The picturesque, but snow-capped volcanoes, composing the Islands of the Four Mountains in Alaska's Aleutian Island chain look suspiciously like an alien world in this August 2010 image from the ASTER camera aboard NASA's orbiting Terra satellite. The islands contain restless Mt. Cleveland, an active volcano currently being watched to see if it emits an ash cloud that could affect air travel over parts of North America. A close look at Mt. Cleveland, seen near the image center, shows red vegetation (false color), a white snow-covered peak, a light plume of gas and ash, and dark lanes where ash and debris fell or flowed. Millions of volcanoes have likely been active over the turbulent history of the Earth's surface, while about 20 volcanoes are erupting even today, at any given time. Image Credit: NASA

Aug 26, 2010

A massive 245-hectare fire near the town of Moapa, Nev., did $2.5 million worth of property damage in July and destroyed the Warm Springs Oasis , home to the little-known moapa dace ( Moapa coriacea ), an endangered fish that lives in the springs. But despite fears to the contrary, the fish were able to get out alive, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) reported. [More]



United States - United States Fish and Wildlife Service - Fish - Habitat - Endangered species

Aug 25, 2010

Editor's Note: Students from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering are working in Tanzania to help improve sanitation and energy technologies in local villages. The student-led group , known as Humanitarian Engineering Leadership Projects (HELP), will file dispatches from the field during their trip. This is their sixth blog post for Scientific American.

After hearing many rumors, we finally received confirmation that the famous Dr. Jane Goodall was actually in town to celebrate 50 years of chimpanzee research in Gombe National Park . This discovery came about after finding out that the Land Cruiser that we had reserved to drive to Kalinzi had been used to escort Dr. Jane Goodall to one of the villages. We took our unexpected delay with alacrity as we considered how incredible of an opportunity it was to be in the presence of a living legend. When we finally arrived in Kalinzi, we made our way past the cornucopia of emerald green bananas at the market to the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) field station, which would serve as our headquarters for the rest of the summer. [More]



Jane Goodall - Tanzania - Jane Goodall Institute - Gombe Stream National Park - Chimpanzee

Aug 25, 2010

These are boom times for oil-eating microbes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, thanks to BP's Deepwater Horizon accident that has added some 600 million liters of hydrocarbons to those waters. And now research published online in Science on August 24 shows that an array of new and unclassified oil-eating bacteria are feasting on the newly rich resource of hydrocarbons. [More]



Oil spill - Gulf of Mexico - deepwaterhorizon - BP - Environment

Aug 24, 2010

With all due respect to T. S. Eliot, maybe the world really does end with a bang, not a whimper. Whether of our own creation (nuclear holocaust) or of nature’s (asteroid impact), plenty of cataclysms could doom civilization--perhaps even putting the survival of the species in jeopardy. We assessed the likelihood of several doomsday scenarios, from oft-discussed threats such as climate change to more fanciful ideas such as quantum fluctuations that would destroy our universe. The probabilities listed here are not scientific fact--an impossible goal when estimating the possibility of unprecedented events--but informed conjecture based on researchers’ expert opinions. We also relied on those opinions to approximate how catastrophic each event would be, ranging from 1 (localized chaos) to 10 (good-bye, universe).

KILLER PANDEMIC [More]



Climate change - Environment - T. S. Eliot - Species - Probability

Aug 24, 2010

If the 20th century was an expansive era seemingly without boundaries--a time of jet planes, space travel and the Internet--the early years of the 21st have showed us the limits of our small world. Regional blackouts remind us that the flow of energy we used to take for granted may be in tight supply. The once mighty Colorado River, tapped by thirsty metropolises of the desert West, no longer reaches the ocean. Oil is so hard to find that new wells extend many kilometers underneath the seafloor. The boundless atmosphere is now reeling from two centuries’ worth of greenhouse gas emissions. Even life itself seems to be running out, as biologists warn that we are in the midst of a global extinction event comparable to the last throes of the dinosaurs.

The constraints on our resources and environment--compounded by the rise of the middle class in nations such as China and India--will shape the rest of this century and beyond. Here is a visual accounting of what we have left to work with, a map of our resources plotted against time.

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China - India - Energy - Colorado River - Earth

Aug 24, 2010

Coral, the reef-building organisms responsible for some of the oceans' most vital ecosystems, are in trouble around the world because of climate change, ocean acidification and human interference. But lots of people are also trying to save coral reefs before it's too late. Here's a roundup of some of the latest research into this important class of organism.

Some of the worst news comes out of Indonesia, where the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) found that rising surface water temperatures have created a large-scale bleaching event in the local coral. Bleaching occurs when environmental factors stress the living organisms residing within coral reefs, causing them to either leave their reef structures or die. As a result, reefs turn white. WCS marine biologists found that at least 60 percent of the area's coral reefs, and 80 percent of some coral species in the region, have bleached and died following a 4-degree Celsius rise in water temperatures. Bleached coral reefs cannot support the variety of marine life that depend on coral for their survival. That, in turn, affects the ability of people to fish for their livelihoods around those reefs.

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Climate change - Coral reef - Ocean acidification - Ocean - Environment

Aug 23, 2010

Mimicking volcanoes by throwing particles high into the sky. Maintaining a floating armada of mirrors in space . Burning plant and other organic waste to make charcoal and burying it --or burning it as fuel and burying the CO2 emissions . Even replanting trees . All have been mooted as potential methods of " geoengineering "--"deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment," as the U.K.'s Royal Society puts it. [More]



Geoengineering - Royal Society - Charcoal - Current sea level rise - Climate change

Aug 23, 2010

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Climate change - Environment - Activism - Organizations - Impacts and Indicators

Aug 23, 2010

Last week's post served up facts from Power to Save the World (Vintage, 2008) by Gwyneth Cravens, whose book forced me to see nuclear energy in a more positive light. At the risk of destroying what little credibility I still possess, I'd like to urge readers to check out two even more provocative analysts of the risks of nuclear energy. [More]



Energy - Nuclear power - Nuclear - Gwyneth Cravens - Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy

Aug 23, 2010

A New York City postal processing facility that was contaminated during the 2001 anthrax attacks is now the site of the largest " green roof " in Manhattan. [More]



Green Roof - Manhattan - 2001 anthrax attacks - Construction and Maintenance - Sustainable Architecture

Aug 23, 2010

Editor's note: This story is part of a series of online exclusives about natural phenomena and human endeavors we'd like to see come to an end. They are connected with the September 2010 special issue of Scientific American called " The End ."

The meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES (pronounced "sight-eez") this past March was a decided defeat for the Atlantic bluefin tuna . Delegates voted 72 to 43 not to restrict fishing and international trade of the tuna so prized for its sushi that stocks are estimated to be at 15 percent of their historic levels . Although dismayed, conservationists remain upbeat, because they have at their disposal other management tools that could save the species. [More]



Fish - Tuna - Thunnus - Environment - CITES