The Planetary Society has announced the second round of winners of its Science and Technology Empowered by the Public (STEP) grant program, in which society members and donors have crowdfunded science and technology projects that advance space science and exploration. A winner of a 2023 STEP grant is a team led by Dartmouth College, which was awarded for their project to study small, extremely salty lakes in British Columbia, Canada, that may be analogous to ancient Mars as well as some of the Solar System’s ocean moons, places of key interest in the search for life. A member of that research team is Emily Hughes, a graduate student in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
The Planetary Society
May 31, 2023Digital learning provider Stride has announced a partnership with nonprofit research network Ocean Visions to build instructional content for Minecraft: Education Edition to teach students about the science of oceans and support the goals of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, according to a news release. Ocean Visions selected Stride to be its lead education partner as it ramps up efforts to introduce students around the globe to the nonprofit’s Global Ecosystem for Ocean Solutions Decade Programme, or GEOS, through Minecraft. The new content will also be embedded within Stride’s curriculum. Annalisa Bracco, professor and Associate Chair for Research in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is on the Ocean Visions Network's leadership team.
THE Journal
May 14, 2023In this panel from SXSW (South By Southwest) 2023 in March, leading ocean experts discussed the ocean’s role in climate, the potential for ocean-based carbon dioxide removal, and a code of conduct for CO2 removal that could maximize collective societal and environmental benefits for our ocean planet. One of the panelists was Susan Lozier, Dean of the College of Sciences, Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair, and professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Lozier, a physical oceanographer, spoke of her research on global currents, particularly the Atlantic Meriodonal Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which brings water from north to south and back in a long cycle within the Atlantic Ocean.
YouTube
May 8, 2023In a rhythm that’s pulsed through epochs, a river’s plume carries sediment and nutrients from the continental interior into the ocean, a major exchange of resources from land to sea. More than 6,000 rivers worldwide surge freshwater into oceans, delivering nutrients, including nitrogen and phosphorus, that feed phytoplankton, generating a bloom of life that in turn feeds progressively larger creatures. They may even influence ocean currents in ways researchers are just starting to understand. But today, in rivers around the world, humans are altering this critical phenomenon. In many places, the culprit is a dam. Researchers led by Annalisa Bracco, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, investigated these dynamics in a study of the plume created by the Mekong River, the 12th-longest river in the world. The study found that current and proposed Mekong River dams will dramatically reduce its annual mean flow, its seasonal cycle, and sediment loading. The scientists argue that a reduced productivity of the offshore water of the South China Sea along the pathway of the summer jet may be an undesirable outcome as well. Other EAS researchers in the study are Xiyuan Zeng, graduate student, and Filippos Tagklis, postdoctoral scholar.
Nautilus
May 3, 2023In February, the countries of Turkey and Syria were devastated by a pair of high-magnitude earthquakes occurring nine hours apart. The two events, 7.8- and 7.5-magnitudes respectively, caused thousands of deaths and widespread destruction of infrastructure. Both occurred along the East Anatolian fault, one of Turkey’s two main earthquake zones. A team of scientists from Georgia Tech, the University of Missouri, and the Scientific and Technological Research Institution of Turkey (TUBITAK) are working to better understand the makeup of the earthquake zone and surrounding areas to help scientists better explain why February’s earthquakes were unusually intense. Zhigang Peng, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, will join colleagues in placing 250 autonomous, wireless sensors near the fault. (This story was also covered in the Columbia Daily Tribune.)
University of Missouri
April 12, 2023Green companies across the U.S. have developed innovations geared toward minimizing humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions. While carbon dioxide is naturally released from events like volcanic eruptions and wildfires, it’s also the primary greenhouse gas released by transportation, electricity, industrial processes and other activities. Many climate tech businesses are hard at work developing solutions to shrink our carbon footprint. One of the companies highlighted in this profile is Lithos, a carbon capture innovator focused on the agriculture industry. The company’s rock weathering solution is based on a biogeochemical process that uses volcanic basalt rock dust to decompose carbon in fields, as well as nourish growing crops. Chris Reinhard, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is a Lithos co-founder.
Built In
March 27, 2023If you’ve ever dreamed of skating on Saturn’s rings or making a pit-stop on Venus, maybe those fantasies are best kept to dreamland. In reality, each of the planets in our solar system besides Earth would immediately annihilate you — in pretty much the worst way possible. In short, not even a spacesuit would save you from Jupiter’s insane atmospheric pressure or Venus’s 900-degree temperatures. Unfortunately, you’d pretty much be gone in the blink of an eye — but it’s still fascinating to know exactly how that would happen. Jennifer Glass, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, details how you'd die on Mercury: "“If you died on the hot side, you would be burned to death in seconds, while asphyxiating and having all the water vaporize from your body.” (This story includes other information from an October 2022 Newsweek story, which has more quotes from Glass.)
Mitú
March 22, 2023Plants, like animals and people, seek refuge from climate change. And when they move, they take ecosystems with them. To understand why and how plants have trekked across landscapes throughout time, researchers are calling for a new framework. The key to protecting biodiversity in the future may be understanding the past. Jenny McGuire, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Biological Sciences, spearheaded a U.S. National Science Foundation-supported paper on the topic in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. McGuire and her collaborators highlight the outstanding needs for successful future conservation efforts. The paper brings together conservation research that illuminates the complex and constantly evolving dynamics brought on by climate change and the ever-shifting ways humans use land. These factors, McGuire said, interact over time to create dynamic changes and illustrate the need to incorporate time perspectives into conservation strategies by looking deep into the past. (This research was also covered in Time Magazine.)
National Science Foundation
March 6, 2023Even as some parts of West Antarctica rapidly melt, raising sea level, large swaths of the ice remain stable for the time being. Scientists have now explored one of those stable spots — an isolated nook where the ocean meets the ice. This environment is “really at the edge” between melting and freezing, says Justin Lawrence, Ph.D. student with the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. The delicate balance between these two processes is shaping the ice into those strange textures, and the result, at Kamb Ice Stream, is that massive cracks in the underside of the ice appear to be freezing back together. Ben Hurwitz, Ph.D. student in Ocean Science and Engineering, and Anthony Spears, Ph.D. student with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, also contributed to the study, published in Nature Geoscience. (The study was also covered at Astrobiology.com, AZO Robotics, Eos, and India Education Daily.)
Science News
March 2, 2023Machine learning can help conservationists monitor climate impacts across large swaths of marine ecosystems over extended periods of time, a task never possible before. The Delta Maps machine learning tool provides a new way to assess which reefs might be best-suited for survival and which play a key role in delivering larvae to others, and therefore should be targeted for preservation efforts, according to researchers in a paper published recently in the journal Communications Biology. Two scientists in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences conducted the research: Annalisa Bracco, professor and associate chair, and Lyuba Novi, postdoctoral fellow.
Machine learning makes long-term, expansive reef monitoring possible
February 23, 2023- ‹ previous
- 10 of 28
- next ›
