Shore towns use sand dredged from inlets to widen beaches
Coastal areas around the country are dredging clogged inlets to make them easier to navigate, and using the sand they suck from the bottom to widen beaches damaged by natural erosion or serious storms. Concerns that have arisen from inlet dredging include possibly disturbing wildlife habitat, or affecting the shape of nearby shorelines.
Slowly but surely, South Carolina’s incredibly complex shoreline is losing ground
More than half of South Carolina’s shoreline is eroding under an onslaught of rising seas, pounding storms and other scouring forces. These and other recent findings cast new light on the nature and fate of our coast.
The Last Continent: Antarctic remains an enigma
As the last continent to be discovered, Antarctica remains a mysterious, mystical and spectacularly beautiful place that often turns adventurers and rational scientists into poets when they are asked to describe it. It is the emptiest and coldest place on Earth, but human incursions over the past century have severely impacted both the wildlife and the oceans.
Plastic waste ‘building up’ in Arctic
Plastic waste is building up in the supposedly pristine wilderness of the Norwegian Arctic, scientists say.
Federal penalties against polluters at lowest level in a decade under Trump
Figures released by the EPA show that 115 crime cases were opened in 2017, down from a peak of nearly 400 in 2009.
Trucking Mud to the Beaches Means More Sand but Dirtier Waters, CA
When Santa Barbara County dumps tons of mud from the catastrophic debris flow of January 9 on the shores of Goleta and Carpinteria, this wasn’t like anything that’s happened before. So residents are asking, “Will there be long-term effects? Might there be other locations that can share the impacts..?”
Mysterious lives of narwhals
Arctic marine mammals are really good indicators of climate change because they are very specialized. They are finely attuned to specific environmental conditions, thus are good indicator species for how the physical changes many scientists are documenting in the Arctic can reverberate throughout the ecosystem.
New Trump Administration Flood Standards Mirror Obama-Era Rules
Six months after President Trump revoked an Obama-era rule mandating that federally funded projects account for future sea level rise and flooding, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has announced that recipients of $7.4 billion in disaster recovery grants must do just that — seemingly representing a reversal of the administration’s stance on climate preparedness.
Demand for sand leads to global ecological crisis
Every day, miners remove 5,500 to 6,000 truckloads of sand (about 20 tons each) from the scenic beachfronts and 17 river basins of Tamil Nadu, India. Fueled by a real estate boom estimated to generate $180 billion annually by 2020, India is digging 500 million metric tons of sand every year, feeding an industry worth more than $50 billion. And India’s hunger is bound to increase…