"A decades-long effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary, is showing signs of success. But scientists now say progress could be hindered by a hydroelectric dam, located on the Susquehanna River in northern Maryland."
"When diving in the Gulf of Maine a few years back, Jennifer Dijkstra expected to be swimming through a flowing kelp forest that had long served as a nursery and food for juvenile fish and lobster. But Dijkstra, a University of New Hampshire marine biologist, saw only a patchy seafloor before her."
"A new study suggests warming sea temperatures could result in smaller fish sizes."
"CHURCH ROCK, N.M. – Angie Hood grew up in a remote valley tucked along the edge of the Navajo Nation. On hot summer days, Hood and her three siblings would tend to the family’s sheep, play football in a steep-banked arroyo and explore the piñon-studded mesas. Then, to cool off, they would splash in a pool of water that streamed from a pipe. At the time, the Hood children had no idea they were playing in radioactive waste."
"Energy Transfer Partners LP has sued Greenpeace International, Earth First! and other groups, accusing them of inciting terrorist acts and vandalism to generate publicity and raise money for their causes while hampering the Dakota Access pipeline majority owner’s ability to raise money for projects."
"In the 1980s, an ecologist named Thomas Lovejoy conducted an unusual experiment in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest. As loggers moved in with chain saws to clear trees for cattle pasture north of Manaus, he asked them to leave untouched several small “islands” of forest to see how the animals within them fared."
"As the moon's shadow raced across the U.S. yesterday, 1,900 utility-scale solar power plants and many thousands of rooftop solar cells dozed off or shut down, one after the other, their electric currents disappearing from power networks from coast to coast. ... From the standpoint of the overall North American grid, nothing much had really happened."
"Federal regulators did not adequately consider greenhouse gas emissions when approving a natural gas pipeline project in the Southeast, a federal court today ruled."
With an alarming spread of blights, infestations, and extreme weather affecting trees, Morris Arboretum at University of Pennsylvania is holding a one-day event in Haverford (a suburb of Philadelphia) to discuss the challenges facing and successful strategies available to communities responsible for maintaining a healthy tree canopy.
"When Kodiak Island's elderberries started ripening earlier, its icon bears changed their diet. It's another ecological shift amid climate change, scientists say. "
"Each summer, the shallow freshwater streams of Kodiak Island, Alaska, are so thick with sockeye salmon, you literally cannot cross the waterways without stepping on the brightly colored fish. With the salmon come brown bears, often dozens of grizzlies per stream, hauling the fish onto nearby banks for an easy meal.
