum of the Arctic sea ice tied with the second-lowest extent on record, a mere 1.6m sq miles, and badly affected polar bear populations that live and hunt on the north slope of Alaska, plus those that live on the ice floes in the Bering Sea.
U.N. confirms the ocean is screwed
The ocean isn’t alright. The seas, which hold some 332,519,000 cubic miles of water, are warming, rising, acidifying, and losing oxygen. And a new comprehensive U.N. climate special report, released Wednesday, presents an encyclopedic review of how Earth’s oceans and ice sheets have been altered as the world relentlessly warms.