Paleontologists have made a remarkable discovery that bridges a gap of 150 million years. Their new study has uncovered nearly 50 hidden relatives of Pterodactylus, the first pterosaur ever discovered.



This fossil find from the <a href="https://le.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Leicester</a> allows scientists to piece together the life story of this ancient flying reptile, from its earliest days to adulthood.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-understanding-pterosaurs-the-basics">Understanding pterosaurs -- the basics</h2>



These fascinating flying reptiles weren't actually dinosaurs, but rather a separate group of flying reptiles that first appeared around 230 million years ago during the Triassic period. 



Unlike birds or bats, pterosaurs had a unique wing structure formed by a membrane of skin and muscle that stretched from an elongated fourth finger to their body. This created a lightweight and flexible flying apparatus that allowed them to soar and glide.



Different pterosaur species came in an astonishing range of sizes, from tiny creatures the size of sparrows to massive pterosaurs with wingspans around 33 feet wide. 



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Pterodactylus_growth-stages_illustration_ULeicester_1m.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img src="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Pterodactylus_growth-stages_illustration_ULeicester_1s.webp" alt="Growth stages of Pterodactylus. From tiny &quot;flaplings&quot; no larger than a sparrow, most known specimens represent 'teenagers' comparable in size to a pigeon. Fully grown individuals boasted impressive wingspans exceeding 1 meter. Unlike birds, which must grow before achieving flight, even the smallest Pterodactylus were capable of flight from an early age. Credit: University of Leicester" class="wp-image-1954862"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Growth stages of Pterodactylus. From tiny "flaplings" no larger than a sparrow, most known specimens represent 'teenagers' comparable in size to a pigeon. Fully grown individuals boasted impressive wingspans exceeding 1 meter. Unlike birds, which must grow before achieving flight, even the smallest Pterodactylus were capable of flight from an early age. Credit: University of Leicester</figcaption></figure>



Some had long, spear-like beaks perfect for fishing, while others sported elaborate head crests that might have been used for display, communication, or even temperature regulation. 



Their bones were incredibly lightweight and hollow, similar to modern bird bones, which helped them achieve flight with minimal energy expenditure.



Pterosaurs were incredibly successful and adaptable creatures that survived for an impressive 160 million years before finally going extinct along with the dinosaurs during the catastrophic asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous period. 



Their fossils have been discovered on every continent, revealing that they occupied diverse environments from coastal regions to inland areas.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-first-pterosaur-discovery">First pterosaur discovery</h2>



Almost 250 years ago, a fossil unearthed in a Bavarian quarry introduced the world to <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/pterosaur-new-species-named-abfab-had-wings-wide-as-car/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pterosaurs</a>. 



This fossil, named&nbsp;Pterodactylus, offered the first glimpse into the Mesozoic skies, where these creatures soared above the dinosaurs.



Though the first specimen was modest in size - comparable to a turtle dove - it revolutionized our understanding of prehistoric life and showcased the extraordinary <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/pterosaurs-took-flight-millions-of-years-before-birds/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">diversity of flying reptiles</a>.



Over time, however,&nbsp;Pterodactylus&nbsp;faded from public attention, overshadowed by its larger and flashier relatives, such as&nbsp;Pteranodon&nbsp;and&nbsp;Quetzalcoatlus. 



Yet, among scientists,&nbsp;the Pterodactylus genus remained a vital subject of study that played a central role in shaping our understanding of pterosaur anatomy, flight, diet, and growth.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-finding-pterodactylus-family">Finding Pterodactylus family</h2>



Despite its significance, confusion has long surrounded&nbsp;Pterodactylus. 



Fossils attributed to this genus were often mixed with other species, making it challenging to determine which truly belonged to&nbsp;Pterodactylus. This <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/new-fossil-fills-crucial-gap-in-pterosaur-evolution/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ambiguity</a> persisted for centuries - until now.



Using UV fluorescence, paleontologists Robert Smyth and Dr. Dave Unwin from the <a href="https://le.ac.uk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Leicester</a> conducted a meticulous analysis of&nbsp;Pterodactylus&nbsp;fossils housed in museums across Europe. 



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Pterodactylus_fossil_UV-light_ULeicester_1m.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img src="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Pterodactylus_fossil_UV-light_ULeicester_1s.webp" alt="UV photography of Pterodactylus. Ultraviolet light reveals remarkable details of the fossil invisible under normal lighting. This famous specimen showcases preserved soft tissues, including the delicate wing membranes, which fluoresce vividly under UV illumination. Credit: University of Leicester" class="wp-image-1954860"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">UV photography of Pterodactylus. Ultraviolet light reveals remarkable details of the fossil invisible under normal lighting. This famous specimen showcases preserved soft tissues, including the delicate wing membranes, which fluoresce vividly under UV illumination. Credit: University of Leicester</figcaption></figure>



By shining powerful UV light on fossilized bones, they illuminated previously invisible features that distinguish the&nbsp;Pterodactylus&nbsp;family from other pterosaurs. Their work revealed dozens of misclassified fossils, including over 40 specimens that were reidentified as&nbsp;Pterodactylus.



“By examining lots of fossils in collections across Europe, we were able to reidentify more than forty specimens as&nbsp;Pterodactylus,” said lead author Robert Smyth. 



“UV stimulated fluorescence is astonishing in the amount of detail it can reveal. Features that were once hidden were glowing in plain sight.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-new-face-of-nbsp-pterodactylus">New face of&nbsp;Pterodactylus</h2>



This discovery has profoundly altered the scientific understanding of&nbsp;the genus Pterodactylus. Previously thought to be a rare find, nearly 50 specimens have now been confirmed.



This expanded collection allows researchers to construct a complete and detailed skeletal anatomy of this <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/cracking-the-code-of-pterosaur-flight-soaring-vs-flapping/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pivotal pterosaur</a>. 



Remarkably, soft tissues are preserved in over 20 of the specimens, which provides unprecedented insights into a range of features.



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Pterodactylus_comparison-relative_fossil_UV-light_ULeicester_1m.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img src="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Pterodactylus_comparison-relative_fossil_UV-light_ULeicester_1s.webp" alt="Family resemblance. This larger specimen is slightly jumbled, but it still reveals many important details, including the anatomy of the hands and feet, which have been found to be highly diagnostic features. This allows us to distinguish Pterodactylus from other closely related pterosaurs. Credit: University of Leicester" class="wp-image-1954857"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Family resemblance. This larger specimen is slightly jumbled, but it still reveals many important details, including the anatomy of the hands and feet, which have been found to be highly diagnostic features. This allows us to distinguish Pterodactylus from other closely related pterosaurs. Credit: University of Leicester</figcaption></figure>



“We can now construct a complete and highly detailed skeletal anatomy for this key pterosaur,” explained co-author Dr. Dave Unwin. “Soft tissues are fossilised in more than twenty examples so we can also reconstruct head crests, body shape, foot webs, and even the wings.”



The result is akin to a family portrait, showcasing Pterodactylus at every stage of its life. The smallest hatchlings, endearingly called “flaplings,” were robin-sized. 



These grew into “teenage” forms before reaching adulthood, where they boasted raven-sized bodies and wingspans of up to ten times their body length.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-revolutionary-technique">A revolutionary technique</h2>



The study highlights the transformative potential of UV fluorescence in paleontology. 



While the technique is well-known, the combination of advanced light sources and a systematic approach has yielded groundbreaking results in this case.



“UV stimulated fluorescence is a well-known technique,” Dr. Unwin noted. 



“But the difference in this case is that we have been able to combine new, high-quality light sources with a systematic "catch-all" approach, and it's going to have a revolutionary impact on our understanding of pterosaurs.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-pterodactylus-family-and-future-study">Pterodactylus family and future study</h2>



This discovery not only redefines&nbsp;Pterodactylus&nbsp;but also highlights the value of revisiting and reexamining existing collections of fossils.



With nearly 50 examples now identified, researchers have an unprecedented opportunity to explore the life history of one of the most important pterosaurs. 



From its early days as a tiny flapling to its commanding presence in the skies,&nbsp;the Pterodactylus&nbsp;fossils provide a vivid window into the Mesozoic era.



As families come together this festive season, paleontologists celebrate their own remarkable reunion - a long-lost family, brought back to light after 150 million years.



The study is published in the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14772019.2024.2421845" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Journal of Systematic Palaeontology</a>. 



-----



Like what you read? <a href="https://www.earth.com/subscribe/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Subscribe to our newsletter</a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-ralls/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Eric Ralls</a> and Earth.com.



-----

Pterodactylus: New pterosaur family members discovered that lived 150 million years ago

Paleontologists have made a remarkable discovery that bridges a gap of 150 million years. Their new study has uncovered nearly 50 hidden relatives of Pterodactylus, the first pterosaur ever discovered. This fossil find from the University of Leicester allows scientists to piece together the life story of this ancient flying reptile, from its earliest days to adulthood. Understanding pterosaurs -- the basics These fascinating flying reptiles weren't actually dinosaurs, but rather a separate group of flying reptiles that first appeared around 230 million years ago during the Triassic...

Corals Also Need A Balanced Diet. Researchers examine nutrient enrichment and bleaching resilience in Red Sea corals

A new study found that a nutrient-rich, balanced diet is beneficial to corals during stressful thermal events. The research led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and the Centre Scientifique de Monaco concluded that the particular nutrient balance in seawater is what matters most.

To test which nutrients were more beneficial to corals during elevated temperature conditions, the scientists fed them two types - inorganic nutrients of nitrogen and phosphorus commonly found in the ocean as a result of fertilizers and sewage runoff, and organic nutrients of <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=zooplankton&amp;cvid=65250a6dd69a492ca3d80808a94a39cf&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">zooplankton</a>, tiny animals in the ocean that coral are known to feed on.

The research team placed specimens of the yellow scroll coral, Turbinaria reniformis, collected from the Red Sea in separate seawater tanks with varying temperature and nutrients. The corals were subjected to two different inorganic nutrient enrichment scenarios - increased nitrogen only or increased nitrogen and phosphorus at varying temperatures - 25 degrees Celsius to represent normal temperature conditions and 30 degrees Celsius to represent thermal stress conditions. Some of the corals also received organic nutrient enrichment of tiny ocean animals called zooplankton during the laboratory experiment. All of the corals were then returned to normal temperature conditions to examine their recovery.

"We found that the coral's resilience to thermal stress totally depends on the kind of inorganic enrichment - if it's 'balanced' or not," said Erica Towle, an alumna of the UM Rosenstiel School.

The researchers found that excess nitrogen alone and zooplankton made high-temperature bleaching events worse. While excess nitrogen in combination with extra phosphorus and zooplankton afford the coral resilience to bleaching. This study is one of the first to assess the three-way interaction between the two types of nutrient enrichment and thermal stress on coral health.

The UM Rosenstiel School research team published a previous study in 2015 that showed the critically endangered Staghorn coral may benefit from supplemental nutrition to mitigate the adverse impacts of global climate change. The results revealed that temperature, CO2 and feeding each had significant effects on the coral's growth rate. That study was the first to document that an endangered coral species, which was once found widely throughout South Florida and the Caribbean, can buffer the effects of increased CO2 in the ocean by increasing feeding rates.

"Excess nutrients from land sources and thermal stress will likely occur in concert in the future so it's important to assess them together," said Towle. "Incorporating nutrient levels in thermal bleaching models will likely be very important for coral reef managers in the future as ocean waters warm."

---

<a href="http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">University of Miami</a>

Corals Also Need A Balanced Diet

Corals Also Need A Balanced Diet. Researchers examine nutrient enrichment...

Alaska Seeks Federal Funds To Relocate Newtok Village. One of Alaska's most eroded coastal Native villages is being eyed as a possible national model for relocating whole communities whose futures are threatened by natural disasters escalated by climate change.
The state is hoping to kick-start a mass exodus from the tiny Newtok village through a national competition for states and local governments vying for a slice of nearly $1 billion in grants to be awarded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD's National Disaster Resilience Competition is billed as an effort addressing <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=climate+change&amp;cvid=983b530af01d4e5e9dd2ad04ec4c0ef9&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">climate change</a> and extreme weather. Alaska Seeks Federal Funds To Relocate Newtok Village
If successful, Alaska officials are proposing that $62.6 million of the funds be used for relocation costs, including money for infrastructure and money to allow 62 families from Newtok to establish new homes at the chosen relocation site on higher ground 9 miles away. In the draft proposal publicly released Friday, state officials also are seeking a total of $162.4 million for three other vulnerable villages - Emmonak, Galena and Teller - with extensive storm damage in recent years.
But officials acknowledge that competing for the funding unused by Hurricane Sandy victims won't be easy. <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/alaskas-barry-glacier-could-trigger-a-catastrophic-tsunami/">Alaska</a> is among 40 finalists for the funds, including Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. Still, Alaska officials are hoping their proposal catches the eye of federal officials.
"We think we have a very compelling story to tell," said Sally Russell Cox, a state planner who worked on the competition entry.
The release of Alaska's proposal opens a 15-day public comment period before the final contest submission is due to HUD Oct. 27. Alaska Seeks Federal Funds To Relocate Newtok Village
President Barack Obama, in his recent three-day visit to the state, focused almost entirely on climate change and how temperatures are rising faster in Alaska than anywhere else, already threatening entire communities.
Newtok is the only one of Alaska's multiple imperiled communities that has begun a physical move. The Yup'ik Eskimo community of about 380 shepherded various multiagency projects including construction of several homes and the beginning of an evacuation community center, which would be completed with nearly $5.5 million sought through the HUD competition. A tribal power dispute, however, stalled relocation efforts for about two years until a federal appeals panel sided with the new village leaders last month.
Oblivious to village politics, the raging Ninglick River is steadily inching toward homes, gobbling up as much as 75 feet of riverbank a year. Melting permafrost is sinking and knocking homes and village boardwalks out of alignment. Officials estimate Newtok, nearly 500 miles west of Anchorage, has until 2017 until erosion is expected to reach the school.
Villagers believe they're living on borrowed time, and they are actively lobbying for funding wherever they can find it. Village relocation coordinator Romy Cadiente is in Washington, D.C., this week to gather support by meeting with officials, including Alaska's congressional delegation or their representatives. The village is also trying to obtain funding for some homes for the new site through the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, and is working with the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Fairbanks on plans to build a high-efficiency home at the current site as a demonstration model.
"We're trying to really focus on how to get this village out of there," Cadiente said in a phone interview Wednesday. "That shore is not going to grow back."
---
Online:
Alaska's draft proposal:<a href="https://aws.state.ak.us/OnlinePublicNotices/Notices/View.aspx?id=178489" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://aws.state.ak.us/OnlinePublicNotices/Notices/View.aspx?id=178489</a>
---
Follow Rachel D'Oro at <a href="https://twitter.com/rdoro" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://twitter.com/rdoro</a>
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Alaska Seeks Federal Funds To Relocate Newtok Village

Alaska Seeks Federal Funds To Relocate Newtok Village. One of...

Analysis: Volkswagen Pollution Cheating Killed Dozens Each Year. Volkswagen pollution chicanery has not just been victimless tinkering, killing between five and 20 people in the United States annually in recent years, according to an Associated Press statistical and computer analysis.
The software that the company admitted using to get around government emissions limits allowed VWs to spew enough pollution to kill somewhere between 16 and 94 deaths over seven years, with the annual count increasing more recently as more of the <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/bacteria-cold-green-detergents/">diesels</a> were on the road. The total cost has been well over $100 million.Analysis: Volkswagen Pollution Cheating Killed Dozens Each Year
That's just in the United States. It's likely far deadlier and costlier in Europe, where more VW diesels were sold, engineers said. Scientists and experts said the death toll in Europe could be as high as hundreds each year, though they caution that it is hard to take American health and air quality computer models and translate them to a more densely populated Europe.
"Statistically, we can't point out who died because of this policy, but some people have died or likely died as a result of this," said Carnegie Mellon environmental engineer professor Peter Adams. He calculates the cost of air pollution with a sophisticated computer model that he and the AP used in its analysis.
Computer software allowed VW diesel cars to spew between 10 to 40 times more nitrogen oxides (NOx) than allowed by regulation, making this "clearly a concern for air quality and public health," said Janet McCabe, acting air quality chief for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Nitrogen oxides mostly form smog - that murky, dirty air that makes it hard to see and for some people to breathe - but also amplify a deadlier, larger problem: tiny particles of soot. Numerous medical studies show those tiny particles cause about 50,000 deaths a year in the United States, mostly from heart problems.
Nitrogen oxides can travel hundreds of miles, so pollution spewed in Pittsburgh can be felt on the East Coast, Adams said.
Experts calculate how much pollution costs society by looking at the value of lost lives. In this case, Adams and other said the lost lives - valued at $8.6 million apiece - overwhelm other costs such as lost work days or hospital costs. The overall annual cost of the extra pollutants from the VW diesels ranged from $40 million to $170 million, environmental engineering professors calculated.
"Even the small increase in NOx from VW diesel emissions is likely to have worsened pollution along the roadways where they have traveled, and affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people," said Dan Greenbaum, president of the Health Effects Institute in Boston.
"To say millions of people of people are breathing poor air as the result of that is not off the mark," said Greenbaum, who runs the institute that is funded by both the EPA and the auto industry to serve as an independent arbiter of the science.
Representatives of VW did not respond to AP request for comment.
These calculations should be put in context of air that is getting dramatically cleaner in the United States, experts said. Also, the deaths from extra pollution are dwarfed by the 35,000 people in the U.S. a year who die in auto accidents and are closer to the annual U.S. death toll of spider or snake bites.
The AP calculated how much pollution was spewed year by year, starting with that broad 10 times to 40 times emissions level estimate from the EPA, then factoring in mileage and car number totals from EPA, the car company and Kelley Blue Book.
The results show an upper and lower limit of extra nitrogen oxides pollution allowed by VW's subterfuge. The AP took those figures to scientists who previously created a sophisticated computer program that looks at air movement and numerous epidemiological studies on the health effects of pollutants. The result was a rough estimate on deaths and costs to society based on a certain amount of pollution triggering each death.
The EPA has its own open source computer model that calculates death and social costs of emissions, roughly finding it takes nearly 1,300 tons of nitrogen oxides to cause one death. Using that calculation and AP's emission totals, the total death figures over the past seven years range from 12 to 69, slightly lower than the AP calculations.
The AP ran its calculations and results by more than a dozen experts in emissions, risk and public health. They all confirmed the calculations and results seemed right. One scientist had even done a statistical analysis on his own and came independently to the same conclusion. The experts were mostly university professors or from research institutes. They were not environmental advocates or representatives of auto companies.
But engineers caution that these figures come with many caveats and are ballpark estimates. They rely on many assumptions and a range of potential emissions per car. Air pollution impacts on people are usually calculated on a local level because that's where it is felt, and it changes from place to place. But these calculations were broadened to a national level, which adds more uncertainty.
The computer simulation that made the death calculations use conservative medical studies as their baseline. Other epidemiological studies would more than double the deaths and health costs, said Adams and model co-creator Jinhyok Heo of Cornell University.
Chris Frey, an engineering professor at North Carolina State University, has been testing the VW diesels in real world conditions, driving more than 100 miles with monitors in the car tailpipes. He found pollution 10 times higher than the federal standard, and noticed that the worst pollution came as he got on to highways and in stop-and-go traffic. Those less desirable areas are where poorer people live, Adams and Greenbaum said.
Since 2008, VW sold more than 10 million VW diesel cars in Europe, compared with less than half a million in the United States. In Europe, the population is more densely packed in urban areas, making them more vulnerable to added air pollution, several experts said.
"Assuming most of the cars are in Europe, it's pretty simple to estimate that it could go as high as hundreds," said Robert Rohde, a physicist and lead scientist at the Berkeley Earth team that has estimated death tolls of air pollution in the past.
---
Online:
EASIUR computer model that calculates costs of air pollution:<a href="http://barney.ce.cmu.edu/~jinhyok/easiur/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://barney.ce.cmu.edu/~jinhyok/easiur/</a>
EPA on Volkswagen emissions dodge: <a href="http://1.usa.gov/1KLXXH1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://1.usa.gov/1KLXXH1</a>
Volkswagen on the emissions dodge: <a href="http://www.vwdieselinfo.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.vwdieselinfo.com/</a>
EPA computer model that calculates death and social costs of pollution: <a href="http://www2.epa.gov/benmap" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www2.epa.gov/benmap</a>
--
Seth Borenstein can be followed at <a href="http://twitter.com/borenbears" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://twitter.com/borenbears</a>
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Analysis: Volkswagen Pollution Cheating Killed Dozens Each Year

Analysis: Volkswagen Pollution Cheating Killed Dozens Each Year. Volkswagen pollution...

BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill Settlement Finalized. The Justice Department and five states have finalized a settlement of more than $20 billion arising from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon gulf oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The deal announced Monday resolves all civil claims against BP and ends five years of legal fighting over the nearly 134 million-gallon spill.
"BP is receiving the punishment it deserves, while also providing critical compensation for the injuries it caused to the environment and the economy of the Gulf region," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at a Justice Department news conference. "The steep penalty should inspire BP and its peers to take every measure necessary to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again."BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/warming-of-2c-would-unleash-230-billions-tons-of-soil-carbon/">Oil</a> Spill Settlement Finalized
The settlement finalizes an agreement first announced in July.
Among other requirements, BP will be forced to pay $5.5 billion in Clean Water Act penalties and nearly $5 billion to five Gulf states: Alabama, <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=flordia&amp;cvid=d9cf3f84713b48dfa49f365baf7e6659&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">Florida</a>, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
The spill followed the April 2010 explosion on an offshore rig that killed 11 workers. BP earlier settled with people and businesses harmed by the spill, a deal that's so far resulted in $5.84 billion in payouts.
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill Settlement Finalized

BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill Settlement Finalized. The Justice...

Alaska Seeks Federal Funds To Relocate Newtok Village. One of Alaska's most eroded coastal Native villages is being eyed as a possible national model for relocating whole communities whose futures are threatened by natural disasters escalated by climate change.
The state is hoping to kick-start a mass exodus from the tiny Newtok village through a national competition for states and local governments vying for a slice of nearly $1 billion in grants to be awarded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD's National Disaster Resilience Competition is billed as an effort addressing <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=climate+change&amp;cvid=787f9db2007144ac92f45715b3eb427e&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">climate change</a> and extreme weather. Alaska Seeks <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/alaska-federal-public-lands-trump/">Federal</a> Funds To Relocate Newtok Village
If successful, Alaska officials are proposing that $62.6 million of the funds be used for relocation costs, including money for infrastructure and money to allow 62 families from Newtok to establish new homes at the chosen relocation site on higher ground 9 miles away. In the draft proposal publicly released Friday, state officials also are seeking a total of $162.4 million for three other vulnerable villages - Emmonak, Galena and Teller - with extensive storm damage in recent years.
But officials acknowledge that competing for the funding unused by Hurricane Sandy victims won't be easy. Alaska is among 40 finalists for the funds, including Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. Still, Alaska officials are hoping their proposal catches the eye of federal officials.
"We think we have a very compelling story to tell," said Sally Russell Cox, a state planner who worked on the competition entry.
The release of Alaska's proposal opens a 15-day public comment period before the final contest submission is due to HUD Oct. 27.
President Barack Obama, in his recent three-day visit to the state, focused almost entirely on climate change and how temperatures are rising faster in Alaska than anywhere else, already threatening entire communities.
Newtok is the only one of Alaska's multiple imperiled communities that has begun a physical move. The Yup'ik Eskimo community of about 380 shepherded various multiagency projects including construction of several homes and the beginning of an evacuation community center, which would be completed with nearly $5.5 million sought through the HUD competition. A tribal power dispute, however, stalled relocation efforts for about two years until a federal appeals panel sided with the new village leaders last month.
Oblivious to village politics, the raging Ninglick River is steadily inching toward homes, gobbling up as much as 75 feet of riverbank a year. Melting permafrost is sinking and knocking homes and village boardwalks out of alignment. Officials estimate Newtok, nearly 500 miles west of Anchorage, has until 2017 until erosion is expected to reach the school.
Villagers believe they're living on borrowed time, and they are actively lobbying for funding wherever they can find it. Village relocation coordinator Romy Cadiente is in Washington, D.C., this week to gather support by meeting with officials, including Alaska's congressional delegation or their representatives. The village is also trying to obtain funding for some homes for the new site through the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, and is working with the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Fairbanks on plans to build a high-efficiency home at the current site as a demonstration model.
"We're trying to really focus on how to get this village out of there," Cadiente said in a phone interview Wednesday. "That shore is not going to grow back."
---
Online:
Alaska's draft proposal:<a href="https://aws.state.ak.us/OnlinePublicNotices/Notices/View.aspx?id=178489" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://aws.state.ak.us/OnlinePublicNotices/Notices/View.aspx?id=178489</a>
---
Follow Rachel D'Oro at <a href="https://twitter.com/rdoro" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://twitter.com/rdoro</a>
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Feds: Difficult To Prosecute Companies Over Migratory Bird Deaths. Companies accused of causing migratory bird deaths may be harder to successfully prosecute after a federal appeals court recently ruled that a century-old wildlife protection law only applies if the killing is intentional.
The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals runs contrary to two other federal courts' interpretations of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act and could save companies that operate wind farms, power transmission lines and other methods of energy production millions in research - at the risk of more bird deaths.
"If you have a dead migratory bird, you have a violation. Doesn't matter how, why or when; that's historically been the government's interpretation," said Barry Hartman of K&amp;L Gates, a Washington law firm that represents Duke Energy Corp. "And what the court is saying is that interpretation doesn't extend to unintentional takes." Feds: Difficult To Prosecute Companies Over Migratory Bird Deaths
The U.S. <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=fish&amp;cvid=0ae78e786ab3416dbc210e9377cbe290&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">Fish</a> and Wildlife Service has maintained that no intent is required to violate the law, which makes it illegal to "pursue, hunt, take, capture" or "kill" more than 1,000 bird species. But companies have long claimed they should not be held responsible for actions that incidentally cause deaths - up to about a half-million annually by wind turbines alone, the federal agency says.
The nation's appellate courts have starkly different interpretations of the law, resulting in an uneven enforcement across the country, with companies in some <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/earth-could-be-powered-entirely-by-renewable-energy/">energy</a>-rich states facing a narrower liability toward migratory birds than operations in other regions.
In the Sept. 4 ruling, the 5th Circuit said a U.S. District Court was wrong to convict and levy a $2 million fine against Citgo Petroleum Corp. for the deaths of at least 35 protected birds that flew into two large, open-top petroleum tanks in 2003 in Corpus Christi. In overturning the lower court's decision, the 5th Circuit agreed with Citgo that the statute was misinterpreted as covering unintentional bird kills.
The ruling agrees with decisions from the 8th and 9th Circuits that hold the law only applies to the intentional killing of birds, but contrasts with two other circuit rulings - one of which upheld misdemeanor convictions of two Kansas oil rig operators after dead birds were found trapped in oil-treatment vessels.
"It was a very easy charge for the government to bring" without having to prove intent, said Benjamin Cowan, a Houston attorney who represents traditional and renewable energy companies. "They won't be able to do that anymore."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has also used the bird act to regulate wind energy, and the Department of Justice are reviewing the 5th Circuit ruling before deciding whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, service spokeswoman Laury Parramore said. She added they may also ask the appeals court to reconsider.
The federal service is considering adding new regulations to mitigate bird deaths from energy production.
Since 2013, the Department of Justice has prosecuted two energy companies whose Wyoming wind turbines killed migratory birds, as well as several oil and gas companies in North Dakota whose wastewater pits became death traps for ducks. In 2014, Duke Energy Corp. was sentenced to $1 million in fines and five years' probation and ordered to develop a mitigation strategy for bird deaths at wind farms.
Environmental groups say the ruling by the 5th Circuit - which covers the energy-producing states of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi - weakens the law's intent in some of the country's most crucial bird habitats; Texas leads the nation in wind energy production. The groups also say the ruling threatens the integrity of treaties signed with Great Britain, Canada, Japan, Mexico and Russia.
The first of these, signed by the U.S. and Canada in 1916, was enacted in an era when many bird species were threatened by the commercial trade of birds and feathers and was intended to protect against the "indiscriminate slaughter" of migratory birds.
Eric Glitzenstein, an attorney who represents the American Bird Conservancy, called the ruling "an extraordinarily narrow" interpretation of the statute.
"Ignoring the greatest threats to migratory bird populations from inherently hazardous industrial activities is really a setback to our commitment to migratory birds in a serious and unfortunate way," he said.
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Feds: Difficult To Prosecute Companies Over Migratory Bird Deaths

Feds: Difficult To Prosecute Companies Over Migratory Bird Deaths. Companies...

BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill Settlement Finalized. The Justice Department and five states have finalized a settlement of more than $20 billion arising from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon gulf oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The deal announced Monday resolves all <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=civil&amp;cvid=5cf3ebea38554c12b31c1db97a3a91a7&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">civil</a> claims against BP and ends five years of legal fighting over the nearly 134 million-gallon spill.
"BP is receiving the punishment it deserves, while also providing critical compensation for the injuries it caused to the environment and the economy of the <a href="http://www.earth.com/image/city-lights-surround-the-persian-gulf/">Gulf</a> region," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at a Justice Department news conference. "The steep penalty should inspire BP and its peers to take every measure necessary to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again."
The settlement finalizes an agreement first announced in July. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was an industrial disaster that began on April 20, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, considered to be the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry and estimated to be 8 percent to 31 percent larger in volume than the previous largest, the Ixtoc I oil spill, also in the Gulf o…

<div id="expitem_-1465872902_26" class="sml inline" data-appns="SERP" data-k="5657.1" data-expl=""></div>
Among other requirements, BP will be forced to pay $5.5 billion in Clean Water Act penalties and nearly $5 billion to five Gulf states: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. BP Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill Settlement Finalized
The spill followed the April 2010 explosion on an offshore rig that killed 11 workers. BP earlier settled with people and businesses harmed by the spill, a deal that's so far resulted in $5.84 billion in payouts.
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Clouds of reef fish and corals, French frigate shoals, NWHI

Obama Designates Two New National Marine Sanctuaries. President Barack Obama declared new marine sanctuaries in Lake Michigan and the tidal waters of Maryland on Monday, while Chile blocked off more than 200,000 square miles of the <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=Pacific+Ocean&amp;cvid=f37903bcfa0e47ad93b9fbce37e2246e&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">Pacific Ocean</a> near the world-famous Easter Island from commercial fishing and oil and gas exploration.
The announcements came as top officials, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, attended an international conference on marine protection in the Chilean port city of Valparaiso. Several nations also outlined plans for tracing seafood imports to combat overfishing and stemming increased pollution in the ocean. Obama Designates Two New National Marine Sanctuaries
The new protected waters in the <a href="http://www.earth.com/image/severe-fire-threat-continues-in-the-western-united-states/">United States</a> are the first to be designated as such in 15 years, the White House said in a statement.
The 875-square mile area of Wisconsin's Lake Michigan extends from Port Washington to Two Rivers, containing a collection of 39 known shipwrecks. Fifteen are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Mallows Bay-Potomac River in Maryland encompasses a 14-square mile area of the tidal Potomac River next to Charles County. Nearly 200 vessels, some dating back to the Revolutionary War, are found in the largely undeveloped area that provides habitat for endangered species of wildlife and fish.
The actions are the latest in a series of environmental steps by Obama, who last year set aside some 400,000 square miles of the central Pacific Ocean from commercial fishing, deep sea mining and other forms of resource extraction. The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument is now the largest marine reserve in the world.
In a videotaped message to conference participants, Obama recalled his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia and said he always maintained "a special love for the ocean."
"Our economies, our livelihoods and our food all depend on our oceans," he said, "and yet we know that our actions are changing them. Greenhouse gas emissions are making our seas warmer and more acidic. Marine pollution harms fish and wildlife, affecting the entire food chain. Illegal fishing depletes the world's fisheries."
Obama said he would seek to protect more American waters in the coming months.
Chile made its own ambitious declaration, cordoning off a vast expanse of the South Pacific Ocean.
President Michelle Bachelet said the new marine park would protect the ancestral species of Rapa Nui, the name used by the native Polynesians of Easter Island, which is celebrated for its hundreds of human statues carved out of volcanic rock. She was joined by representatives of the island, who clapped their hands and sang after the announcement was made.
Bachelet called it the third-largest protected marine zone worldwide.
Britain, Gabon, Kiribati, New Zealand and Palau have taken steps as well to protect sections of the sea in recent months.
The "Our Ocean" conference also targeted marine pollution resulting from discarded plastics and increasing levels of ocean acidification, which damages coral reefs and shellfish populations. Such concerns are shared by the U.S., which imports 90 percent of the fish it consumes, and Chile, whose coastline of almost 2,500 miles is vital to the economy.
To address overfishing, the Obama administration announced a global initiative, "Sea Scout," to identify unregulated and unreported activity, and help prosecute illegal fishing organizations. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is expanding a program for detecting boats that use lights to attract fishery catch at night and will implement it in Indonesia, the Philippines and three other countries next year.
The "traceability" initiative is supposed to start for the most commonly exported fish species such as tuna, cod, shrimp and crab in September 2016. It would apply to all fish a year later and is designed to provide a full accounting of where exporters are getting their catch and whether they are operating in a sustainable manner. Anyone who wants to export fish to the United States would have to adhere to the conditions. The program needs final approval from the U.S. Senate and several additional countries before entering into force.
"There is literally too much money chasing too much fish," Kerry told the conference. A third of the world's fish stocks are over-exploited, he said, calling overfishing a $10 billion-a-year industry.
---
Online:
Obama's remarks: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UDXsv-BLpI" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UDXsv-BLpI</a>
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Obama Designates Two New National Marine Sanctuaries

Obama Designates Two New National Marine Sanctuaries. President Barack Obama...

Feds: Difficult To Prosecute Companies Over Migratory Bird Deaths. Companies accused of causing migratory bird deaths may be harder to successfully prosecute after a federal appeals court recently ruled that a century-old wildlife protection law only applies if the killing is intentional.
The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals runs contrary to two other federal courts' interpretations of the 1918 Migratory <a href="http://www.earth.com/earthpedia-articles/save-the-baby-kiwi-birds/">Bird</a> Treaty Act and could save companies that operate wind farms, power transmission lines and other methods of energy production millions in research - at the risk of more bird deaths.
"If you have a dead migratory bird, you have a violation. Doesn't matter how, why or when; that's historically been the government's interpretation," said Barry Hartman of K&amp;L Gates, a Washington law firm that represents <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=duke+energy&amp;cvid=0fb30bf47abc469cba6f66da0b2aa8fe&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">Duke Energy</a> Corp. "And what the court is saying is that interpretation doesn't extend to unintentional takes."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has maintained that no intent is required to violate the law, which makes it illegal to "pursue, hunt, take, capture" or "kill" more than 1,000 bird species. But companies have long claimed they should not be held responsible for actions that incidentally cause deaths - up to about a half-million annually by wind turbines alone, the federal agency says.
The nation's appellate courts have starkly different interpretations of the law, resulting in an uneven enforcement across the country, with companies in some energy-rich states facing a narrower liability toward migratory birds than operations in other regions.
In the Sept. 4 ruling, the 5th Circuit said a U.S. District Court was wrong to convict and levy a $2 million fine against Citgo Petroleum Corp. for the deaths of at least 35 protected birds that flew into two large, open-top petroleum tanks in 2003 in Corpus Christi. In overturning the lower court's decision, the 5th Circuit agreed with Citgo that the statute was misinterpreted as covering unintentional bird kills.
The ruling agrees with decisions from the 8th and 9th Circuits that hold the law only applies to the intentional killing of birds, but contrasts with two other circuit rulings - one of which upheld misdemeanor convictions of two Kansas oil rig operators after dead birds were found trapped in oil-treatment vessels.
"It was a very easy charge for the government to bring" without having to prove intent, said Benjamin Cowan, a Houston attorney who represents traditional and renewable energy companies. "They won't be able to do that anymore."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has also used the bird act to regulate wind energy, and the Department of Justice are reviewing the 5th Circuit ruling before deciding whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, service spokeswoman Laury Parramore said. She added they may also ask the appeals court to reconsider.
The federal service is considering adding new regulations to mitigate bird deaths from energy production.
Since 2013, the Department of Justice has prosecuted two energy companies whose Wyoming wind turbines killed migratory birds, as well as several oil and gas companies in North Dakota whose wastewater pits became death traps for ducks. In 2014, Duke Energy Corp. was sentenced to $1 million in fines and five years' probation and ordered to develop a mitigation strategy for bird deaths at wind farms.
Environmental groups say the ruling by the 5th Circuit - which covers the energy-producing states of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi - weakens the law's intent in some of the country's most crucial bird habitats; Texas leads the nation in wind energy production. The groups also say the ruling threatens the integrity of treaties signed with Great Britain, Canada, Japan, Mexico and Russia.
The first of these, signed by the U.S. and Canada in 1916, was enacted in an era when many bird species were threatened by the commercial trade of birds and feathers and was intended to protect against the "indiscriminate slaughter" of migratory birds.
Eric Glitzenstein, an attorney who represents the American Bird Conservancy, called the ruling "an extraordinarily narrow" interpretation of the statute.
"Ignoring the greatest threats to migratory bird populations from inherently hazardous industrial activities is really a setback to our commitment to migratory birds in a serious and unfortunate way," he said.
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Volkswagen Emission Testing

Volkswagen Pollution Testing Center Under Scrutiny After Scandal. When Volkswagen opened its gleaming pollution testing center near the California coast, a top executive from the German automaker helped snip the blue ribbon and joined a tour of a lab so advanced that VW would brag the air inside was cleaner than in the surrounding strawberry fields.
Three years later, with VW admitting that it manipulated emissions results in 482,000 U.S. diesel vehicles to make them seem more environmentally friendly, questions are swirling around Volkswagen's only test center in <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=north+america&amp;cvid=ec97ef97f27a477c96c4ca8936edaed1&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">North America</a>. Was anyone at the facility complicit in the scheme? Or were VW's own testers unaware of the deception like so many others?
The center in Oxnard, about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles, was built with the help of a $10 million, tax-exempt public bond and opened in 2012.


[caption id="attachment_2384940" align="alignleft" width="150"]<a href="http://cff1.greenatom.net/uploads/2015/10/05120204/volkswagen-america-headquarters_1big_ap.jpg"><img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-2384940" src="http://cff1.greenatom.net/uploads/2015/10/05120204/volkswagen-america-headquarters_1big_ap-150x150.jpg" alt="Volkswagens only test center in North America in Oxnard, Calif." width="150" height="150" /></a> Volkswagens only test center in North America in Oxnard, Calif.[/caption]
Volkswagen saw the facility as key to its multibillion-dollar U.S. growth strategy, partly because vehicles would have the selling point of meeting the nation's strictest emissions standards. At the facility, VW runs cars through a battery of tests to check whether they're polluting as little as advertised.
While no evidence has surfaced that Oxnard played a role in the fraud, the test center is sure to attract interest from government investigators and private attorneys lining up to sue VW.
"That would be one of the top facilities on my list to get inside of, whether through a subpoena or a search warrant," said William Carter, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles who specialized in environmental crimes. "You'd want to explore what's there."
Carter said that investigators would want to know whether anyone in Oxnard knew about the "defeat devices" that Volkswagen has acknowledged installing on models from 2009 through 2015. The "device" was code in engine software that cheated diesel car emissions tests in the U.S.; 11 million engines worldwide contained the software. The scandal forced out VW's CEO and could lead to $18 billion in U.S. fines, an avalanche of lawsuits and criminal prosecutions both here and abroad.
California has launched its own criminal probe, but the state Attorney General's office would not say if Oxnard was a focus. A U.S. Justice Department spokesman said prosecutors are working closely with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigators but declined to say more.
Two Southern California law firms have cited the center in lawsuits against VW.
"I'm dying to know if they were doing anything in that facility" related to the defeat device, said attorney Graham LippSmith, who is seeking damages for fraud and negligence in federal court in Los Angeles on behalf of VW diesel owners in California.


[caption id="attachment_2384939" align="alignleft" width="150"]<a href="http://cff1.greenatom.net/uploads/2015/10/05120202/volkswagen-pollution-testing-center_2big_ap.jpg"><img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-2384939" src="http://cff1.greenatom.net/uploads/2015/10/05120202/volkswagen-pollution-testing-center_2big_ap-150x150.jpg" alt="Volkswagen Passat with a diesel engine is evaluated" width="150" height="150" /></a> Volkswagen Passat with a diesel engine is evaluated[/caption]
Volkswagen declined to answer questions about what it calls Test Center California, instead providing a fact sheet first distributed at the 2012 opening attended by local dignitaries and VW officials. It denied a tour request, and security escorted out an Associated Press reporter who visited.
California officials who began investigating discrepancies in VW's diesel emissions months ago are familiar with the test center. The California Air Resources Board, in charge of enforcing the state's tough emissions standards, has likely received test results from the center but spokesman John Swanton could not be sure and would not say whether they included the 2009 to 2015 diesel models in question. Volkswagen Pollution Testing Center Under Scrutiny After Scandal
In recent weeks, agency staff visited Oxnard for ideas about how to upgrade their own aging emissions test center in El Monte, about 80 miles away, according to Swanton. The visit came while state and federal regulators were pressing VW to explain emissions test discrepancies but was not part of the investigation, he said.
The agency has researched other automaker test labs in California for ideas and was interested in the VW facility's top-notch environmental design, which includes rooftop solar paneling that provides one-third of its electricity.
And the agency is currently collaborating with VW to test emissions from a diesel research vehicle outside the lab. Air Resources Board engineers have been driving a red VW Golf up and down the coast to Oxnard, taking pollution readings using equipment strapped onto the back. The idea is to test ideas that VW is considering for a possible future diesel model, Swanton said.
Paperwork submitted to the City Council in 2010 as part of the approval process for a $10 million California Economic Development Authority tax-exempt bond to build the $27 million center said it would include "sophisticated emission-testing equipment" as part of VW's research to develop ultra-low emission vehicles, including diesel. VW came to Oxnard to replace a smaller, older facility nearby.
Civic leaders in Oxnard received a tour in 2012 that focused on how the precision lab assesses engine performance and its impact on emissions, said Steven Kinney, former president of the Economic Development Corporation of Oxnard.
The floors were so clean you could eat off them, Kinney said. He peered into a climate-controlled chamber where engineers could simulate sub-zero temperatures or desert conditions and saw cars undergoing emissions testing on treadmills.
At the Oxnard facility, and those like it that other automakers have in Southern California, cars would typically be several years old - tested for how they are performing as they age. Testing to certify that a new model meets U.S. and California emissions standards is typically done at an automaker's headquarters.
"They were proud of the fact that the air inside the facility was cleaner than the ambient air," he recalled.
Now, Kinney is left with questions: "How are they going to react to this? How much are they going to now open up the facility to broader public scrutiny?"
---
Pritchard reported from Los Angeles. Michael Biesecker contributed from Washington, D.C., and Don Thompson from Sacramento, California.
---
Contact Flaccus at <a href="https://twitter.com/gflaccus" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://twitter.com/gflaccus</a> and Pritchard at <a href="https://twitter.com/lalanewsman" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://twitter.com/lalanewsman</a> .
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Volkswagen Pollution Testing Center Under Scrutiny After Scandal

Volkswagen Pollution Testing Center Under Scrutiny After Scandal. When Volkswagen...

Obama Designates Two New National Marine Sanctuaries. President Barack Obama declared new marine sanctuaries in Lake Michigan and the tidal waters of Maryland on Monday, while Chile blocked off more than 200,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean near the world-famous Easter Island from commercial fishing and oil and gas exploration.
The announcements came as top officials, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, attended an international conference on marine protection in the Chilean port city of Valparaiso. Several nations also outlined plans for tracing seafood imports to combat overfishing and stemming increased pollution in the ocean.
The new protected waters in the United States are the first to be designated as such in 15 years, the White House said in a statement.
The 875-square mile area of Wisconsin's Lake Michigan extends from Port Washington to Two Rivers, containing a collection of 39 known shipwrecks. Fifteen are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Mallows Bay-Potomac River in Maryland encompasses a 14-square mile area of the tidal Potomac River next to Charles County. Nearly 200 vessels, some dating back to the Revolutionary War, are found in the largely undeveloped area that provides habitat for endangered species of wildlife and fish.
The actions are the latest in a series of environmental steps by Obama, who last year set aside some 400,000 square miles of the central Pacific Ocean from commercial fishing, deep sea mining and other forms of resource extraction. The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument is now the largest marine reserve in the world.
In a videotaped message to conference participants, Obama recalled his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia and said he always maintained "a special love for the ocean."
"Our economies, our livelihoods and our food all depend on our oceans," he said, "and yet we know that our actions are changing them. Greenhouse gas emissions are making our seas warmer and more acidic. Marine pollution harms fish and wildlife, affecting the entire food chain. Illegal fishing depletes the world's fisheries."
Obama said he would seek to protect more American waters in the coming months.
Chile made its own ambitious declaration, cordoning off a vast expanse of the South Pacific Ocean.
President Michelle Bachelet said the new marine park would protect the ancestral species of Rapa Nui, the name used by the native Polynesians of Easter Island, which is celebrated for its hundreds of human statues carved out of volcanic rock. She was joined by representatives of the island, who clapped their hands and sang after the announcement was made.
Bachelet called it the third-largest protected marine zone worldwide.
Britain, Gabon, Kiribati, New Zealand and Palau have taken steps as well to protect sections of the sea in recent months.
The "Our Ocean" conference also targeted marine pollution resulting from discarded plastics and increasing levels of ocean acidification, which damages coral reefs and shellfish populations. Such concerns are shared by the U.S., which imports 90 percent of the fish it consumes, and Chile, whose coastline of almost 2,500 miles is vital to the economy.
To address overfishing, the Obama administration announced a global initiative, "Sea Scout," to identify unregulated and unreported activity, and help prosecute illegal fishing organizations. The U.S. National <a href="http://www.earth.com/endangered-species/megalagrion-oceanicum/">Oceanic</a> and Atmospheric Administration is expanding a program for detecting boats that use lights to attract fishery catch at night and will implement it in Indonesia, the <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=Philippines&amp;cvid=353301fec3bb4845b6a7206c62e11a6a&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">Philippines</a> and three other countries next year.
The "traceability" initiative is supposed to start for the most commonly exported fish species such as tuna, cod, shrimp and crab in September 2016. It would apply to all fish a year later and is designed to provide a full accounting of where exporters are getting their catch and whether they are operating in a sustainable manner. Anyone who wants to export fish to the United States would have to adhere to the conditions. The program needs final approval from the U.S. Senate and several additional countries before entering into force.
"There is literally too much money chasing too much fish," Kerry told the conference. A third of the world's fish stocks are over-exploited, he said, calling overfishing a $10 billion-a-year industry.
---
Online:
Obama's remarks: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UDXsv-BLpI" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UDXsv-BLpI</a>
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Estimating The Impact Of Permafrost Carbon And Climate Change. Berkeley Lab scientist leads effort to shed light on a potentially huge player in the planet's climate...permafrost carbon

One of the big unknowns in predicting climate change is the billions of tons of carbon frozen in Arctic permafrost. As global warming causes soil temperatures to increase, some of this carbon will decompose and enter the atmosphere and accelerate climate change.

Although permafrost carbon has the potential to be a huge player in the planet's climate, it's difficult to predict the amount that will enter the atmosphere for a given increase in temperature. That's because the current way to estimate feedback between permafrost <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/warming-of-2c-would-unleash-230-billions-tons-of-soil-carbon/">carbon</a> and climate is by using complex Earth system models that include a wide range of atmospheric and land surface phenomena. When it comes to representing the dynamics of permafrost carbon, these models don't use data from direct observations of the amount of carbon that is currently frozen in Arctic permafrost.

[caption id="attachment_2384952" align="alignleft" width="150"]<a href="http://cff1.greenatom.net/uploads/2015/10/05173228/permafrost-graphic_1big_LLNB.jpg"><img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-2384952" src="http://cff1.greenatom.net/uploads/2015/10/05173228/permafrost-graphic_1big_LLNB-150x150.jpg" alt="The new approach includes data from recently compiled soil carbon maps of permafrost in Alaska, Canada, and Russia." width="150" height="150" /></a> The new approach includes data from recently compiled soil carbon maps of permafrost in Alaska, Canada, and Russia.[/caption]

Now, a team of researchers led by a scientist from the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has developed a simple model of permafrost carbon based on direct observations. Their approach could help climate scientists evaluate how well permafrost dynamics are represented in the Earth system models used to predict climate change.

The scientists present their research in a paper published online Oct. 5 in the journalPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A.

"In the classic way of evaluating how well climate models account for permafrost carbon, scientists ask: Does the model predict soil carbon levels that are close to what is observed?" says Charlie Koven, a staff scientist in Berkeley Lab's Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division who led the research.

"But we flipped the question and started with: What are the actual, observed stocks of carbon in the soil? With this approach, we built the simplest possible model of Arctic permafrost carbon and its dynamics," Koven says.

Their approach takes into account recently developed soil carbon maps that identify the distribution and type of carbon in permafrost soils in Alaska, Canada, and Russia. It also includes a meta-analysis of several lab studies in which permafrost was held at a constant above-freezing temperature for months or even years. These incubation experiments quantify the rates of carbon lost due to permafrost thaw. A third component is a meta-analysis of soil thermal models that track soil dynamics in response to climate warming. These models account for the effects of melting snow, freezing and thawing of soils, and differences in soil thermal properties, to name a few phenomena.

The scientists ran their simplified model under two scenarios. In one scenario, fossil fuel emissions begin to curb dramatically by the middle of this century and the global temperature increases 1.8 degrees Celsius. In the other scenario, fossil fuel emissions continue at current rates unchecked and the global temperature increases 3.4 degrees Celsius.

They averaged the results from the two scenarios, and found that for every one degree Celsius of global warming, the amount of permafrost carbon that enters the atmosphere is equivalent to 1.5 years of global carbon dioxide emissions.

"We found for a given amount of warming, there is an extra amount of carbon released, which would lead to further warming--in other words, a feedback loop," says Koven.

Koven notes that their approach doesn't include many important processes that may increase or mitigate carbon release from permafrost soils.

"But the beauty of simple models is they are very easy to understand. We know exactly what goes into this," Koven adds. "The processes responsible for permafrost carbon-climate feedback have not been well represented in many models, and our approach is a way to start. It serves as a data-constrained estimate on the large-scale permafrost carbon response to warming."

The research was funded partly by the Department of Energy's Office of Science.
###
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit <a href="http://www.lbl.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.lbl.gov</a>.

Estimating The Impact Of Permafrost Carbon And Climate Change

Estimating The Impact Of Permafrost Carbon And Climate Change. Berkeley...

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="0ynNMYkMKa-2340414-12187" type="single"]</div>



Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Nushagak Bay, a large estuary in southwest Alaska. Nushagak runs mainly north to south and exits in Bristol Bay, a large body of water in the Bering Sea.



"The bay is primarily fed by the Nushagak River, which begins in the Alaska Range and flows southwest approximately 450 km. The bay is also fed by several additional rivers including the Wood, Igushik, Snake and Weary rivers," says ESA.



"The dark colors of the Nushagak River are most likely due to tannins or lignins (chemical substances found in plants). Tannins and lignins from roots, leaves, seeds, bark and soil can leach into the water and give it a brown or even black colour. The sediments then flow southwards where it is mixed with the bluer waters of the bay."



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



---



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

Nushagak Bay in southwest Alaska

[sendtonews key="0ynNMYkMKa-2340414-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="G9bUoxcjr4-2511624-12187" type="single"]</div>



Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> (ACS) reveals that proteins on flu viruses are actually flexible, tilting and waving in a “breath-like” motion. According to the experts, these proteins could be used to better defend against the flu.



"The main antigenic targets of influenza virus are two surface glycoproteins, hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). Whereas the structural and dynamical properties of both glycoproteins have been studied previously, the understanding of their plasticity in the whole-virion context is fragmented," wrote the researchers.



To investigate, the team conducted detailed simulations of the influenza A H1N1 virion, or the swine flu. The experts concluded that the visualizations show many new vulnerable states of flu viruses, which could improve future vaccines and antiviral drugs.



Video/ Image Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



---



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.

Flu viruses are more flexible than expected

[sendtonews key="G9bUoxcjr4-2511624-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="3upvlAaHgO-2256633-12187" type="single"]</div>



Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Lake Trasimeno, which is located west of Perugia in central Italy. It is the fourth largest lake in the country. While Trasimeno’s water level varies, it has a maximum depth of approximately six meters.&nbsp;



"In this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, captured on 6 August 2022, the lake’s emerald green colour is likely due to the presence of phytoplankton. Streaks in the water, particularly visible in the west, indicate the presence of soil and sediments which have been stirred up by winds. Dark colored waters in the southern part of the lake indicate a presence of submerged and floating macrophytes (aquatic plants) as well as algae," says ESA.



"Surrounded by hills on three sides, Trasimeno is subject to heavy storms created by winds, especially from the north and west. There are three islets in the lake: Maggiore, Minore and Polvese (the largest). The lake’s shores are sparsely inhabited with only two popular villages: Castiglione del Lago and Passignano sul Trasimeno."



"Italy is experiencing its worst drought in 70 years which has affected drinking water supplies, hydroelectric power and agricultural production. High temperatures, hot winds and lack of rainfall are the main causes of drought in the Umbrian region which saw Lake Trasimeno’s drop 1.3 m, reaching the limit of the hydrometric zero in July 2022."



Video/Image Credit: ESA&nbsp;



---



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

Lake Trasimeno in Central Italy

[sendtonews key="3upvlAaHgO-2256633-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="LvS8v8bp9z-2564889-12187" type="single"]</div>



Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> describes a new self-powered nanosensor that can instantly detect mercury contamination with the tap of a finger.&nbsp;



The oxidized form of mercury can be harmful when it is ingested through contaminated water or food. This makes it necessary for experts to develop sensors that can quickly and accurately detect the presence of mercury.&nbsp;



Zong-Hong Lin and colleagues have now created a triboelectric nanosensor (TENS) that can detect mercury by simply by touching a sample. According to the researchers, their TENS could serve as the basis for similar devices to safely and remotely monitor other pollutants.



Video Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



---



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.

Detecting mercury contamination with the tap of a finger

[sendtonews key="LvS8v8bp9z-2564889-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="iuA5mpp3jv-1641775-12187" type="single"]</div>



Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Kainji Lake, a reservoir on the Niger River.



In 1968, Kainji Lake was created by the construction of the Kainji Dam. The Niger River, the third longest in Africa, enters the lake in the north.&nbsp;



According to <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/rivers-in-the-american-west-are-a-lifesaving-resource-for-birds/">ESA</a>, the creation of the lake submerged Foge Island and the town of Bussa and permanently flooded other riverine settlements, leaving around 50,000 people displaced.&nbsp;



Large parts of Foge Island are temporarily exposed during low water tides, and the land is often used by migrating fishermen. Kainji Dam is a dam across the Niger River in Niger State of Central Nigeria. 



Wild mammals occur at relatively low densities due to illegal hunting. Lake Kainji has suffered a dramatic decline as a fishery due to the high numbers of artisanal and subsistence fisherfolk using the lake. It has been suggested that a period of closure, together with controlled fishing rights may help improve fish stocks.



Kainji Lake National Park is the oldest of its kind in Nigeria. The park contains three distinct areas: a part of the Kainji Lake, the Borgu Game Reserve to the west of the lake, and the Zugurma Game Reserve to the southeast. The park is home to around 65 mammal species, 350 bird species, and 30 species of reptiles and amphibians. 



Video/ Image Credit: European Space Agency&nbsp;



---



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.

Kainji Lake in north central Nigeria

[sendtonews key="iuA5mpp3jv-1641775-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="QGPzYnXEtN-1712599-12187" type="single"]</div>



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



---



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.

Designing crops that can beat the heat

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

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="X0f6OHYoI4-2310561-12187" type="single"]</div>



Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> explores the ability of salt to transform the way that foods and beverages taste. Salt is known to cover up undesirable flavors, such as bitterness in coffee or beer, but how exactly does sodium chloride change the taste of other compounds?



One previous study showed that, not only does salt suppress bitterness, but also enhances sweetness and sourness. Another study revealed that bitterness reduction by salt seems to be happening at the tongue receptor level as well as in the brain.&nbsp;



While it is known that salt taste is mediated by the presence of sodium channels in the form of taste buds, experts believe that there is also an unknown receptor responsible for how we taste salt that has not yet been identified.&nbsp;



Video Credit: ACS Reactions



---



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.

How does salt makes things taste better?

[sendtonews key="X0f6OHYoI4-2310561-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="JRaP49ISmm-2357509-12187" type="single"]</div>



Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Santiago, the capital city of Chile. The city is located in the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, which has a population of about eight million people.&nbsp;



'The weather of Santiago resembles the Mediterranean climate with dry and warm summers with temperatures reaching up to 35°C (from October to March) and cool and humid winters that can drop to 0°C (from April to September)."



"The city lies in the centre of the country’s central valley around 80 km from the Pacific Ocean to the west and borders Argentina to the east. A tiny part of Argentina is visible in the top-right corner of the image where the mountain crest of the Andes Mountains acts as a divider between the two countries," says ESA.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



---



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.

Santiago, Chile in South America

[sendtonews key="JRaP49ISmm-2357509-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

Spiral,Galaxy,,Illustration,Of,Milky,Way

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="e4ZG0Jawp3-2374785-12187" type="single"]</div>



Astronomers at <a href="https://www.jhu.edu/">Johns Hopkins University</a> have created an interactive map of the universe, including the actual position and real colors of 200,000 galaxies. The map allows the public to access data that was previously only available to scientists.



The map was developed using data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For over two decades, a telescope in New Mexico was aimed at slightly different locations to capture the night sky.&nbsp;



"Growing up I was very inspired by astronomy pictures, stars, nebulae and galaxies, and now it's our time to create a new type of picture to inspire people," said map creator Brice Ménard, a professor at Johns Hopkins. "Astrophysicists around the world have been analyzing this data for years, leading to thousands of scientific papers and discoveries. But nobody took the time to create a map that is beautiful, scientifically accurate, and accessible to people who are not scientists. Our goal here is to show everybody what the universe really looks like."



"In this map, we are just a speck at the very bottom, just one pixel. And when I say we, I mean our galaxy, the Milky Way which has billions of stars and planets. We are used to seeing astronomical pictures showing one galaxy here, one galaxy there or perhaps a group of galaxies. But what this map shows is a very, very different scale."



"From this speck at the bottom, we are able to map out galaxies across the entire universe, and that says something about the power of science."



The <a href="https://mapoftheuniverse.net/">interactive map</a> is available online, where it can be downloaded for free.



Video Credit: Johns Hopkins&nbsp;



---



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.

Interactive map of the universe includes 200,000 galaxies

[sendtonews key="e4ZG0Jawp3-2374785-12187" type="single"] Astronomers at Johns Hopkins University have created...

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="EjmSP20gQK-2593093-12187" type="single"]</div>



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;



---



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...

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="qjvhBOBnY8-2426650-12187" type="single"]</div>



Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Dublin, the capital and largest city of Ireland. Beyond its pub culture, Dublin is known as a modern culinary destination and a UNESCO City of Literature.



"Dublin is located near the midpoint of Ireland’s east coast in the province of Leinster. The city, which covers an area of around 115 square kilometers, is bordered by the Dublin Mountains, a low mountain range to the south, and is surrounded by flat farmland to the north and west," says ESA.



"The city straddles the River Liffey, which rises in the Wicklow Mountains and flows around 80 kilometers eastwards through the city of Dublin, in which it is canalised and bordered with quays. It then empties into Dublin Bay, an arm of the Irish Sea."



Dublin has an abundance of green spaces, including one of the largest enclosed public parks in any European capital city. Phoenix Park, which was originally formed as a royal hunting park in the 1660s, includes 707 hectares of green space.



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;



---



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.

The city of Dublin on Ireland's east coast

[sendtonews key="qjvhBOBnY8-2426650-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="oL4FnPTGCV-2384527-12187" type="single"]</div>



Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain. The image was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.



"Together with the provinces of Huesca and Teruel, Zaragoza formed the old kingdom of Aragon. Its capital, also called Zaragoza (not visible in this image) is home to around half of Aragon’s population," says ESA.



"The Ebro River can be seen winding its way through the province from west to east in this image. Between its source in the Cantabrian Mountains in the northwest and its delta on the Mediterranean coast, the Ebro River is fed by more than 200 tributaries as it flows 910 km across much of northern Spain."



Since rainfall is very scarce in this region, irrigation in the Ebro basin is critically important. In the valleys surrounding the Ebro River, many fields are used for growing crops such as corn, wheat, and barley.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



---



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.

The province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain

[sendtonews key="oL4FnPTGCV-2384527-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="f8fukm28Vz-2491833-12187" type="single"]</div>



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



---



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.

Wetlands are a major source of methane emissions

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

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="0879czfG3k-1785905-12187" type="single"]</div>



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



---



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.

The rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier

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

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="6HyfrAJTBI-1831843-12187" type="single"]</div>



Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the Pyrenees Mountains, which form a natural boundary between France and Spain in southwest Europe.



The mountain range is 430 kilometers in length. It stretches from the Mediterranean Sea on the east to the Atlantic Ocean on the west.



At an elevation of 3404 meters, Pico de Aneto is the highest mountain peak in the Pyrenees, and the third-highest peak in Spain. Pico de Aneto is located in the Posets-Maladeta Natural Park, which spans more than 82,000 acres.&nbsp;



"Geological studies have revealed that the Pyrenees Mountains have been around for longer than the Alps, with their sediments first deposited in coastal basins during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras," reports ESA.



"The entire mountain range formed due to the upwelling of large sedimentary rocks by the collision of the Iberian and the Eurasian plate around 100 to 150 million years ago, followed by intense erosion from ice and water."



The western Pyrenees receive more precipitation due to moisture blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. The mountain range contains many lakes, several small glaciers, and some of the highest waterfalls in Europe.



Video &amp; Image Credit: ESA



---



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.

The Pyrenees Mountains in southwest Europe

[sendtonews key="6HyfrAJTBI-1831843-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="0dEcERCq61-2283382-12187" type="single"]</div>



Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.stowers.org/">Stowers Institute for Medical Research</a> describes why experts are studying zebrafish to gain a better understanding of how the immune system responds to injury. Zebrafish have the ability to repair and regenerate organs.



“Organ regeneration offers an exciting opportunity for studying the immune system and to inquire why some species can regenerate organs like the heart or missing limbs while others like humans cannot,” explained Dr. Tatjana Piotrowski.



Zebrafish sensory organ hair cells are an ideal system to investigate the pathways and cell types involved in regeneration since they are easily destroyed with antibiotics and begin regenerating within five hours. This enabled the researchers to identify the exact timing and genetic programs for each anti-inflammatory macrophage activation state.&nbsp;



“Our hypothesis is that human macrophages do not receive the proper chemical activation 'cocktail' to instruct pro-regenerative processes,” said Dr. Nicolas Denans. “Identifying the molecular recipe of macrophage activation in zebrafish may one day enable us to design regenerative immunotherapies in humans.”&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“The new evidence is a valuable resource for comparative studies on the genetic programs involved in macrophage-mediated repair and regeneration. In other words, different types of injuries may induce different kinds of inflammatory responses. We want to decipher whether this 'language' is universal or if there are a variety of dialects."



Video Credit: Stowers Institute for Medical Research&nbsp;



---



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.

How the immune system responds to injury

[sendtonews key="0dEcERCq61-2283382-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from Stowers...

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="3UUsNkFOuS-2487333-12187" type="single"]</div>



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



---



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.

2022 illustrated the consequences of a warming climate

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

Earth,Like,Exoplanet,3d,Render

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="QIoVYJqRBi-2434608-12187" type="single"]</div>



Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes two exoplanets that are orbiting a star 218 light-years away. A team of researchers led by the University of Montreal has found evidence that these planets are "water worlds."



The experts used data from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes. They discovered that exoplanets Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 could be composed largely of water.



"We previously thought that planets that were a bit larger than Earth were big balls of metal and rock, like scaled-up versions of Earth, and that's why we called them super-Earths," explained study co-author Björn Benneke.&nbsp;



"However, we have now shown that these two planets, Kepler-138 c and d, are quite different in nature and that a big fraction of their entire volume is likely composed of water. It is the best evidence yet for water worlds, a type of planet that was theorized by astronomers to exist for a long time."



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and Leah Hustak (STScI)



---



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.

Two distant planets may be "water worlds"

[sendtonews key="QIoVYJqRBi-2434608-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

<div class="wp-block-sendtonews-playerselector">[sendtonews key="JbW4VsY53O-1632195-12187" type="single"]</div>



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;



---



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

[sendtonews key="JbW4VsY53O-1632195-12187" type="single"] Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected...

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



---



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...