The State of DC’s Trees 2020: “The Tree Report Card is Casey Trees’ annual evaluation of DC’s urban forest. It looks at where our successes have been over the past year and highlights where improvements can be made. This year, Casey Trees is pleased to announce that the District received an overall grade of A.… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Environmental Law
Why not drinking tap water may do more harm than good
The public health reason to stop worrying and love the city supply. Imagine seeing a news report about lead contamination in drinking water in a community that looks like yours. It might make you think twice about whether to drink your tap water or serve it to your kids – especially if you also have… Continue Reading
Why garden? – Attitudes and the perceived health benefits of home gardening
Cities. Volume 112, May 2021, 103118. “Domestic (home) gardens provide opportunities for psychological and physical health benefits, yet these environments have received less attention in terms of their therapeutic value compared to other urban green spaces. This is despite their ubiquity and the popularity of gardening as a pastime. This research explored why residents engaged… Continue Reading
Rare chunks of Earth’s mantle found exposed in Maryland
National Geographic – “The set of rocks strewn throughout Baltimore likely represent a slice of prehistoric seafloor from a now-vanished ocean…Standing among patches of muddy snow on the outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland, I bent down to pick up a piece of the planet that should have been hidden miles below my feet. On that chilly… Continue Reading
Samsung’s New Upcycling Program Allows You To Turn an Old Galaxy Phone Into a New IoT Device
Gizmodo – “Usually, when a phone gets worn down, you recycle it or trade it in for a new one. But with its new upcycling program, Samsung is trying to help people convert old Galaxy phones into new IoT devices. Today, with the expansion of its Galaxy Upcycling at Home service (which is still in… Continue Reading
Climate change and the 1991-2020 U.S. Climate Normals
Climate.gov: “As soon as the 2021 New Year’s celebrations were over, the calls and questions started coming in from weather watchers: When will NOAA release the new U.S. Climate Normals? The Normals are 30-year averages of key climate observations made at weather stations and corrected for bad or missing values and station changes over time.… Continue Reading
NOAA report highlights 2020 climate, weather, ocean research
“Launching uncrewed systems to monitor climate and ecosystem changes in the U.S. Arctic, sequencing the genome for endangered marine species, and improving weather forecasts with advances in regional models — these are just a few of NOAA’s scientific achievements in 2020. The newly released 2020 NOAA Science Report highlights the ways these accomplishments — and many… Continue Reading
UMass Institute Launches New Tool to Track Air Pollution at Every U.S. School
“Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) today unveiled a new interactive, web-based tool for tracking industrial toxic air pollution at every school in the United States. The tool, Air Toxics at School, reports toxicity-weighted concentrations of pollutants to show individual chronic human health risk from industrial toxic air pollutants… Continue Reading
IMF Launches Climate Change Indicators Dashboard
“The International Monetary Fund (IMF) launched a new Climate Change Indicators Dashboard—an international statistical initiative to address the growing need for data in macroeconomic and financial policy analysis to facilitate climate change mitigation and adaptation. The Dashboard is a single platform that brings together experimental climate change indicators that allows comparison across countries. The indicators… Continue Reading
Sentinel Playground
sentinelhub: “Sentinel Playground utilizes Sentinel Hub technology to enable easy-to-use discovery and exploring of full-resolution Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Landsat 8, DEM and MODIS imagery, along with access to the EO data products. It is a graphical interface to a complete and daily updated Sentinel-2 archive, a massive resource for anyone interested in Earth’s changing surface, natural… Continue Reading
The bizarre push to kill more of Montana’s wolves, explained
Vox – Four new hunting bills in the Big Sky State are reigniting a centuries-old debate – “This story is part of Down to Earth, a new Vox reporting initiative on the science, politics, and economics of the biodiversity crisis. Late this winter, Greg Gianforte, Montana’s recently elected Republican governor, trapped and shot a male… Continue Reading
Just 3% of world’s ecosystems remain intact, study suggests
Where Might We Find Ecologically Intact Communities? Front. For. Glob. Change, 15 April 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2021.626635 “Conservation efforts should target the few remaining areas of the world that represent outstanding examples of ecological integrity and aim to restore ecological integrity to a much broader area of the world with intact habitat and minimal species loss… Continue Reading
