Waterborne Environmental, Inc.

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NEWS: U of I study tracks harmful particles in landfills, wastewater plants "A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study has new findings concerning the fate of #microplastics and #polyfluoroalkyl substances, or #PFAS, after water waste and #landfill treatments. Scientists measured the #liquidwaste released by Illinois landfills and #wastewater treatment plants. Although the?study?did find that landfills keep most of the plastic that’s dumped, and wastewater treatment plants remove 99% of microplastics, both microplastics and PFAS gather in biosolids. Around 70% of biosolids from wastewater treatment plants are used as fertilizers. The rest are buried in landfills. Because of this, most of the microplastics and PFAS go right back into the environment, according to John Scott, U of I research scientist." Read more: https://lnkd.in/eshj6u6u

Did you know that November is National Banana Pudding Lovers Month? We didn't either, but this news helped us walk down memory lane to a past project involving bananas in Costa Rica. Spanning multiple years, our modeling work helped make #bananapudding a more environmentally friendly indulgence. We wrote the story of this project in our latest blog post, "Modeling Banana Production in Costa Rica for the Banana Task Force," which can be read here: https://lnkd.in/e8sSreWB #agmodeling #agriculturescience #environmentalscience

NEWS: Record dryness in US Northeast should change water behavior, experts say. The last time the Northeast had this little rain in the fall was in 1978, according to an Associated Press analysis of #precipitation data. "It hasn’t been a typical fall for the northeastern United States. Fires have?burned in parks and forests?around New York City. Towns and cities in a stretch from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to south of Philadelphia had their driest three months on record, according to the #AppliedClimateInformationSystem. Some reservoirs in the region are?near historic lows. Major changes need to happen to avoid critical shortages of water in the future, even if that future isn’t immediate. As the climate warms, droughts will?continue to intensify?and communities should use this one as motivation to put in place long-term solutions, experts say. “This is the canary in the coal mine for the future,” said Tim Eustance, executive director of the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission. “People should stop watering their lawns yesterday.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/eNCqrq59 #watershortages #climatechange #environmentalscience #waterscience

NEWS: Traditional owners and scientists worked together on ‘coral IVF’ projects. "The #GreatBarrierReef, which supports an estimated 64,000 jobs and has a social and economic value of around?A$6.4 billion, is under threat due to human-induced?climate change. Scientists have begun “#biobanking”, which involves gathering coral sperm from the reef during annual spawning. These samples are held in?special repositories?and can be used in future to create baby #corals via “#coralIVF”. Until now, much of this research has been done without consultation with, or permission from, the traditional custodians of the sea Countries of origin." Read more: https://lnkd.in/gh99zAGy

NEWS: NASA Satellites Reveal Abrupt Drop in Global Freshwater Levels. "An international team of scientists using observations from NASA-German satellites found evidence that Earth’s total amount of #freshwater dropped abruptly starting in May 2014 and has remained low ever since. Reporting in Surveys in Geophysics, the researchers suggested the shift could indicate Earth's continents have entered a?persistently drier phase. From 2015 through 2023, satellite measurements showed that the average amount of freshwater stored on land — that includes liquid surface water like #lakes and #rivers, plus water in #aquifers underground — was 290 cubic miles (1,200 cubic km) lower than the average levels from 2002 through 2014, said Matthew Rodell, one of the study authors and a hydrologist at NASA’s NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “That’s two and a half times the volume of Lake Erie lost.” During times of #drought, along with the modern expansion of irrigated #agriculture, farms and cities must rely more heavily on #groundwater, which can lead to a cycle of declining underground water supplies: freshwater supplies become depleted, rain and snow fail to replenish them, and more groundwater is pumped. The reduction in available water puts a strain on farmers and communities, potentially leading to famine, conflicts, poverty, and an increased risk of disease when people turn to contaminated water sources, according to a?UN report on water stress?published in 2024." Read more: https://lnkd.in/dwRcWknv

NEWS: Bumblebee Queens Prefer to Live in a Toxic Home In an elaborate experiment, scientists discovered that the #insects chose to hibernate in soil full of pesticides and other poisons. "In a paper published last month in the journal Science of the Total Environment (STOTEN), researchers described an experiment that gave common eastern #bumblebee queens a choice: hibernate in clean soil, or in soil laced with pesticides. The insects behaved in a way that was?the opposite?of what was expected. “Queens did not avoid any of the #pesticides,” said Sabrina Rondeau, Ph.D., an ecologist at the University of Ottawa. “Even at high concentrations they didn’t, and still seem to prefer the soil contaminated with pesticides.” The finding, Dr. Rondeau admits, was “very surprising.” One researcher described the study’s findings as “terrifying.” “It wasn’t just one pesticide at one concentration, it was across the board,” said?S. Hollis Woodard, a bee biologist?at the University of California, Riverside. That’s scary, she said, because our soils are full of pesticides — many that traveled far from where they were originally used. Gravitating toward these pesticides may put queens at high risk for direct exposure, with potentially damaging consequences." Read more: https://lnkd.in/g8PcTFRP

NEWS: After months of negotiations, Idaho farmers reach new long-term water agreement. Idaho’s new water mitigation breaks water allotments into four-year increments and requires farmers to conserve water. "The new water agreement gives groundwater users their #waterallotment in four-year increments, instead of handling things one year at a time. That allows farmers to plan out and manage their own water usage... The new agreement also calls for #groundwater districts to conserve a minimum of 205,000 acre-feet of water annually. An acre-foot is a unit of volume that measures the amount of water it would take to cover an acre of land in water one foot deep. For comparison, an acre is slightly smaller than the size of a football field." Read more: https://lnkd.in/e5GiDsfU #agriculture #agwater #agenvironmental

NEWS: ‘Without water they die very quickly’: Drought-starved streams feed ecosystem concern. "With no quenching rain yet assured, the situation has sparked?wildfires, generated?fire warnings?and?burn bans, and led to calls for #waterconservation across eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The impacts on the #ecosystem of local #waterways could take years to repair, according to members of the?Lehigh River Stocking Association. Spaits, the?nonprofit organization’s vice president, walked the Coplay on Nov. 10 and found entire stretches of the creek completely dry. There were hundreds of dead fish across a variety of species, including sunfish, white suckers, shiners and dace." Read more: https://lnkd.in/eWKasA8Z

NEWS: As Ocean Waters Warm, a Race to Breed Heat-Resistant Coral Around the world, researchers are working on a range of projects that aim to enhance corals’ resistance to marine heat waves. In a promising sign, a U.K. team recently became the first to quantify an uptick in heat tolerance among adult #corals selectively bred for the trait. "After seven years of experimentation, a team of researchers at the Coralassist Lab at Newcastle University, in the United Kingdom, finally achieved its goals. Through selective breeding, they had for the first time ever produced adult corals capable of resisting marine heat waves — a potentially useful trait in an ever-warming world. Their work,?published?in October in?Nature Communications, showed that corals can become better adapted to warming within a single generation. The rise in tolerance that they achieved was not large compared with how fast the ocean is warming. “But it’s not an inconsequential jump,” says Stephen Palumbi, a marine biologist at Stanford University who also works on heat tolerance in corals but was not involved in this study. “[It’s] not a small benefit.” Read more: https://lnkd.in/eKq4y4hZ #globalwarming #climatechange #oceanhealth