The world watches as the Great Salt Lake, one of Earth's largest saline lakes, deteriorates. 



Over the past 30 years, the lake has lost a staggering 15 billion cubic yards (11.4 billion cubic meters) of water. It has grown shallower at the rate of 4 inches (10 cm) each year.



This rapid depletion isn't a natural mystery. Decades of unsustainable water diversion, combined with increasing demand and a changing climate, have pushed the lake to a breaking point.



Agriculture is a major contributor to this dire situation, particularly in the case of livestock feed crops.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-rapid-depletion-of-great-salt-lake">Rapid depletion of Great Salt Lake </h2>



A recent study published in the journal Environmental Challenges reveals a shocking statistic. Approximately 62% of the river water heading towards Great Salt Lake gets diverted for human usage.



Agricultural activities are the primary culprits, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the water diverted.



“The research highlights the alarming role of water consumption for feeding livestock in driving the lake’s rapid depletion," explained William Ripple, a professor of ecology at <a href="https://oregonstate.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Oregon State University</a> and co-author of the study.



Almost 80% of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/agricultural-water-scarcity-is-about-to-get-much-worse/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">agricultural water</a> use is for irrigating alfalfa and hay crops - the primary feed for livestock.



This level of diversion not only depletes the lake's vital inflows but also raises questions about the long-term sustainability of current agricultural practices in the region.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-significance-of-great-salt-lake">Significance of Great Salt Lake</h2>



The importance of Great Salt Lake extends far beyond its beauty or agricultural use.



As one of the world's largest saline lakes, it plays important ecological, economic, cultural, and spiritual roles - all of which are in grave danger due to the dramatic <a href="https://www.earth.com/image/the-great-salt-lake-has-reached-historically-low-levels/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">decline in lake levels</a> during the past decades.



Data from the Utah Division of Water Resources shows a disturbing trend. From 1989 to 2022, consumption and evaporation consistently outpaced inflows from river water and precipitation.



This imbalance has created an annual deficit of approximately 500 million cubic yards (380 cubic meters), which has further accelerated the lake's decline.



The water budget has faced a persistent deficit for most of the past century. The situation has been exacerbated by the growing impacts of climate change and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/global-drought-has-caused-crisis-levels-of-food-and-water-scarcity/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">prolonged drought</a>, according to the researchers.



“Abnormally large <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/snowmelt-changes-may-greatly-affect-farmers-in-western-u-s/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">snowmelt</a> inflow during the 1980s and 1990s served to temporarily obscure the long-term decline in lake levels, and the lake actually reached its highest level in more than a century in 1987,” explained Professor Ripple. “But it has been dropping by roughly 4 inches per year on average since then.”



Great Salt Lake is the largest saline lake in the Western Hemisphere and ranks eighth globally. Its 21,000-square-mile drainage basin, which includes the Wasatch Mountains, relies heavily on snowfall for water replenishment.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-threats-from-declining-lake-levels">Threats from declining lake levels</h2>



Great Salt Lake is also a biodiversity hotspot, hosting over 10 million migrating birds and an estimated 350 different species of birds. These habitats are threatened by declining lake levels.



In addition, the lake creates $2.5 billion in annual economic activity. Recreation, mining, and the harvesting of brine shrimp support more than 9,000 jobs. As salinity levels increase, however, brine shrimp experience extreme stress.



Human health also suffers as the Lake shrinks, with wind-carried <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/great-salt-lake-drying-up-causing-major-dust-pollution/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dust from the exposed saline lakebed</a> causing a range of pulmonary problems.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-saving-great-salt-lake">Saving Great Salt Lake</h2>



To halt this alarming trend and start refilling the lake, a 35% reduction of human water consumption in the Great Salt Lake watershed by 35% has been proposed.



This includes a significant cut in irrigated alfalfa production, a fallowing of much of the region’s irrigated grass hay fields, and taxpayer-funded compensation for affected farmers and ranchers.



Conservation measures such as crop shifting, reducing municipal and industrial use, and leasing water rights from irrigators have also been proposed.



The impacts of these changes will be significant, and will affect as many as 20,000 farmers and ranchers in the basin. However, the situation presents an opportunity to set a precedent for addressing water scarcity globally.



“The economic and cultural adjustments required are significant but not insurmountable. With the right policies and public support, we can secure a sustainable future for the Great Salt Lake and set a precedent for addressing water scarcity globally,” concluded Professor Ripple.



The full study was published in the journal <a href="https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S2667010024002312" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Environmental Challenges</a>.



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Great Salt Lake: Agriculture is draining a natural wonder

The world watches as the Great Salt Lake, one of Earth's largest saline lakes, deteriorates. Over the past 30 years, the lake has lost a staggering 15 billion cubic yards (11.4 billion cubic meters) of water. It has grown shallower at the rate of 4 inches (10 cm) each year. This rapid depletion isn't a natural mystery. Decades of unsustainable water diversion, combined with increasing demand and a changing climate, have pushed the lake to a breaking point. Agriculture is a major contributor to this dire situation,...

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<div></div>
<div>A study published today in Ecology Letters adds to a growing body of work examining the relationship between harmful algal blooms in the Gulf of Mexico and agricultural runoff. The article focuses on water chemistry, specifically the ratio of dissolved silica to dissolved inorganic nitrogen in 130 lakes connected to watersheds influencing nutrient concentrations in the Gulf of Mexico.</div>
<div></div>
<div>The research is particularly timely as algae, agriculture and weather combined to create an above-average size "Dead Zone" in the Gulf in 2016. Starting at the mouth of the Mississippi River, the ratio of silica to inorganic nitrogen has shifted dramatically toward nitrogen in the last century in the Gulf of Mexico. Two possible explanations for the change in ratio are that dams and reservoirs may remove silica and that agriculture supplies so much nitrogen that the ratios are forced downward. This study shows that reservoirs do not remove silica whereas nitrogen increases greatly when landscapes are more than 60 percent agriculture.

Excess dissolved nitrogen, in coastal zones like the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Erie, fuels the growth of algae which in turn precipitates anoxic conditions, or dead zones. Prior to such nutrient loading, the ratio of dissolved silica to dissolved inorganic nitrogen was balanced in a way that allowed diatoms, which supply the oxygen in every fourth breath a person takes, to survive.

"It is easy to change a phytoplankton community just by altering the availability of a few important compounds such as dissolved silica or dissolved inorganic nitrogen," said co-author John Downing, director of the University of Minnesota Sea Grant College Program and the study's principal investigator. "In the Gulf we want to see diatoms, a type of phytoplankton that needs about equal amounts of dissolved silica and dissolved inorganic nitrogen. What we've created is a nitrate-rich condition that favors other, harmful types of phytoplankton."

Downing and colleagues from the University of Washington and Boston University found that increased nitrogen loss from agricultural fields sufficiently explains why the northern Gulf of Mexico waters are plagued by blooms of harmful algae. They also identified methods that may lead to better techniques for managing landscapes and the water they influence.

Downing and colleagues suggest that managing landscapes at watershed levels could significantly improve water quality, especially in wet years. They also point to reservoirs and similar water impoundments as areas where heavy nutrient loads could be diminished without affecting silica concentrations before the water reaches the Gulf of Mexico.

"We need to be vigilant about our land use and water quality," said Downing. "Climate change and increased storminess will likely exacerbate the skewed ratios we found and the extent of harmful blooms in coastal areas if we don't manage agricultural runoff more effectively. Harmful algae blooms cost the U.S. seafood, tourism and health industries over $80 million a year according the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and we know we can do better."</div>
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<div>Credit: <a href="http://www.minnesota.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of Minnesota</a></div>

New insights into relationship between agriculture and dead zones

A study published today in Ecology Letters adds to a...

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As torrential rain descends on the Pacific Northwest, new research published online in the journal Global Change Biology provides a glimpse of how salmon rivers might fare in a future with larger floods.

The study, led by Wild Salmon Center science director Dr. Matthew Sloat, in collaboration with US Forest Service researchers, examines new climate patterns in southeast Alaska and the effects on flooding and habitat in salmon watersheds. Climate projections for southeast Alaska suggest that the region, home to the largest remaining temperate rain forest in the world, will be even warmer and wetter in the future.

Salmon are absolutely central to the culture, economy, and ecosystems of southeast Alaska. Salmon fishing in the region generates about $1 billion annually. Salmon populations and their habitat are generally in good condition throughout the region, but local communities are concerned about the potential effect of a changing climate on these populations.

Sloat and colleagues looked at the impact future floods could have on salmon spawning. Salmon spawn in streams in the fall and eggs develop through the winter, so increased winter flooding could potentially scour their eggs from the streambed and impact the next generation of fish.

The researchers combined field measurements and model simulations to estimate the potential influence of future flood disturbance on the quality and extent of coho, chum, and pink salmon spawning habitat in over 800 southeast Alaska watersheds.

They found that as much as 16% of the spawning habitat for coho salmon could be lost by the 2080s. But losses were predicted to occur primarily in narrower, steeper streams that provide moderate-quality habitat and, to a lesser extent, in high quality low gradient floodplain habitats. Estimated effects were lower for pink and chum salmon, which spawn almost exclusively in low gradient floodplain streams.

Somewhat surprisingly, the study shows that the overall risk of flood impacts to salmon reproduction in southeast Alaska is probably much lower than was previously thought.

According to Sloat, one key factor in this finding is the relatively pristine condition of the area's rivers and floodplains. Intact floodplains can minimize future impacts to salmon populations because floodplains allow large floods to spread out over valley bottoms. Previous assessments had not accounted for valley and stream channel morphology when considering potential effects of floods.

"Flood plains essentially act as pressure release valves that can dissipate the energy of large floods," says Sloat. "In fact, most salmon prefer to spawn in stretches of river with intact floodplains, which is probably no coincidence because these features of the landscape help protect salmon eggs from flood events."

Sloat says that a clear message from this research project is that maintaining or reconnecting rivers and their floodplains may be critical for increasing the resilience of salmon in the face of a changing climate.

"Our results identify key parts of watersheds that, if protected, will continue to buffer salmon populations from flood disturbance in the future," he says.

The relationships between floodplains, climate change, and salmon habitat are applicable in other regions as well.

"We have been addressing this issue in southeast Alaska but the same tools can be used in the lower 48 and elsewhere," he says. "The real take-home message from this work is that protecting intact rivers, especially areas with functioning floodplains, is one of the key elements for sustaining salmon in the future."

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<div>Credit: <a href="http://www.fs.fed.us/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">US Forest Service</a> and the <a href="http://www.wildsalmoncenter.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wild Salmon Center</a></div>

How will salmon survive under climate change?

As torrential rain descends on the Pacific Northwest, new research...

<div>
<div class="img-wrapper">Many people know that tropical cyclones and hurricanes cause high winds and storm surges. But two of their other effects, heavy rainfall and inland flooding, can be just as dangerous and impact larger areas.</div>
<div class="img-wrapper"></div>
<div class="img-wrapper">Most recently, inland rainfall produced by Hurricane Matthew has caused record flooding in North Carolina, with the levels of some already swollen rivers and streams continuing to rise.</div>
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), more than 50 percent of the deaths associated with hurricanes from 1970 to 2004 were caused by fresh water flooding. And from 1981 to 2011, hurricane damage accounted for almost half--$417.9 billion--of the total monetary damage from all weather and climate disasters during that same time period (adjusted for inflation to 2011 dollars).

With the goal of providing basic information to help improve preparedness and mitigation efforts, new University of Iowa-led research published online in September in the Journal of Hydrology examined how accurate current forecasting systems are in predicting rainfall from North Atlantic tropical cyclones that reach land in the United States.

Comparing five state-of-the-art weather prediction models, researchers found current models can forecast both where and how much rainfall a tropical cyclone will produce up to two days in advance. However, the forecast's accuracy decreased significantly when the prediction window increased to five days. The researchers' findings were based on 15 North Atlantic hurricanes that came within at least 500 kilometers of the U.S. coastline from 2007 to 2012.

Gabriele Villarini, UI associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and corresponding author on the paper, says researchers honed in on predicting the impacts of tropical cyclones because that information is generally more useful than typical forecasts that predict how many storms are expected in a season.

"The more specific the information we can provide is, the more useful it will be. This is why we have been moving toward predicting U.S. landfalling tropical cyclone activity and the associated rainfall," he says.

Villarini, also an associate research engineer at the UI's renowned Iowa Flood Center, says while a 48-hour lead time is a good starting point in terms of warning, he will continue to conduct more research to improve these predictions.

"By improving our understanding of the processes that drive tropical cyclones and hurricanes, we will be better positioned to improve our ability to forecast these events and their impacts with longer and longer lead times," he says.

Gabriel Vecchi, head of the climate variations and predictability group at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab and another author on the paper, says decades of weather prediction data show that forecasts have improved--and will improve--as scientists learn more about hurricanes.

"We can't do anything about the past," he says. "The goal of this work is to provide better information in the future."

Vecchi, who has collaborated with Villarini on several research projects, says he values the expertise in flooding and hydrology that Villarini and the Iowa Flood Center bring to their partnership.

"This is one of these examples of interdisciplinary work that has been incredibly fruitful," he says.

The paper also was authored by Beda Luitel while he was a graduate student at the UI.

<hr />

Credit: <a href="http://www.noaa.gov" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NOAA</a>

The Iowa Flood Center, IIHR­-Hydroscience and Engineering, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Institute for Water Resources funded the work.

</div>
<div>

&nbsp;

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Predicting rainfall from tropical cyclones and hurricanes

Many people know that tropical cyclones and hurricanes cause high...

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Colonial plunder, crime, tribal factions, sectarianism, drug running, piracy, animal poaching, illegal logging and destructive mining practices -- all of which add up to wholesale environmental exploitation. The island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines has seen it all and more.

"Mindanao has about 22 totally separate ethnolinguistic groups, who speak maybe 70 languages -- culturally, it's incredibly complex and diverse," said Rafe Brown, curator-in-charge of herpetology at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute. "Colliding cultures have butted heads for 500 years or more. Historically there has been tension between the national Catholic government and Muslim regional government, and the cultural interests of numerous indigenous peoples' groups also underlie conflict over natural resources. Mindanao has extensive mineral resources and forests with valuable timber. Tropical rainforest soils are also very fertile, making the lowlands attractive to agribusiness. There's been conflict over those resources for hundreds of years."

If the island seems like a daunting locale to conduct biological research, that's because it is. Brown recently took part in an expedition into the mountains of Mindanao to carry out a biological survey of the area's fauna, bringing KU graduate students along for the challenging fieldwork with scientists from Father Saturnino Urios University, the University of Oklahoma, the National Museum of the Philippines and Silliman University.

Brown, a world-renowned herpetologist who focuses on southeast Asia, said the risks inherent in the work are worthwhile because he values international collaboration so much and because Mindanao is a treasure house of biodiversity.

"The Philippine archipelago is recognized as a globally significant conservation priority -- a biodiversity hotspot," he said. "For example, 95 percent of Mindanao's amphibians don't appear anywhere else in the world. The terrestrial biodiversity of the Philippines is amazing, and this part of Mindanao is the center of the center of that diversity. The biodiversity is so high in this one pocket of northeast Mindanao, largely because the ranges of so many species in the archipelago overlap in this one area. We knew it was really diverse, but we didn't have a sense of this one area being the bull's-eye, the epicenter of this diversity."

As a result of the expedition in Mindanao, the research team has published a new paper in the online open-access journal ZooKeys detailing their findings: a total of 126 species, including 40 frogs, one caecilian, 49 lizards, 35 snakes, a freshwater turtle and a crocodile.

Their discoveries, making up 36 percent of the total known Philippine reptiles and amphibians, were the result of genetic and morphological analysis, international collaboration and, above all, rigorous fieldwork. Much of the expedition was carried out on mountains, as extensive logging has destroyed the lion's share of old-growth forest on Mindanao's lowlands.

"Mindanao is a place where unfortunately the original forest cover was more than 85 percent, but now it's down to 6 percent original forest, and 15 percent is second-growth vegetation," Brown said. "Giant U.S. logging operations made it big under the Marcos administration. They deforested Mindanao in about 40 years. Mindanao formerly supported incredibly diverse forests with trees as big around as your house standing 250 feet tall. I saw a bit of it left in Cotabato in 1991 during my first trip to the Philippines, before it was cut down in the early '90s."

To prepare for the expedition, first Brown and collaborators from local universities met with local authorities, tribal leaders, hunters, police and military for advice and to ensure the safety of the research team, a process he calls "ground proofing." Then, Brown's research team hiked up one of the biggest mountains on Mindanao.

"On Mount Hilong-hilong, we established camps at 300, 900 and 1,200 meters," he said. "We were there for three-and-a-half weeks, then moved to the next mountain range over, where we surveyed Mount Lumot. Once we get up, we set up tents and put our traps along trails created by animals. Every expedition is a training opportunity for the participants, and we're all anxious to learn new skills from each other. The researchers from the U.S. are trained to go out with shovels and potato rakes and machetes, actively searching habitats of target species. We typically dig around tree trunks looking for animals that live underground. We search rivers and streams, turning over rocks, splitting open decaying logs looking for lizards or frogs. We climb trees, looking for tree-dwelling lizards, or place pitfall traps in the ground to catch lizards and small snakes that live in the leaf litter. We also use sticky traps like people use to catch pests in homes."

Brown and his team also rely on indigenous knowledge of each area's biodiversity and techniques for locating elusive animals.

"On these expeditions, we also found that different tribal groups have unique and ingenious means of catching forest animals," he said. "For example, a master hunter taught us how to make a variety of traps and snares from vines and rattan. And with his techniques, we captured species of rodents and lizards that we never caught by any other means."

Aside from passive traps, KU researchers and their Filipino collaborators spent a great deal of their time searching for animals in the dark.

"The longer distances are traversed at night, when we walk in groups through the forest on trails, actively looking for nocturnal animals on the ground, along rivers and up in trees, using powerful head lamps. This is one of the most important pieces of equipment we have, a really strong head lamp. Without the right light, we'd be in trouble."

For Brown, the research work on Mindanao harkens back a century to when KU Professor Edward Harrison Taylor, called the "Father of Philippine herpetology," performed years of fieldwork in the same part of Mindanao, discovering many of the 120 species he described in his career. Indeed, Brown and his Filipino collaborators have spent considerable time and effort, throughout the Philippines, trying to rediscover species first discovered and formally described by Taylor but over the last century pushed toward extinction by the ensuing deforestation.

"We like to think back to Taylor, a century ago, who would go out 'herping' by himself with a kerosene lantern, carrying it above his head with one hand, while grabbing lizards with the other. It's difficult to imagine how he collected as many specimens as he did," Brown said. "But his legacy, the published record and the many well-preserved specimens in museums around the world formed the foundation of Philippine herpetology. That legacy has been an inspiration to three or four generations of Filipino and American students who followed in his footsteps, all the while emphasizing partnership and collaboration between our historically linked countries."

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Credit: <a href="http://www.ku.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of Kansas</a>

</div>

Scientists declare the island of Mindanao a biodiversity hotspot

Colonial plunder, crime, tribal factions, sectarianism, drug running, piracy, animal...

<div>
<div class="img-wrapper">At the southern end of the Earth, a NASA plane carrying a team of scientists and a sophisticated instrument suite to study ice is returning to surveying Antarctica. For the past eight years, Operation IceBridge has been on a mission to build a record of how polar ice is evolving in a changing environment.</div>
<div class="img-wrapper"></div>
<div class="img-wrapper">The information IceBridge has gathered in the Antarctic, which includes data on the thickness and shape of snow and ice, as well as the topography of the land and ocean floor beneath the ocean and the ice, has allowed scientists to determine that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may be in irreversible decline. Researchers have also used IceBridge data to evaluate climate models of Antarctica and map of the bedrock underneath Antarctic ice.</div>
IceBridge completed the first research flight of its 2016 Antarctic campaign on October 14. The campaign will continue through November 19. This year, the mission is based in Punta Arenas, a city at the southern tip of Chile. From there, IceBridge is carrying 12-hour flights back and forth to Antarctica, covering most of the western section of the frozen continent - the region that is experiencing the fastest changes and is Antarctica's biggest contributor to sea level rise.

"We have a total of 46 flight lines to choose from this year," said John Sonntag, IceBridge mission scientist. "If we're lucky -the weather is very tricky in Antarctica- we'll fly around half of them, for a total of 300 flight hours."

IceBridge's flights will be mostly revisits of lines flown in previous years, to monitor how the ice has evolved since the last time the mission measured it. Still, there are some variations and additions to this year's plans. IceBridge intends to carry a new flight in the Bellingshausen Sea that will mimic some of the tracks that an upcoming NASA satellite mission -the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2- will follow in that area. The data collected during this flight will help calibrate ICESat-2's future measurements.

"This year, we'll mostly repeat our usual flight lines for sea ice, which have been proven to give us good coverage of the sea ice cover in the Weddell and Bellingshausen seas," said Nathan Kurtz, IceBridge's project scientist and a sea ice researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

For land ice, IceBridge has adjusted some of its planned flights to allow scientists to better understand rapidly changing areas that are still relatively unexplored, such as the Smith, Pope and Kohler glaciers and the Getz Ice Shelf. For flights elsewhere in Antarctica, the IceBridge team is also coordinating with a group of scientists from the British Antarctic Survey, who will also be conducting aerial surveys of West Antarctica in some of the areas that IceBridge studies.

"We're interested in knowing the differences between our radar and laser systems and theirs and making best use of finite flight time," said Joe MacGregor, IceBridge's deputy project scientist and a land ice researcher at Goddard. "If we fly portions of their flights, we'll be able to compare the data and collaborate in our efforts to understand the future of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. If we fly in between their tracks, then the combination of our datasets and theirs can produce a more complete picture of a changing Antarctica."

Unlike in some previous years, when IceBridge flew on smaller planes with limited loads, this campaign's flights will again be conducted aboard NASA's DC-8 roomy airborne science laboratory, which allows the mission to carry its full instrument suite. The main instrument is a laser altimeter that records minute changes in the height of the ice surface from one year to the next. Accompanying the laser are three radars that analyze the elevation and layer composition of the snow and ice, as well as the shape of the land underneath, and a high-resolution camera system. The DC-8 also carries a gravimeter and magnetometer that measure small variations in gravity and the Earth's magnetic field to map the ocean cavity underneath Antarctica's ice edges, which is essential for improving our understanding of how the ice and ocean interact. For the first time in the Antarctic, IceBridge will also be using an infrared camera to measure the surface temperature of the ice.

A high-school teacher from Colorado, a handful of professors and students from Universidad de Magallanes, Chile, and several media teams, among other visitors, will be flying with IceBridge during the Antarctic campaign.

Operation IceBridge's mission is to collect data on changing polar land and sea ice and maintain continuity of measurements between ICESat missions. The original ICESat mission ended in 2009, and its successor, ICESat-2, is scheduled for launch in 2018. Operation IceBridge is currently funded until 2019. The planned overlap with ICESat-2 will help scientists validate the satellite's measurements. NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia provided the laser altimeter and the infrared camera that are being used during IceBridge's 2016 Antarctic spring campaign. IceBridge's three radar instruments come from the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets at the University of Kansas, while NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California, provided the Digital Mapping System, and the gravimeter and magnetometer onboard IceBridge are managed by Columbia University.

---

Credit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/icebridge" target="_blank">Operation IceBridge</a>


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Operation IceBridge begins 8th year studying Antarctica

At the southern end of the Earth, a NASA plane...

<div>
<div class="img-wrapper">Tiny robots have been helping researchers study how climate change affects biodiversity. Developed by Northeastern University scientist Brian Helmuth, the "robomussels" have the shape, size, and color of actual mussels, with miniature built-in sensors that track temperatures inside the mussel beds.</div>
<div class="img-wrapper"></div>
<div class="img-wrapper">For the past 18 years, every 10 to 15 minutes, Helmuth and a global research team of 48 scientists have used robomussels to track internal body temperature, which is determined by the temperature of the surrounding air or water, and the amount of solar radiation the devices absorb. They place the robots inside mussel beds in oceans around the globe and record temperatures. The researchers have built a database of nearly two decades worth of data enabling scientists to pinpoint areas of unusual warming, intervene to help curb damage to vital marine ecosystems, and develop strategies that could prevent extinction of certain species.</div>
Housed at Northeastern's Marine Science Center in Nahant, Massachusetts, this largest-ever database is not only a remarkable way to track the effects of climate change, the findings can also reveal emerging hotspots so policymakers and scientists can step in and relieve stressors such as erosion and water acidification before it's too late.

"They look exactly like mussels but they have little green blinking lights in them," says Helmuth. "You basically pluck out a mussel and then glue the device to the rock right inside the mussel bed. They enable us to link our field observations with the physiological impact of global climate change on these ecologically and economically important animals."

For ecological forecasters such as Helmuth, mussels act as a barometer of climate change. That's because they rely on external sources of heat such as air temperature and sun exposure for their body heat and thrive, or not, depending on those conditions. Using fieldwork along with mathematical and computational models, Helmuth forecasts the patterns of growth, reproduction, and survival of mussels in intertidal zones.

Over the years, he and his colleagues have found surprises: "Our expectations of where to look for the effects of climate change in nature are more complex than anticipated," says Helmuth. For example, in an earlier paper in the journal Science, his team found that hotspots existed not only at the southern end of the species' distribution, in this case, southern California; they also existed at sites up north, in Oregon and Washington state.

"These datasets tell us when and where to look for the effects of climate change," he says. "Without them we could miss early warning signs of trouble."

The robomussels' near-continuous measurements serve as an early warning system. "If we start to see sites where the animals are regularly getting to temperatures that are right below what kills them, we know that any slight increase is likely to send them over the edge, and we can act," says Helmuth.

It's not only the mussels that may be pulled back from the brink. The advance notice could inform everything from maintaining the biodiversity of coastal systems to determining the best--and worst--places to locate mussel farms.

"Losing mussel beds is essentially like clearing a forest," says Helmuth. "If they go, everything that's living in them will go. They are a major food supply for many species, including lobsters and crabs. They also function as filters along near-shore waters, clearing huge amounts of particulates. So losing them can affect everything from the growth of species we care about because we want to eat them to water clarity to biodiversity of all the tiny animals that live on the insides of the beds."
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<div>Credit: <a href="http://www.northeastern.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Northeastern University</a></div>

Scientists create 'robomussels' to monitor climate change

Tiny robots have been helping researchers study how climate change...

Nearly 200 nations have reached a deal, announced Saturday morning after all-night negotiations, to limit the use of greenhouse gases far more powerful than carbon dioxide in a major effort to fight climate change.
The talks on hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, were called the first test of global will since the historic Paris Agreement to cut carbon emissions was reached last year. HFCs are described as the world's fastest-growing climate pollutant and are used in air conditioners and refrigerators. Experts say cutting them is the fastest way to reduce global warming.
President Barack Obama, in a statement Saturday, called the new deal "an ambitious and far-reaching solution to this looming crisis." The spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called it "critically important."
The agreement, unlike the broader Paris one, is legally binding. It caps and reduces the use of HFCs in a gradual process beginning by 2019 with action by developed countries including the United States, the world's second-worst polluter. More than 100 developing countries, including China, the world's top carbon emitter, will start taking action by 2024, when HFC consumption levels should peak.
A small group of countries including India, Pakistan and some Gulf states pushed for and secured a later start in 2028, saying their economies need more time to grow. That's three years earlier than India, the world's third-worst polluter, had first proposed.
"It's a very historic moment, and we are all very delighted that we have come to this point where we can reach a consensus and agree to most of the issues that were on the table," said India's chief delegate, Ajay Narayan Jha.
Environmental groups had hoped that the deal could reduce global warming by a half-degree Celsius by the end of this century. This agreement gets about 90 percent of the way there, said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development.
Zaelke's group said this is the "largest temperature reduction ever achieved by a single agreement."
The new agreement is "equal to stopping the entire world's fossil-fuel CO2 emissions for more than two years," David Doniger, climate and clean air program director with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement.
It is estimated that the agreement will cut the global levels of HFCs by 80 to 85 percent by 2047, the World Resources Institute said in a statement.
Experts said they hope that market forces will help speed up the limits agreed to in the deal.
HFCs were introduced in the 1980s as a substitute for ozone-depleting gases. But their danger has grown as air conditioner and refrigerator sales have soared in emerging economies like China and India. HFCs are also found in inhalers and insulating foams.
Major economies have debated how quickly to phase out HFCs. The United States, whose delegation was led by Secretary of State John Kerry, and Western countries want quick action. Nations such as India want to give their industries more time to adjust.
"Thank God we got to this agreement that is good for all nations, that takes into consideration all regional and national issues," said Taha Mohamed Zatari, the head of Saudi Arabia's negotiating team.
Small island states and many African countries had pushed for early timeframes, saying they face the biggest threat from climate change.
"It may not be entirely what the islands wanted, but it is a good deal," Mattlan Zackhras, the minister-in-assistance to the president of the Marshall Islands, said in a statement. "We all know we must go further, and we will go further."
The U.N. says the next meeting in 2017 will determine how much of the billions of dollars needed to finance the reduction of HFCs will be provided by countries.
HFCs are less plentiful than carbon dioxide, but Kerry said last month that they currently emit as much pollution as 300 coal-fired power plants each year. That amount will rise significantly over the coming decades as air conditioning units and refrigerators reach hundreds of millions of new people.
HFCs don't harm the ozone layer like chlorofluorocarbons and similar gases that were eliminated under the 1987 Montreal Protocol. The entire world ratified that agreement, helping to repair holes in the ozone that helps shield the planet from the harmful rays of the sun. The aim of this meeting was to attach an amendment to that treaty dealing specifically with HFCs.
"This is about much more than the ozone layer and HFCs. It is a clear statement by all world leaders that the green transformation started in Paris is irreversible and unstoppable," Erik Solheim, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said in a statement.
Environmental groups were already turning attention Saturday to other greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.
"Acting on HFCs does not exempt us from acting on CO2 or other important greenhouse gases like methane. We emit considerably more carbon, and it lingers in the atmosphere for more than 500 years," Carol Werner, executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, said in a statement.
---
Associated Press videographer Khaled Kazziha in Kigali contributed.
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200 nations finalize agreement to limit powerful greenhouse gases

Nearly 200 nations have reached a deal, announced Saturday morning...

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In recent years, a class of highly absorbent, nanoporous materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as a promising material for carbon capture in power plants. But finding the optimal MOF to do the best job is another story.

"People are really excited about these materials because we can make a huge variety and really tune them," said Northwestern University's Randall Q. Snurr. "But there's a flip side to that. If you have an application in mind, there are thousands of existing MOFs and millions of potential MOFs you could make. How do you find the best one for a given application?"

Snurr, who is the John G. Searle Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and his group have discovered a way to rapidly identify top candidates for carbon capture -- using just 1 percent of the computational effort that was previously required. By applying a genetic algorithm, they rapidly searched through a database of 55,000 MOFs.

"In the past, we had to evaluate all 55,000 candidates one at a time," Snurr said. "We just marched through them and calculated all of their properties. This genetic algorithm allows you to avoid that."

One of the identified top candidates, a variant of NOTT-101, has a higher capacity for carbon dioxide (CO2) than any MOF reported in scientific literature for the relevant conditions. This information could lead to designs for newly commissioned, cleaner power plants.

"The percentage of carbon dioxide that the MOF can absorb depends on the process," Snurr said. "The Department of Energy target is to remove 90 percent of carbon dioxide from a power plant; it's likely that a process using this material could meet that target."

Supported by the US Department of Energy, the research appeared online today in the journal Science Advances. Yongchul G. Chung and Diego A. Gomez-Gualdron, former postdoctoral fellows in Snurr's laboratory, were the paper's co-first authors. Northwestern chemistry professors J. Fraser Stoddart, Joseph Hupp, and Omar Farha contributed to the work as well as Fengqi You, former professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern.

With their nanoscopic pores and incredibly high surface areas, MOFs are excellent materials for gas storage. MOFs' vast internal surface areas allow them to hold remarkably high volumes of gas. The volume of some MOF crystals might be the size of a grain of salt, for example, but the internal surface area, if unfolded, could cover an entire football field.

Snurr's previous work has explored how to use MOFs to capture carbon from existing power plants during the post-combustion process. About 10 to 15 percent of power plant exhaust is CO2; the rest is mainly nitrogen and water vapor. Snurr and Hupp designed a MOF that can sort these gases to capture CO2 before it enters the atmosphere.

Recently, Snurr recalled that the method is a lot easier after a little chemical processing. Chemically processing the fuel before it enters the power plant can turn it into CO2 and hydrogen. After the MOF captures the CO2, the hydrogen is burned and the only byproduct is water. This extra chemical processing step would need to be built into new power plants as a pre-combustion process.

"In places like China, where they are still building a lot of power plants," Snurr said, "this would make a lot of sense."

An optimization technique that mimics natural selection, the genetic algorithm takes a random population of candidate solutions and evolves them toward better solutions through mutation, crossover, and selection. Snurr said this technique has been applied to material screening in the past but not in a search for top candidates for the pre-combustion process, which he describes as a "new challenge."

To tackle carbon capture in pre-combustion, the genetic algorithm pinpointed NOTT-101 as a top candidate. (The material is named after Nottingham, the place where the MOF was first discovered.) Hupp and Farha created the NOTT-101 variant and tested it in the laboratory. Out of all of the MOFs that have been evaluated for pre-combustion, this material had the highest capacity for capturing carbon and good selectivity for grabbing CO2 to sort it from hydrogen.

"Initially, I wasn't sure how well this algorithm would work," Snurr said. "But using just 1 percent of the usual computational effort is a significant improvement in speed. It's very exciting."

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<div>Credit: <a href="http://www.northwestern.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Northwestern University</a></div>

Progress made in finding ideal materials for carbon capture

In recent years, a class of highly absorbent, nanoporous materials...

With dreams of turning carbon dioxide into everything from concrete to fish food, teams from six countries have advanced beyond the first phase of a $20 million XPRIZE contest to find profitable uses for CO2 emitted by power plants.
A panel of nine judges recently chose the 28 proposals from 47 entries submitted last summer. The teams now will have a year or so to demonstrate their techniques in laboratories and compete for the first $5 million in prize money, XPRIZE announced Monday.
"The race is really on," said Paul Bunje, principal and senior scientist at XPRIZE.
The goal is to find new ways to prevent carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from entering the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. Coal-fired power plants are a major source of carbon dioxide emissions, a problem contributing to hard times in the U.S. coal industry.
Semi-finalist entries came from Canada, China, India, Switzerland, Scotland and the U.S.
Successful ideas in the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE must work as anticipated and will need to be profitable enough to offset their cost in a real-world application.
Ideas moving up to the contest's second round would turn CO2 into a range of products including graphene, a newly discovered substance much stronger than steel; carbon nanotubes, extremely tiny tubes with potential uses in electronics; and toothpaste.
Making high-protein fish food from carbon dioxide could have environmental benefits besides controlling greenhouse gas. Farm-raised fish, such as salmon, could be more sustainable if they got some of their nutrition from sources that don't grow in the ocean.
In the third and final round, teams will demonstrate their ideas at a coal-fired power plant in Wyoming and at natural-gas-fired power plant in Canada.
"Each round is 10 times harder than the previous one in some respects," Bunje said.
The winners on each side of the competition - technologies destined for gas-fired-power-plants and those for use at coal-fired power plants - will get $2.5 million after the second round. They will each get $7.5 million after the third and final round.
NRG is a U.S. energy company based in Houston, Texas. COSIA stands for the Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, a group of companies developing the Canadian oil sands.
The gas-fired power plant where the competition will take place has yet to be announced. The XPRIZE competition will be the first tenant of a carbon-capture test center under construction at Basin Electric's Dry Fork Station near Gillette in northeast Wyoming.
The state of Wyoming has pledged $15 million toward the project.
---
Follow Mead Gruver at <a href="https://twitter.com/meadgruver">https://twitter.com/meadgruver</a>
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XPRIZE to find profitable uses for CO2 emissions advances to next stage

With dreams of turning carbon dioxide into everything from concrete...

<div>
<div class="img-wrapper">Remember dropping your milk teeth? After a lot of wiggling the tooth finally dropped out. But in your hand was only the enamel-covered crown: the entire root of the tooth had somehow disappeared. In a paper published in Nature, a team of researchers from Uppsala University and the ESRF in France apply synchrotron x-ray tomography to a tiny jawbone of a 424 million year old fossil fish in order to illuminate the origin of this strange system of tooth replacement.</div>
<div class="img-wrapper"></div>
<div class="img-wrapper">Teeth are subject to a lot of wear and tear, so it makes sense to be able to replace them during the lifetime of the animal. Surprisingly, however, the teeth of the earliest jawed vertebrates were fixed to the jaw bones and could not be shed. Tooth shedding eventually evolved independently on two occasions, using two quite different processes. In sharks and rays, the fibres that anchor the tooth to the skin of the jaw dissolve and the whole tooth simply falls out. In bony fish and land vertebrates, the developing tooth becomes attached directly to the jaw bone by a special tissue known as "bone of attachment", and when it is time for the tooth to be shed this attachment must be severed; specialized cells come in and resorb the dentine and bone of attachment until the tooth comes loose. That's why our milk teeth loose their roots before they are shed. But when did this process evolve?

The authors of the new study decided to investigate a jaw bone of the 424 million year old fossil fish Andreolepis from Gotland in Sweden, close to the common ancestor of all living bony fish and land vertebrates. The jaw is a tiny thing, less than a centimetre in length, but it hides a wonderful secret: the internal microstructure of the bone is perfectly preserved and contains a record of its growth history. Until recently it has only been possible to see internal structures by physically cutting thin sections from the fossil and viewing them under the microscope, but this destroys the specimen and provides only a two-dimensional image that is hard to interpret.

However, at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, it is now possible to make tomographic scans that capture the same level of microscopic detail, in three dimensions, without damaging the specimen. Donglei Chen, first author of the study, has spent several years painstakingly 'dissecting' the scan data on the computer screen, building up a three-dimensional map of the entire sequence of tooth addition and loss - the first time an early fossil dentition has been analyzed in such detail.

"Every time a tooth was shed, the resorption process created a hollow where it had been attached. When the succeeding replacement tooth was cemented in place by bone of attachment, the old resorption surface remained as a faint buried scar within the bone tissue. I found up to four of these buried resorption surfaces under each tooth, stacked on top of each other like plates in a cupboard. This shows that the teeth were replaced again and again during the life of the fish," explains Donglei Chen.

This is the earliest known example of tooth shedding by basal resorption, and it seems to be most similar to the process of tooth replacement seen today in primitive bony fish such as gar (Lepisosteus) and bichir (Polypterus). Like in these fish, new replacement teeth developed alongside the old ones, rather than underneath them like in us.

"The amount of biological information we get from the scans is simply astonishing. We can follow the process of growth and resorption right down to cellular level, almost like in a living animal. As we apply this technique to more early vertebrates, we will come to understand their life processes much better - and no doubt we will be in for some major surprises," says Per Ahlberg, one of the leaders of the project.


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<div>Credit: <a href="http://www.uu.se/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Uppsala University</a></div>

Tooth shedding evolved over 400 million years ago

Remember dropping your milk teeth? After a lot of wiggling...

On Oct. 17, Hurricane Nicole has been active for almost two weeks. Nicole was still a hurricane when the GPM core observatory satellite flew over on October 17.
<div>

As GPM looked at the rainfall rates within the storm, the National Hurricane Center noted that Nicole is still having a widespread effect on ocean swells around the North Atlantic from the U.S. to Europe and Africa.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or core GPM satellite passed over Nicole in the North Atlantic Ocean on Oct. 17 at 12:36 a.m. EDT (0436 UTC). The GPM satellite analyzed the rainfall in Nicole's large ragged eye. GPM's Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) swath sliced through the center of Nicole's eye and found some very heavy rainfall. A few strong storms in the southern side of the eye were dropping rain at a rate of over 113 mm (4.4 inches) per hour.

GPM's radar (DPR KU band) data collected with this pass were used in a 3-D examination of storm top heights. GPM found that the most powerful storms in Nicole's eye were reaching heights of only about 12 km (7.4 miles). GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA.

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) on Oct. 17 the center of Hurricane Nicole was located near 41.4 degrees north latitude and 44.6 degrees west longitude. That's about 560 miles (900 km) southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland, Canada.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Nicole was moving toward the north-northeast near 9 mph (15 kph), and this general heading with a significant increase in forward speed is expected during the next couple of days. Maximum sustained winds are near 75 mph (120 kph) with higher gusts. Little change in strength is forecast during the next 48 hours. However, Nicole should lose its tropical characteristics by early Tuesday, Oct. 18.

Nicole is a large hurricane. NHC estimated hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 90 miles (150 km) from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 415 miles (665 km). The estimated minimum central pressure is 962 millibars.

Nicole is expected to continue producing hurricane force winds while moving northward over the cooler waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. NHC predicts that Nicole's center will cool and transition to a strong extra-tropical cyclone on Oct. 18 as it heads toward Iceland.

Nicole has left a lasting impression on the ocean as swells from the storm are expected to affect a great deal of coastlines. The National Hurricane Center noted that "large swells associated with Nicole will affect the United States east coast, the coast of Atlantic Canada, Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, the Leeward Islands, and the Azores islands for the next several days, creating dangerous surf conditions and rip currents. These swells are also likely to reach Europe and the northwest coast of Africa in a day or two."

[ooyala code="5uanFzNjE6UtB5uppJD2uzZ1ZYgwRtyr" player_id="ce75157bc770441eaf5e849ae4d1d21f" auto="true" width="896" height="504" autoplay="true"]


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<div>Credit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NASA</a></div>

Hurricane Nicole seen moving over cold North Atlantic

On Oct. 17, Hurricane Nicole has been active for almost...

<div>
<div class="img-wrapper">NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible look at Typhoon Sarika as it was poised for its second of three expected landfalls. When the satellite passed over Sarika it was in the South China Sea.</div>
Strong wind signal #3 is in force at Hong Kong, China, according to the Central Weather Bureau. Sarika, formerly known as Tropical Depression 24W fills up the northern half of the South China Sea on satellite imagery.

On Oct. 17 at 2:10 (06:10 UTC) NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over Sarika and provided a visible-light image of the storm. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite showed the cloud-filled center of circulation in the central northern South China Sea, southwest of Hainan Island, China.

At 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) Sarika had maximum sustained winds near 92 mph (80 knots/148 kph). It was centered near 18.0 degrees north latitude and 112.4 degrees east longitude, about 409 nautical miles east-southeast of Hanoi, Vietnam. It was moving to the west at 10 mph (8 knots/16 kph).

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecasts Sarika to move toward Hainan Island, China where it is expected to make landfall. Sarika is later forecast to continue west and make a third landfall in northern Vietnam.


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<div></div>
<div>Credit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NASA</a></div>

Typhoon Sarika seen approaching landfall in China

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible look at Typhoon...

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.igb.illinois.edu/">Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology</a> reveals how scientists can modify common crops like soybean, rice, and wheat to protect them from heat stress.



“We need to double crop production by 2050 to feed a growing global population, and not only are we not on track to do that, but climate change is further complicating things,” said Amanda Cavanagh, a lecturer at the University of Essex. 



The study is part of Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE), an international research project that aims to develop food crops that turn the sun’s energy into food more efficiently.



“Using an engineering approach we designed multiple alternative metabolic pathways to photorespiration. Testing them in the field showed increases in productivity which led Amanda to significantly move the project forward by showing our engineered plants can withstand pretty extreme temperature stress,” said study co-author and RIPE researcher Paul South.&nbsp;



“As the climate changes and temperature stresses increase the pressure on our global food supply, farmers will need every tool available including engineering approaches like the synthetic biology used here to maintain safe and productive harvests.”



The experts tested plants modified to have more efficient photorespiration to see if they were better adapted to warmer temperatures.&nbsp;



The team found that the engineered plants produced 26 percent more biomass than the wild-type plants exposed to the same temperatures, and had 15 percent less yield loss under the higher temperatures.



Video Credit: Amanda Nguyen/University of Illinois



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Designing crops that can beat the heat

[sendtonews key="QGPzYnXEtN-1712599-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from Carl...

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes the first comprehensive estimate of carbon density in the Saharan, Sahel, and Sudanian zones of Africa. In an effort to measure the amount of carbon stored across these drylands, a team of scientists used high-resolution satellite images and artificial intelligence to map nearly 10 billion individual trees. 



"The high spatial resolution (50 cm) combined with AI and field measurements used in this study is key to improving tree inventories in drylands," said Pierre Hiernaux, a French researcher working for NASA. "The ever-increasing availability of very high-resolution satellite imagery will make it possible to assess carbon pools and their dynamics at the individual tree level on a global scale."



"This study is exceptional because it is pioneering a type of approach that will revolutionize the monitoring of trees and forests on a global scale: in the short term, it will be possible to map the world's trees from the centre of the Amazon to our schoolyards," said <a href="https://www.inrae.fr/en">INRAE</a> researcher Jean-Pierre Wigneron.



"Many fields of application will become much more efficient and accurate, such as tracking carbon stocks, biodiversity, monitoring logging and protection against illegal forest degradation, in near real time.”



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Remote sensing will revolutionize the way we monitor trees

[sendtonews key="EjmSP20gQK-2593093-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Lesotho: Africa's "Kingdom in the Sky" Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features northwest Lesotho in South Africa.



According to ESA, Lesotho is the only nation in the world that lies completely above 1,000 m in elevation. The country is famous for its tall mountains and narrow valleys, and is known as Africa's "Kingdom in the Sky."



Out of a population of around two million people, about 80 percent live in rural areas. More than 75 percent of these people are engaged in <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/climate-change-will-have-a-global-impact-on-agriculture/">agriculture</a>, including rainfed cereal production and animal grazing.&nbsp;



ESA reports that the country’s agricultural system faces a growing number of issues, with climate-related vulnerabilities such as drought, floods and extreme temperatures occurring more frequently. 



Diamonds are amongst the minerals found in the mountains. Indeed, Lesotho can truly be called the Kingdom in the Sky. Beautiful, culturally rich, safe, affordable, and easily accessible from Durban and Johannesburg, mountainous Lesotho is a vastly underrated travel destination. the Kingdom of Lesotho (Sotho: 'Muso oa Lesotho) is an enclaved country in southern Africa. It is just over 30,000 km2 (11,583 sq mi) in size and has a population of around 2 million.



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer 



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Lesotho: Africa's "Kingdom in the Sky"

[sendtonews key="uV9Lh2fQbV-1760058-12187" type="single"] Lesotho: Africa's "Kingdom in the Sky" Today’s...

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> features a visual dataset of.methane emissions from wetlands across the globe. Atmospheric methane levels have reached record highs in recent years, and wetlands are a major source of these emissions.&nbsp;



"Methane is an important greenhouse gas that contributes substantially to global warming. On a molecule by molecule basis, methane is much more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, the main driver of warming," says NASA.



"Though human activities, including agriculture, oil and natural gas production and use, and waste disposal, collectively contribute the majority of methane to the atmosphere, about a third of total methane emissions comes from wetlands."&nbsp;



According to NASA, understanding methane emissions from wetlands and other natural sources is critically important for scientists and policymakers who are working to combat climate change by reducing emissions from human activities.



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Wetlands are a major source of methane emissions

[sendtonews key="f8fukm28Vz-2491833-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> reveals the evolution of the Columbia Glacier in southeastern Alaska. Columbia is among the fastest shrinking glaciers in the world, and the video documents its rapid retreat over the years.&nbsp;



Columbia Glacier is a large, multi-branched calving glacier that flows out of the Chugach Mountains to the Prince William Sound.&nbsp;



According to USGS, Columbia had a long history of stability prior to 1980, with a length 41 miles, and small, short-lived advances or retreats.



In the years since 1980, however, satellite images have captured Columbia’s alarming retreat. By using false-color images, scientists can distinguish between snow and ice, open water, vegetation, and rocky debris on the glacier’s surface.



The series of false-color images featured in today's video were acquired over the span of 35 years. You can see that by 2021, the glacier’s main branch had retreated about 15 miles from its initial position.



The Columbia Glacier has also lost more than 50 percent of its volume, mostly due to calving. <a href="https://www.earth.com/video/nasa-reveals-3d-visual-of-an-atmospheric-river/">NASA</a> reports that while climate change likely started the retreat, mechanical processes kept the disintegration going.



The NASA images are provided by Jesse Allen, Robert Simmon, Joshua Stevens, and Lauren Dauphin using data from Landsat satellites, from the U.S. Geological Survey, and data from MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite. The structure of Columbia’s moraine played a large role in the stability of the glacier before 1980. 



Like other tidewater glaciers, the Columbia built up a moraine over time, and the mixture of ice and rock functioned like a dam keeping out the sea. It was supported on one end by the shoreline and by the underwater terminal moraine at the other.



Video Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/&nbsp; NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio



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The rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier

[sendtonews key="0879czfG3k-1785905-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes how record-breaking heat expressed itself around the world in 2022.



Scientists have determined that 2022 was the 5th warmest year since 1880. Furthermore, the last nine consecutive years have been the warmest on record.



From devastating floods and wildfires to natural disasters like Hurricane Ian, 2022 showed us yet again how a warming climate affects people across the globe.&nbsp;



"As we look back at 20:22 and years past, we see that each year we better understand the challenges we face and how important it is to meet them," says NASA.



Video/ Image Credit: NASA Goddard



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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2022 illustrated the consequences of a warming climate

[sendtonews key="3UUsNkFOuS-2487333-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes Earth’s interconnected systems, and how this network is affected by rising temperatures.&nbsp;



During 2020, average global temperatures matched the hottest year on record. The hurricane season was also record-breaking, with many of the storms intensifying at extraordinary speeds. Hot water in the ocean is fuel for hurricanes. The satellite data shows that it's all one interconnected system showing how Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected.



According to NASA, dust swept up from Northern Africa plays a major role in the formation of hurricanes, and is also a key source of fertilization in the Amazon rainforest. As a result of<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/seagrass-wasting-disease-is-fueled-by-climate-change/"> climate</a> change, dust plumes are expected to decline, which will have an effect on vegetation far away.&nbsp;



Images from Earth-observing satellites show how the world’s plant life is affected by natural disasters, fires, and deforestation. Satellites also reveal how widespread changes in vegetation impact waterways,&nbsp; the climate, air quality. Satellites communicate by using radio waves to send signals to the antennas on the Earth. "Earth From Space" is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. 



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://welcome.miami.edu/">University of Miami</a> Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science explores how changes in water temperatures have affected tiger shark habitats and movements in the North Atlantic Ocean. The study reveals that rising temperatures have caused the sharks to shift toward the poles over the past 40 years.



“Tiger shark annual migrations have expanded poleward, paralleling rising water temperatures,” explained study lead author Neil Hammerschlag. “These results have consequences for tiger shark conservation, since shifts in their movements outside of marine protected areas may leave them more vulnerable to commercial fishing.”



The researchers analyzed nine years of tracking data from satellite-tagged tiger sharks, combined with four decades of conventional tag and recapture data provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Cooperative Shark Tagging Program.



The experts found that during the last decade of record heat, for every one-degree Celsius increase in water temperatures, tiger sharks migrated further poleward by over 400 kilometers. They also migrated two weeks earlier than usual to waters off the northeastern coast of the United States.



“Given their role as apex predators, these changes to tiger shark movements may alter predator-prey interactions, leading to ecological imbalances, and more frequent encounters with humans,” concluded Professor Hammerschlag.



Video Credit: University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Tiger sharks are shifting poleward as temperatures rise

Today’s Video of the Day from the University of Miami...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> is focused on the melt ponds that emerge during the spring and summer on the Greenland Ice Sheet, which is the largest ice mass in the northern hemisphere.



"Melt ponds are vast pools of open water that form on both sea ice and ice sheets and are visible as turquoise-blue pools of water in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image," says ESA.



"When snow and ice melts atop glaciers, water flows in channels and streams and collects in depressions on the surface. These melt ponds can speed up the melting of the surrounding ice since they greatly reduce the ice’s ability to reflect sunlight."



"This can create a positive feedback where an increasing number of melt ponds absorb more heat which causes ice cover to melt even faster."



According to ESA, Greenland has been hit with a late-season heatwave that began in early September. This caused the type of melt event that usually occurs in the middle of summer.



"In a recent paper published in Nature Climate Change, scientists found that major sea-level rise from the melting of the Greenland ice cap is now ‘inevitable’ even if the burning of fossil fuels were to halt overnight," says ESA. "Using satellite observations of Greenland ice loss and ice cap from 2000 to 2019, the team found the losses will lead to a minimum rise of 27 cm regardless of climate change."



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Melt ponds on the Greenland Ice Sheet

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> describes how Earth is unique in our solar system for its ability to sustain liquid water on its surface. But now, the water cycle is shifting as the climate warms, and scientists must find ways to predict how these changes will affect water availability.



Overall, 96 percent of Earth's water is saltwater, and nearly all of freshwater is found in ice and groundwater. These sources of water are linked as it passes through solid, liquid and gas phases.



In a warmer climate, the water cycle will be transformed. It will be easier for water to evaporate and form clouds, and storms will become more frequent and intense. Some regions will get too much water, while others will be left without enough water. In addition, soil moisture will be lost - which threatens food security.



Scientists are using satellite data from over the last 40 years to track changes that are happening in the water cycle. This will ultimately help us prepare for extreme events and better manage our water resources, according to ESA.



Video Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Tracking changes in Earth's water cycle

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Saturn,-,High,Resolution,3d,Images,Presents,Planets,Of,The

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a> features images of Saturn from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The photographs capture the start of the mysterious "spoke season" on Saturn - when unexplained features appear on its rings. 



According to NASA, both the cause of the spokes and their seasonal variability have yet to be fully explained by planetary scientists.



"Like Earth, Saturn is tilted on its axis and therefore has four seasons, though because of Saturn's much larger orbit, each season lasts approximately seven Earth years. Equinox occurs when the rings are tilted edge-on to the Sun," explains NASA.



"The spokes disappear when it is near summer or winter solstice on Saturn. (When the Sun appears to reach either its highest or lowest latitude in the northern or southern hemisphere of a planet.) As the autumnal equinox of Saturn's northern hemisphere on May 6, 2025, draws near, the spokes are expected to become increasingly prominent and observable."



Experts believe that the spokes may be a product of the planet's variable magnetic field. When magnetic fields interact with solar wind, an electrically charged environment is created. This phenomenon is visible on Earth as the northern lights.&nbsp;



"Scientists think that the smallest, dust-sized icy ring particles can become charged as well, which temporarily levitates those particles above the rest of the larger icy particles and boulders in the rings," says NASA.



The spokes were first observed in the early 1980s by NASA's Voyager mission. Depending on the angle of the rings, the spokes can appear dark or light.



"Thanks to Hubble's OPAL program, which is building an archive of data on the outer solar system planets, we will have longer dedicated time to study Saturn’s spokes this season than ever before," said NASA senior planetary scientist Amy Simon, head of the Hubble Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program.



"Despite years of excellent observations by the Cassini mission, the precise beginning and duration of the spoke season is still unpredictable, rather like predicting the first storm during hurricane season."



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Mysterious "spoke season" captured on Saturn

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Closeup,Of,Fresh,Green,The,Napier,Bush,Grass,As,Animal

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="http://www.ntu.edu.sg/">NTU Singapore</a> reveals that some plants can remove toxic heavy metals from soil.&nbsp;



The researchers analyzed samples of various tropical plant species to test for levels of heavy metals and metalloids. The study showed that there are existing plants with high levels of these contaminants, which means that these species are great candidates for drawing pollutants out of the soil.&nbsp;



Among the plants examined in the study, 12 species had accumulated several types of heavy metals and metalloids. These plants are widely available, including species that are native to Singapore.



“In a small nation like Singapore, land may be repurposed to support new development plans, so it is important that we have a green and sustainable way to remediate land that is contaminated," said Professor Lam Yeng Ming.



"We set out to uncover how to better make use of tropical plants to do phytoremediation and through advanced characterization techniques, we showed how some of these tropical plant species can be an environmentally friendly and literally a 'green' way to remove contaminants in soil."&nbsp;



"Phytoremediation also has benefits of cost effectiveness, simplicity of management, aesthetic advantages, and long-term applicability and sustainability. The strategy prevents erosion and metal leaching by stabilizing or accumulating heavy metals, so that helps reduce the risk of contaminant spread.”



Video Credit: NTU Singapore



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Plants help remove heavy metals from contaminated soil

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> describes why herbicides are not as effective in killing weeds anymore. In the 20th century, chemical companies developed thousands of herbicides. The most commonly used herbicide was glyphosate, which was introduced in 1974.



Over the past few decades, dozens of species of weeds have evolved resistance to glyphosate. Depending on the site of action, the part of the plant that an herbicide interacts with, weeds may even be resistant to herbicides that have not been developed yet.&nbsp;



With increasing resistance to glyphosate and other herbicides, weeds are - once again - becoming a major concern for farmers.&nbsp;



Video Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Weeds are becoming increasingly resistant to herbicides

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/">NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory</a> (JPL) describes a dust storm on Mars that was nearly twice the size of the United States. As the storm covered the southern hemisphere of the planet, some of NASA’s explorers had to delay their normal activities.



NASA’s Insight lander put itself in a "safe mode" for 11 days to conserve battery power because solar power was disrupted by the dust. The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter postponed flights until conditions improved.



"A fleet of NASA orbiters monitor Martian dust storms like this one and serve as lifelines to Earth by relaying data from the rovers and lander on the ground back to the team. This includes the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, MAVEN, and Odyssey," reports JPL.



"Dust storms like this recent one start close to the ground and are spread by wind as they rise – warming the cold Martian atmosphere."



The images in the video were captured by NASA’s Curiosity as the dust rolled in. A fleet of orbiters monitored the dust storm from above, relaying data from Mars’ explorers back to scientists on Earth.



Video &amp; Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

NASA monitors giant dust storms on Mars

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="http://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz. This strait provides the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.



Qeshm is separated from the Iranian coast by the Clarence Strait, also known as Khuran.&nbsp;The Hara Forest Protected Area is a network of shallow waterways and forest located between the island and the mainland. This protected region is home to sea turtles, snakes, and more than 150 species of migrating birds.



Qeshm is famous for its wide range of&nbsp;ecotourist&nbsp;attractions, such as the&nbsp;Hara marine forests. According to environmentalists, about 1.5 percent of the world birds and 25 percent of Iran's native <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/female-hummingbirds-avoid-sexual-harassment-by-looking-like-males/">birds</a> annually migrate to the forests, which are the first national geo park in Iran.



Tourists are also drawn to the island to see an age-old Portuguese&nbsp;fort, historic mosques, the&nbsp;Seyyed Mozaffar&nbsp;and&nbsp;Bibi Maryam&nbsp;shrines, and the "Valley of Stars."



The average temperature on the island is 81 degress and the region is often hot and humid. From June to August, the island is described as being oppressively hot. The ideal time to visit is during the winter season. 



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Inhambane Bay in southeast Mozambique.&nbsp;



"Inhambane Bay is a deep inlet into which the small Mutamba River flows," says ESA. "On one side of the bay lies the historical city of Inhambane, capital of the Inhambane Province, while the sister city of Maxixe, the economic capital of Inhambane, sits across from it. The province is the second largest grower of cashews, after Nampula, and it also produces coconut and citrus fruits."



The beaches of Barra and Tofo are popular with tourists. There are also coral reefs along the long coastline of Inhambane, making it an ideal destination for scuba diving and snorkeling.



"Mozambique’s extensive coastline heightens the country’s vulnerability to tropical cyclones that develop in the Indian Ocean as well as storm surge flooding," says ESA.



"More than half of the population lives in low lying coastal areas, putting communities at risk. Inhambane Bay was dangerously close to where Cyclone Idai made landfall in 2019 causing widespread destruction to the country."



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Inhambane Bay in southeast Mozambique

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency </a>&nbsp;features the Kangerlussuaq Glacier, one of the largest tidewater outlet glaciers in Greenland. The glacier is located on the east coast of the Greenland ice sheet.



As human-induced climate change continues to drive up temperatures, global ice loss is accelerating at an alarming rate. ESA reports that, over the past decade alone, 3.5 trillion tons of ice have melted from the Greenland ice sheet. This is enough to cover the UK with meltwater 15 meters deep.



Based on satellite imagery, researchers determined that Kangerlussuaq entered a new phase of rapid retreat and acceleration in 2017. In their study, published in <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00123/full">Frontiers in Earth Science</a>,&nbsp; the experts report that the glacier's ice front is now at its most retreated position since the early 20th century.



"Given Kangerlussuaq’s previous impacts on both the magnitude and pattern of ice sheet wide mass loss, we predict that its new phase of retreat, acceleration and thinning will markedly enhance the south-east region’s contribution to increasing discharge from the ice sheet," wrote the study authors.&nbsp;&nbsp;



"More broadly, accurate forecasting of the ice sheet’s contribution to sea level rise will require a deeper understanding of, and responses to, these non-linear ice dynamic processes."



Video Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Kangerlussuaq Glacier on the Greenland ice sheet

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> describes the complex relationship between ocean and climate. ESA's Climate Change Initiative will help us understand how oceans influence the climate and how climate change is impacting the oceans.&nbsp;



"Earth’s oceans are huge heat stores, soaking up 93% of the excess heat from human activity over the past 70 years. Ocean currents redistribute heat around the planet, from the Equator to the poles. Where this ocean heat goes influences weather patterns and regional climate," explains ESA.



"As well as absorbing heat, oceans are a natural carbon sink, absorbing a quarter of carbon dioxide emissions from human activity. This has led to the acidification of ocean water, threating marine life."



The amount of heat and carbon dioxide soaked up by the ocean depends on specific variables, including phytoplankton, temperatures, waves, salinity, and ice cover. Satellites can be used to measure these variables from space.



"From their unique vantage point, satellites provide key information for understanding the complexities of our planet and monitoring environmental issues," says ESA.



Video Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Ocean heat influences regional climate

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> describes the importance of monitoring the shape of the sea surface, which is constantly changing. These observations have many applications, such as ship routing, <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/the-modem-ocean-is-a-tough-place-for-whales-to-survive/">ocean</a> current forecasting, and debris tracking.



"A project supported by the Discovery element of ESA’s Basic Activities recently investigated a new technique to measure sea surface topography very precisely," reports ESA.



"The technique involves looking at satellite navigation (GNSS) signals that have been reflected off of the sea surface at very low angles. At these so-called grazing angles, waves and surface roughness have very little impact on the reflection process; the sea surface acts as a very smooth mirror."



Estel Cardellach is the principal investigator at the Institute for Space Studies of Catalonia, who first submitted the idea for the project.



“In a mirror-like reflection the phase of the signal can be tracked – it is continuous," said Cardellach. "Different surface heights result in different phase measurements. It gives a very precise measurement of the surface altitude at a few centimetres’ precision.”



The researchers developed a GNSS receiver and set up an experiment in the Balaeric Islands to collect signals from the receiver that were reflected off the sea surface. Ultimately, these signals will provide improved measurements of the shape of the sea surface.



Image/ Video Credit: ESA



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Monitoring the dynamic shape of the sea surface

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Aerial,Photo,Of,River,In,Amazon,Rainforest,Jungle,In,Peru

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center</a> describes how scientists are using autonomous sound sensors to monitor deforestation in the Amazon. By recording soundscapes, the experts can determine which animals are present through their distinct sounds.&nbsp;



Using this method, sounds can be used as scientific measurements to analyze the effects of deforestation. The researchers will gain a better understanding of how the acoustics of a forest can be used to measure its health.&nbsp;



"From space, parts of the Amazon rainforest that have previously been logged or burned may look lush and green, like a place buzzing with activity and full of sounds. But inside the rainforest, the animal life may tell a different story, of a harsh environment and a quieter soundscape," says NASA.



Video Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center&nbsp;



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Monitoring deforestation in the Amazon through sounds

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