Tag: Environmental Awareness

Bioremediation 101: Everything You Need to Know

Quick Key Facts

  • Bioremediation is a process that uses plants and microorganisms like bacteria, fungi and algae to treat contaminated soils, water and other pollution.
  • Microorganisms are very small organisms that live naturally in the environment and bioremediation stimulates the growth of certain microbes that use contaminants as a source of food and energy.
  • Bioremediation methods can be used to clean up oil and other petroleum products, chemical pollution, pesticides, wastewater and sewage, excessive nutrients in waterways, and can be used to break down plastic pollution.
  • Bioremediation may take place “in situ” at the contamination site, or “ex situ” away from the site.
  • For bioremediation to be effective, the right temperature, nutrients and food must be present. Proper conditions allow the right microbes to grow and multiply — and eat more contaminants. 
  • Bioremediation can also be used on pollution caused by natural disasters like hurricanes, tsunamis and wildfires.

What Is Bioremediation?

Over the last century, urbanization and industrialization, combined with poor waste management, has led to an alarming rise in the amount of pollution in our soils, waterways, groundwater and air. 

Heavy metal toxins from industrial production, chemicals from the agriculture sector, untreated wastewater, plastic pollution, crude oil leaks and spills, toxins from the increasing wildfires, and other pollutants need systems-level change. However, natural processes in the environment do offer solutions.

Bioremediation is a process by which plants and microbes that are already present in the environment — like fungi, algae and bacteria — have the power to remove or reduce environmental pollution — even plastic pollution. 

While natural bioremediation has been around since the dawn of time (microbes were the earliest known life forms), modern bioremediation offers techniques that stimulate and augment these processes. 

Types of Bioremediation

There are several forms of bioremediation. Here are some of the more prominent examples.

Microbial Remediation

Microbial remediation uses microorganisms to degrade organic contaminants or to bind heavy metals to make them less available to other organisms. Microorganisms can use them for food, or metabolize them along with food.

This can be done by breeding bacteria in high numbers and then introducing them into contaminated areas, through a process called bioaugmentation, or it can be done through a process called biostimulation, which creates the conditions for an ideal habitat for bacterial growth in the contaminated soil or water.

The byproduct of microbial remediation floats in the lagoon at the French Limited Superfund site in Houston, Texas on July 1, 1993. An industrial waste facility where oils, grease, acids and solvents were dumped, the site was treated with naturally occurring bacteria that digest toxic sludge. Paul S. Howell / Liaison

Phytoremediation

Phytoremediation uses plants to clean up contaminated soil, water and air. There are several subprocesses by which plants can do this. 

With phytoextraction, contaminants are removed from the soil and concentrated in the plant tissue above ground. Some plants used to extract heavy metal contaminants are sunflowers, willow and Indian mustard. 

Phytostabilization uses plants to sequester toxic heavy metals below ground to prevent migration into the ecosystem, helping to reduce the chance of metals entering the food chain. Poplar trees are one of the plants used for this process.

Phytoremediation with hydroponic plants at the abandoned Cunha Baixa uranium mine in Viseu, Portugal on May 30, 2014. Daniela / Flickr

In phytovolatilization, plants can also absorb contaminants, convert them into less toxic substances, then through transpiration, which is the exhalation through pores of the plant, let them evaporate in the atmosphere. Also, in the process of rhizofiltration, plants filter water through a root system that removes toxic substances and excess nutrients. 

Mycoremediation

This process uses fungi’s digestive enzymes to break down contaminants in the environment. Fungi can break down chemical pollutants, including oil and pesticides, can extract or bind heavy metals, and can filter water. Fungi can also break down certain plastics. 

Bioremediation Processes

While there are numerous bioremediation types, there are also several processes that have been utilized and are either done in situ (at the place of contamination) or ex situ (off-site of the contamination).

Some in-situ processes can involve bioventing, which is a process of aerating soils in order to promote bioremediation by stimulating the biological activity of indigenous microbial populations. Or it can involve the opposite, which is biosparging, injecting pressurized air or gas into contaminated zones in order to target chemical compounds that degrade under aerobic conditions. 

There are also pump-and-treat methods that remove and treat contaminated groundwater. 

Ex-situ processes can include landfarming, which is a waste treatment process that transports contaminated soil and spreads it on the ground at another site, stimulating microbial activity within the soils through aeration and/or the addition of minerals, nutrients and moisture.

As mentioned above through bioventing and biosparging, processes also involve whether or not an organism requires oxygen to break down an environmental contaminant, which is aerobic bioremediation, or if an organism carrying out bioremediation can breathe some other molecule besides oxygen, which is anaerobic bioremediation.

Bioremediation of Hazardous Waste Sites

In 1980, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established the Superfund program to clean up sites contaminated with hazardous substances. Thousands of contaminated sites exist nationally and the waste is primarily due to hazardous waste being dumped or improperly managed by manufacturing facilities, processing plants, landfills, mining sites and pollution from the military. 

Since 1999, the EPA has utilized bioremediation in cleanups involving petroleum and chemicals found in crude oil, pesticides and other contaminants. One of the most common methods used is bioventing, also known as biostimulation — aerating soils to stimulate the biological activity of indigenous microbes. 

One of the sites they cleaned up is an example of anaerobic bioremediation and was used to remediate the groundwater at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware

The area was contaminated by industrial activity and hazardous waste storage. Remediation began in 2006, and since then over 240,000 gallons of a solution of vegetable oil and sodium lactate were injected into the location to provide carbon sources to fuel the growth of microorganisms.  

As of 2022, 1329 Superfund sites across the country were on the national priorities list, with 452 cleaned up since the program’s establishment. Though $1 billion dollars was recently allocated toward cleaning up 22 toxic sites, the program has languished for years due to a lack of funding.

Hemp phytoremediation on the former Loring Air Force Base – a Superfund site. Upland Grassroots

Grassroots organizations have also stepped up to use bioremediation. Upland Grassroots in Limestone, Maine is working to remediate Loring Air Force Base, which has been identified by the EPA as one of several sites with PFAS (also known as forever chemicals) in the soil, which can cause cancer and other adverse health effects.   

The site has since been taken over by the M’ikmaq Nation, the Indigenous Tribe of Aroostook County. Tribal members teamed up with scientists to start a phytoremediation project that involved planting fiber hemp to pull the PFAS out of the ground, which they’ve done successfully since 2019.

Bioremediation Uses on Agriculture Land

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the United States uses more than 1 billion pounds of pesticides every year, and as little as 0.1% of an applied pesticide interacts with its targeted weed or pest. The remainder contaminates the soil, air and water and can have significant impacts throughout the ecosystem and on public health. 

Pesticides can also linger in the soil for years or decades after they are applied.

Over the last century, industrial agriculture has led to more application of pesticides. The pesticides are a major threat to ecosystem biodiversity, compromising soil health alongside other unsustainable agriculture methods. 

Cleanup of soil contaminated by the use of pesticides on a former orchard, at Lincoln Elementary School in Wenatchee, Washington in 2006. Washington State Department of Ecology

Application of animal waste from industrial animal facilities can also be a cause of heavy metal contamination from metals in feed, including copper, zinc and lead. Animal waste from factory farms that is spread on agricultural fields may also contain harmful microbes and antibiotics, with other pharmaceutical residues that can affect soil.  

Conventional approaches to remediation, which involve chemicals and physical extraction, are costly, and introduce other pollutants. However, phytoremediation approaches are more sustainable when reclaiming soils. 

The Rhizae Renewal Collective phytoremediates a lead-contaminated lot in Baltimore’s Johnston Square, using sunflowers and fungi to make it suitable for food production, pictured on Sept. 18, 2020. Baltimore Heritage / Flickr

Currently, the Upland Grassroots folks are also planting fiber hemp on farmland owned by the Tribal Nation contaminated with pesticides and fungicides.

Other microbial remediation methods include biostimulation, through using indigenous microbes, nutrients and other substances to encourage microbes to feed on chemical pollutants. Bioaugmentation can also be used by introducing bacterial microbes sourced from outside the soil to aid in remediation. 

Another method studied has been the use of microalgae. With its ability to grow rapidly in moist locations, microalgae can absorb and degrade toxic contaminants and heavy metals. Some of the non-degraded particles can be absorbed by microalgae, and then be turned into biomass for use in biodiesel production.  

Construction equipment levels gravel and soil during a remediation project on the site of the old Pacific Rod and Gun Club at Lake Merced in San Francisco, California on Dec. 1, 2015. Paul Chinn / The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

Bioremediation of Marine and Freshwater Environments

Our marine, coastal and freshwater resources are constantly impacted by human-caused pollution. Bioremediation methods are used with plastics, industrial and agricultural waste, chemicals from pesticides contaminating waterways and groundwater, raw sewage, fuel and other pollutants.

Workers from the Lake Restoration company pump gallons of alum into Lake Rebecca near Rockford, Minnesota on Nov. 10, 2010. The compound improves water quality by precipitating out phosphates in the lake water. David Brewster / Star Tribune via Getty Images

Oil Spills

Bioremediation methods were used during the devastating 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil spill of 11 million gallons over 1300 miles of Alaska coastline, killing hundreds of harbor seals and bald eagles.

Around 110,000 pounds of nitrogen in fertilizer was applied to numerous areas for three years. Through biostimulation, the nutrients added to the soils enabled local microbes to degrade contaminants more efficiently. 

Another approach to bioremediation of oil spills is bioaugmentation, which uses oil-degrading bacteria to supplement the existing microbial population. 

Treatment requires certain conditions to be effective. For example, the nutrients need to remain intact with the oiled material, and the concentration of nutrients, like in the fertilizer, needs to support the maximum growth rate of the microbes, both of which don’t work in open water environments, because anything applied to a floating oil slick would disperse. 

However, hundreds of kinds of bacteria, fungi and archaea (microbes different from bacteria) are capable of degrading petroleum. 

Phytoremediation is also utilized in oil cleanups. In one instance, researchers reported that a floating treatment wetland, which used four different plant species to vegetate a floating mat made of locally sourced materials, successfully remediated a majority of contamination at a water stabilization pit in Pakistan. The plants and the water in the pit were inoculated with different hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria.  

Eutrophication 

Eutrophication is when a body of water becomes overloaded on nutrients, as a result of human activity like sewage discharge, surface runoff from industrial agricultural practices with manure and fertilizers, and home lawn practices. This leads to acidification, harmful algal blooms which produce toxins that make humans and animals sick, and the depletion of oxygen, resulting in dead zones and fish kills.  

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 65% percent of the estuaries and coastal waters in the contiguous U.S. studied by researchers are moderately to severely degraded by excessive nutrient inputs.

A floating island of plants to filter stormwater runoff and remove excess nutrients from the water is installed at Angelica Creek Park in Reading, Pennsylvania on Sept. 22, 2016. Lauren A. Little / MediaNews Group / Reading Eagle via Getty Images

Phytoremediation has been used as a solution, with species that soak up the nitrates and phosphates, abating overnutrition and eutrophication. Commonly used plants for this task are macrophytes, which are aquatic plants that float on the water, such as water hyacinth or water lettuce.  

After the species soaks up the excess nutrients, the plants used to target the issue are harvested and disposed of, and depending on the kinds of pollutants in the area, might be composted and reused as fertilizer. 

Bioremediation and Natural Disasters

While wildfires are typically human-caused, they are still considered natural disasters, and they often leave behind many toxins through dangerous ash, remains of incinerated hazardous household waste and building materials, charred paint, pesticides, cleaning products, and other items that leave pollutants in the soil like arsenic, asbestos, copper, lead and zinc.  

California, which has suffered severe wildfire devastation in recent years, has utilized bioremediation.

The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, known as CalRecycle — a department within the California Environmental Protection Agency — promotes the benefits of mycoremediation after wildfires.

Wildfires eliminate the soil’s protective vegetative layer, exposing it to wind and rain. This can lead to sediments being washed during heavy rainfall into waterways, roads and neighborhoods, and potentially dangerous mudslides.

Utilizing compost restores soil properties, provides a protective layer, binds and absorbs contaminants, increases water infiltration, protects against erosion and helps reestablish vegetation. 

After the wildfires in 2017, as federal and state workers used traditional methods to remove a lot of the toxic debris, a coalition of fire remediation experts, local businesses and ecological activists in Sonoma County worked together to try mycoremediation with oyster mushrooms. 

Called the Fire Remediation Coalition, they installed 40 miles of wattle — straw-filled tubes designed to prevent erosion — inoculated with oyster mushrooms around parking lots, along roads and across hillsides. These divert runoff from sensitive waterways, while the mushrooms break down the toxins. 

Following the 2018 Camp Fire, a mushroom farmer who lost his property founded the nonprofit Butte Remediation to provide his neighbors with no-cost mycoremediation. The founder, Cheetah Tchudi, is now working alongside ecological restoration nonprofit CoRenewal, which after the 2020 fires has been experimenting with mycoremediation in some of the burn zones.

Mushrooms sprout from wattle following California’s Camp Fire in 2018. Butte Remediation

As Lahaina on Maui moves forward with recovery from a devastating fire last August, some residents are encouraging the local government to utilize bioremediation to clean up toxic pollutants in the water and soil. 

The Maui Bioremediation Group is looking to remediate the environment using genki balls — biodegradable capsules filled with clay and beneficial microorganisms to clean the waterways — and like the Fire Remediation Coalition in California, use fungi-inoculated wattles. 

Bioremediation for Plastic

Bioremediation can be one of the solutions to our plastic crisis. Research has shown a few ways this can occur. One is through mealworms, which can eat and fully degrade plastic in hours due to microscopic bacteria in their guts that result in them secreting an enzyme that allows for the breakdown. 

Another study from a team of researchers in Queensland has pointed to superworms as a source to devour plastic. The team has been seeking to identify which superworm gut enzyme is most effective at degrading plastic, and they hope to reproduce it at scale for recycling. 

Several different microorganisms like fungi, bacteria and algae have different enzymes that lead to degradation. 

To date, 436 species of fungi and bacteria have been found to degrade plastic, while researchers continue to make new discoveries. 

Scientists recently found two strains of fungi in soils that can break down polypropylene (plastic that is often used to make bottle caps and food containers) in just 140 days. 

In 2016, scientists in Japan discovered a bacteria in sludge outside a bottling factory in Japan had developed the ability to devour or decompose PET plastics, leading some to believe breakthroughs like this might lead to industrial-scale facilities that can tackle plastic waste that otherwise might end up in a landfill.  

Bacteria and fungi have also been found in the Alps and the Arctic that only work at cold temperatures. Nineteen strains, including 11 fungi and 8 bacteria, were able to digest polyester-polyurethane, while 14 fungi and 3 bacteria were able to digest polybutylene adipate terephthalate (used in food packaging, agricultural, textile and other industries) and polylactic acid (used in clothing, disposable cutlery and medical implants). 

During the process of mineralization, algae has been found to transform plastic waste into metabolites such as water and carbon dioxide as well as new biomass. Microalgae, specifically, has also been a promising candidate to destroy microplastics, and is said to be easily cultivated on a large scale, because it doesn’t require fertile land, freshwater or pesticides to grow

Research is ongoing in the bioremediation of marine plastic pollution, utilizing bacteria, fungi and microalgae to accelerate the biodegradation process that turns certain plastics into a source of carbon, hydrogen or methane. 

Policy

In 2021, the EPA put out a document for Principles for Greener Cleanups, which outlines policy for evaluating and minimizing the environmental footprint when cleaning up contaminated sites. The document includes EPA’s recommended best management practices fact sheets for project managers and stakeholders. 

Before and after photos of a green remediation project at the Elizabeth Mine in South Strafford, Vermont. U.S. Department of Environmental Protection

It includes processes such as biostimulation, bioaugmentation and bioreactors, which all in some ways promote the growth of microbes, or create the right conditions to help the process of allowing them to thrive to be able to aid in the breakdown of contaminates. 

It also promotes the beneficial use of locally generated industrial byproducts like wood chips, sawdust or agricultural byproducts, as well as manure, wastewater and pesticide-free compost from mushroom farms instead of using new products.  

Bioremediation Projects

CoRenewal

Formerly known as Amazon MycoRenewal Project, this nonprofit organization provides education and research in ecosystem restoration, health and healing, and sustainable community dynamics utilizing mycoremediation.  

Maui Bioremediation Group

After the fires in Lahaina, a coalition of biologists, cultural practitioners, ecologists, conservationists and specialists teamed up to work towards using several bioremediation methods for cleanup of the wildfire disaster.

Butte Remediation

Established in 2018 in response to the Camp Fire in Northern California, this organization provides soil testing bioremediation with mycoremediation, and provides consulting and educational outreach. 

Mycocycle

This Illinois-based company uses fungi to reduce toxins in some landfill materials like gypsum, carpet, rubber and asphalt, as well as to absorb and digest waste, then converts it into reusable materials that can be used in compost or building materials. 

Upland Grassroots

This grassroots organization in Maine does phytoremediation research on fiber hemp’s ability to remove toxins. They are currently working on a Superfund site at the former Loring Air Force Base on land contaminated with jet fuel, as well as former farmland owned by the Mi’kmaq Nation that is contaminated with pesticides and fungicides.

Phytoremediation using hemp at the former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, Maine. Chelli Stanley / Upland Grassroots

Genki Ala Wai Project

Hawai’i-based nonprofit using genki balls (mud balls made with clay, soil, rice, bran, molasses and other components) to restore the ecosystem at the polluted Ala Wai Canal on O’ahu, so it can once again be swimmable and fishable.

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Farmers who graze sheep under solar panels say it improves productivity. So why don’t we do it more?

As a flock of about 2,000 sheep graze between rows of solar panels, grazier Tony Inder wonders what all the fuss is about. “I’m not going to suggest it’s everyone’s cup of tea,” he says. “But as far as sheep grazing goes, solar is really good.”

Inder is talking about concerns over the encroachment of prime agricultural land by ever-expanding solar and windfarms, a well-trodden talking point for the loudest opponents to Australia’s energy transition.

But on Inder’s New South Wales property, a solar farm has increased wool production. It is a symbiotic relationship that the director of the National Renewables in Agriculture Conference, Karin Stark, wants to see replicated across as many solar farms as possible as Australia’s energy grid transitions away from fossil fuels.

“It’s all about farm diversification,” Stark says. “At the moment a lot of us farmers are reliant on when it’s going to rain, having solar and wind provides this secondary income.”

By keeping the grass trimmed, which can otherwise pose a fire risk during dry summer months, sheep save the developer the cost of slashing it themselves.

In exchange, the panels provide shelter for the sheep, encourage healthier pasture growth under the shade of the panels and create “drip lines” from condensation rolling off the face of the panels.

“We had strips of green grass right through the drought,” Dubbo sheep grazier Tom Warren says. Warren has seen a 15 percent rise in wool production due to a solar farm installed on his property more than seven years ago.

Despite these success stories, a 2023 Agrivoltaic Resource Centre report authored by Stark found that solar grazing is under utilised in Australia because developers, despite saying they intend to host livestock, make few planning adjustments to ensure that happens.

“The result is that many solar farms are poorly suited for sheep,” Stark says. “Developers need to be talking to landholders earlier than they currently are.”

Prof Bernadette McCabe, the director of the Centre for Agricultural Engineering at the University of Southern Queensland, says farming and solar are “two very different activities” and there’s “minimal research and demonstrated success” of running them in combination.

The expectation to retain farming land for primary production is driving greater interest in the coexistence of agriculture and renewable energy but McCabe says “misaligned incentives” between the developers and farmers must be better managed.

It’s these conflicting goals that are giving anti-renewable voices “fodder to attack the renewable energy industry,” according to former New South Wales solar developer Ben Wynn.

He says energy developers often “talk up the possibility” of coexisting with livestock production but don’t have “genuine desire to do so”.

Wynn is now part of a community group opposing a large solar farm proposed south of Tamworth because it lies on productive cropping country.

“We need this transition to speed up, but if we take up highly arable black soils we are giving oxygen to the naysayers,” he says.

Wynn also led the construction of a prototype solar farm outside Tamworth, raised high off the ground with steel posts to stay out of reach of a cattle herd below.

“Cattle are massive, they will rub and scratch themselves up against anything,” Wynn says.

The project was a success but Wynn says it is too expensive to be feasible on a large scale because the installation costs are three-to-four fold the cost of regular low-lying solar panels.

The integration of sheep and solar is “highly feasible,” McCabe says, because they can graze under ordinary height panels. But she says it is “still early days” to know if it will become economically viable for cattle.

Dr Nicholas Aberle, the energy generation and storage policy director at the Clean Energy Council, says solar developers should explore dual land use options but warns it be may not be suitable for every project. He adds that “the abundance of land in Australia means it isn’t always necessary.”

According to an analysis by the Clean Energy Council, less than 0.027 percent of land used for agriculture production would be needed to power the east coast states with solar projects – far less than the one-third of all prime agricultural land that the rightwing think tank the Institute of Public Affairs has claimed will be “taken over” by renewables. That argument, which has been heavily refuted by experts, has been taken up by the National party, whose leader, David Littleproud, said regional Australia had reached saturation point with renewable energy developments.

Queensland grazier and the chair of the Future Farmers Network, Caitlin McConnel, has sold electricity to the grid from a dozen custom-built solar arrays on her farm’s cattle pastures for more than a decade.

“Trial and error” and years of modifications have made them structurally sound around cattle and financially viable in the long-term, she says.

“As far as I know, we are the only farm to do solar with cattle,” McConnel says. “It’s good land, so why would we just lock it up just for solar panels?”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Farmers who graze sheep under solar panels say it improves productivity. So why don’t we do it more? on Jun 15, 2024.

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Washington State’s Makah Tribe Receives Federal Waiver to Hunt Gray Whales

Washington State’s Makah Tribe has been granted a federal waiver to resume its hunting traditions off the state’s coastline, allowing the Tribe to take as many as 25 Eastern North Pacific gray whales from United States waters over the course of a decade.

The waiver from the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA)’s take prohibitions allows limited ceremonial and subsistence hunting of the whales in accordance with International Whaling Commission quotas and the Treaty of Neah Bay of 1855, a press release from NOAA Fisheries said.

“This final rule represents a major milestone in the process to return ceremonial and subsistence hunting of Eastern North Pacific gray whales to the Makah Tribe,” said Janet Coit, NOAA Fisheries assistant administrator, in the press release. “The measures adopted today honor the Makah Tribe’s treaty rights and their cultural whaling tradition that dates back well over 1,000 years, and is fundamental to their identity and heritage.”

Before a hunt, the Tribe and NOAA Fisheries are required to enter into an agreement under the Whaling Convention Act, and a permit must be obtained by the Tribe. The final rule includes harvest limits, time and area restrictions, low population thresholds, restrictions on how the gray whale parts may be used and monitoring and reporting requirements.

The Tribe will be limited to two to three Eastern North Pacific gray whales taken annually from U.S. waters. NOAA Fisheries will continue to impose adaptive management strategies to protect endangered Western North Pacific gray whales, as well as the Pacific Coast Feeding Group of Eastern North Pacific gray whales.

“Under this final rule, there will be no change to the number of Eastern North Pacific gray whales that can be hunted under a quota first established by the IWC in 1997. The IWC quota is shared between the Makah Tribe and the Chukotkan Natives in Russia. This action will allow the Makah Tribe to use the quota which has in past years been transferred to Russia,” the press release said.

The Eastern North Pacific gray whale Unusual Mortality Event was closed by NOAA Fisheries earlier this year. It included the stranding of 690 gray whales between December 17, 2018, and November 9, 2023. Peak strandings occurred between December 2018 and December 2020.

The most recent estimate of the gray whale population — based on southbound counts during the winter of 2023 to 2024 — is that there are roughly 17,400 to 21,300 individuals.

In 1994, the Eastern North Pacific gray whale was delisted from the Endangered Species Act, reported Reuters.

The Makah Tribe requested a limited waiver of MMPA’s moratorium on taking Eastern North Pacific gray whales from NOAA Fisheries on February 14, 2005, the press release said.

Timothy Greene, Sr. — Makah Tribal council chairperson — said the amount of time it took to secure the waiver was unjust, but the Tribe was happy about the decision, Reuters reported.

“Whaling remains central to the identity, culture, subsistence, and spirituality of the Makah people, and we regard the Gray Whale as sacred,” Greene said in a statement, as reported by Reuters. “In the time since our last successful hunt in 1999, we have lost many elders who held the knowledge of our whaling customs, and another entire generation of Makahs has grown up without the ability to exercise our Treaty right.”

According to archaeological evidence, the Makah hunted whales for food in cedar canoes from time immemorial, stopping only after the population was decimated by commercial whaling in the early 20th century, The Guardian reported.

“We’ve never lost sight of the importance of whales and whale hunting,” Janine Ledford, Makah Cultural and Research Center’s executive director, told KNKX public radio, as reported by The Guardian. “You know, we weren’t hunting for roughly 80 years, but that didn’t mean that our community – that our tribe, you know – forgot how important whales are to us.”

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Record Low Sea Ice in Hudson Bay Putting Polar Bears at Risk of Extinction

Global heating is predicted to lower the period of sea ice extent on Canada’s Hudson Bay, shortening the hunting season for its roughly 1,700 resident polar bears, reported Springer.

According to a new study, if global temperatures increase to more than 2.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the length of most of Hudson Bay’s ice-free period could be longer than the polar bears normally fast, threatening their survival.

May is normally an ice-covered month for Hudson Bay, but, according to NASA’s National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), this year was the lowest sea ice extent for the month since satellite records began in 1979.

“It’s a very unusual situation,” said Andrew Derocher, a polar bear biologist with the University of Alberta, as Reuters reported. “There are fewer bears in eastern Hudson Bay, but there is much less known about where they come from.”

Hudson Bay and the surrounding area is home to three of the 19 remaining polar bear populations in the world.

Unlike the Arctic, Hudson Bay completely thaws during the summer months, leading polar bears to fast while they await the return of the ice, which they need to hunt their main prey: seals.

“Hudson Bay has warmed over 1°C in the last 30 years. Coincident with this warming, seasonal patterns have shifted, with the spring sea ice melting earlier and the fall freeze-up occurring later, leading to a month longer of ice-free conditions. This extended ice-free period presents a significant challenge for polar bears, as it restricts their hunting opportunities for seals and their ability to accumulate the necessary body weight for successful reproduction,” the authors wrote in the study.

The study, “Ice-free period too long for Southern and Western Hudson Bay polar bear populations if global warming exceeds 1.6 to 2.6 °C,” was published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

Since 1987, half the population of polar bears in Western Hudson Bay has disappeared, reported Reuters. The research team looked at warming predictions from 20 climate models and found that this part of the bay would no longer be suitable habitat for the bears at approximately 2.2 degrees Celsius of planetary warming.

The team also found that the southern portion of the bay would become unable to support its polar bear population at a temperature between 1.6 and 2.1 degrees Celsius of warming.

“The disappearance of the Southern Hudson Bay polar bears is imminent, with Western Hudson Bay not far behind,” said Dr. Julienne Stroeve, lead author of the study, a researcher with the University of Manitoba and a senior scientist at NSIDC, as Reuters reported. “If we go over the 2°C of warming, we can’t really hope that those bears will still stay there.”

The study is the first to take sea ice thickness into account, as it must be sufficient to support an adult bear.

The Hudson Bay region has experienced more than one degree of warming in the past three decades, leading to the lengthening of its ice-free period from roughly 120 to 150 days, reported Springer.

Polar bears are believed to have the ability to safely survive a period without ice lasting from 183 to 218 days.

“Limiting global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels may prevent the ice-free period from exceeding 183 days in both western and southern Hudson Bay, providing some optimism for adult polar bear survival. However, with longer ice-free periods already substantially impacting recruitment, extirpation for polar bears in this region may already be inevitable,” the authors of the study wrote.

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Unusually Large Number of Whales Spotted, Including Multiple Endangered Species, off Northeast U.S. Coasts

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has reported 161 sightings of whales last month, representing seven different whale species. The sightings, recorded on May 25, took place off the northeastern U.S. Coasts, near Martha’s Vineyard and southeast of Nantucket. According to NOAA, the sightings included an unusually high number of whale species, particularly endangered whales.

The sightings don’t necessarily mean there were 161 individual whales, since some may have been counted multiple times, The Associated Press reported. But the recorded whale sightings were still a positive sign, especially considering the high numbers of endangered species observed.

The researchers observed 93 sei whales, which are considered endangered under the Endangered Species Act. As stated on the NOAA website, sei whales experienced major declines in the 19th and 20th centuries, when around 300,000 of these whales were hunted. This was one of the highest recorded concentrations of sei whales, The Associated Press reported.

Teri Frady, chief of research communications for the Northeast Fisheries Science Center under NOAA, said that seeing so many whales in this area around this time of year is not unheard of, but the researchers did not expect to find such a large number in one area at once, especially with such a variety of species.

“It is not unusual that there are a lot of whales in the area this time of year. But since we do not survey every day, or in the same areas every time we fly, catching such a large aggregation with such a variety of species on one of our flights is the exception rather than the rule,” Frady explained, as reported by The Associated Press.

In addition to the sei whales, researchers noted three sightings of the North Atlantic right whale, another endangered species, humpback whales, fin whales, minke whales, sperm whales and the rare sightings of two orcas, which are not as common in this area. One orca was observed with a tuna in its mouth.

Gib Brogan, campaign director at Oceana, told The Associated Press that the area where the whales were observed is “increasingly important as year-round core habitat for North Atlantic right whales and other large whale species,” but that it remains a risky place for whales. Brogan noted the U.S. needs to finalize legal protections to minimize risks of vessel strikes and fishing gear entanglements, two of the biggest threats to whales in the region.

The sightings in May follow the rare observations of a gray whale off the northeastern U.S. in March by the New England Aquarium. New England Aquarium researchers observed a gray whale, a species that has been considered extinct in the Atlantic Ocean for more than two centuries, off the New England coast in an aerial survey. The rare gray whale sighting may be attributed to the species’ adaptation to climate change, scientists said.

The post Unusually Large Number of Whales Spotted, Including Multiple Endangered Species, off Northeast U.S. Coasts appeared first on EcoWatch.

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The world is farming more seafood than it catches. Is that a good thing?

A new report from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, has found that more fish were farmed worldwide in 2022 than harvested from the wild, an apparent first.

Last week, the FAO released its annual report on the state of aquaculture — which refers to the farming of both seafood and aquatic plants — and fisheries around the world. The organization found that global production from both aquaculture and fisheries reached a new high — 223.3 million metric tons of animals and plants — in 2022. Of that, 185.4 million metric tons were aquatic animals, and 37.8 million metric tons were algae. Aquaculture was responsible for 51 percent of aquatic animal production in 2022, or 94.4 metric tons. 

The milestone was in many ways an expected one, given the world’s insatiable appetite for seafood. Since 1961, consumption of seafood has grown at twice the annual rate of the global population, according to the FAO. Because production levels from fisheries are not expected to change significantly in the future, meeting the growing global demand for seafood almost certainly necessitates an increase in aquaculture. 

Though fishery production levels fluctuate from year to year, “it’s not like there’s new fisheries out there waiting to be discovered,” said Dave Martin, program director for Sustainable Fisheries Partnerships, an international organization that works to reduce the environmental impact of seafood supply chains. “So any growth in consumption of seafood is going to come from aquaculture.”

But the rise of aquaculture underscores the need to transform seafood systems to minimize their impact on the planet. Both aquaculture and fisheries — sometimes referred to as capture fisheries, as they involve the capture of wild seafood — come with significant environmental and climate considerations. What’s more, the two systems often depend on each other, making it difficult to isolate their climate impacts. 

A fisherman, wearing reflective gear and visible from the waist down, lifts several crates containing oysters
A worker removes a stack of oyster baskets during harvest.
Bloomberg Creative / Getty Images

“There’s a lot of overlap between fisheries and aquaculture that the average consumer may not see,” said Dave Love, a research professor at the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University. 

Studies have shown that the best diet for the planet is one free of animal protein. Still, seafood generally has much lower greenhouse gas emissions than other forms of protein from land-based animals. And given many people’s unwillingness or inability to go vegan, the FAO recommends transforming, adapting, and expanding sustainable seafood production to feed the world’s growing population and improve food security.

But “there’s a lot of ways to do aquaculture well, and there’s a lot of ways to do it poorly,” said Martin. Aquaculture can result in nitrogen and phosphorus being released into the natural environment, damaging aquatic ecosystems. Farmed fish can also spread disease to wild populations, or escape from their confines and breed with other species, resulting in genetic pollution that can disrupt the fitness of a wild population. Martin points to the diesel fuel used to power equipment on certain fish farms as a major source of aquaculture’s environmental impact. According to an analysis from the climate solutions nonprofit Project Drawdown, swapping out fossil fuel-based generators on fish farms for renewable-powered hybrids would prevent 500 million to 780 million metric tons of carbon emissions by 2050. 

Other areas for improvement will vary depending on the specific species being farmed. In 2012, a U.N. study found that mangrove forests — a major carbon sink — have suffered greatly due to the development of shrimp and fish farming. Today, industry stakeholders have been exploring how new approaches and techniques from shrimp farmers can help restore mangroves

Meanwhile, wild fishing operations present their own environmental problems. For example, poorly managed fisheries can harvest fish more quickly than wild populations can breed, a phenomenon known as overfishing. Certain destructive wild fishing techniques also kill a lot of non-targeted species, known as bycatch, threatening marine biodiversity.

But the line between aquaculture and fish harvested from the wild isn’t as clear as it may seem. For example, pink salmon that are raised in hatcheries and then released into the wild to feed, mature, and ultimately be caught again are often marketed as “wild caught.” Lobsters, caught wild in Maine, are often fed bait by fisherman to help them put on weight. “It’s a wild fishery,” said Love — but the lobster fishermen’s practice of fattening up their catch shows how human intervention is present even in wild-caught operations. 

On the flipside, in a majority of aquaculture systems, farmers provide their fish with feed. That feed sometimes includes fish meal, says Love, a powder that comes from two sources: seafood processing waste (think: fish guts and tails) and wild-caught fish. 

All of this can result in a confusing landscape for climate- or environmentally-conscientious consumers who eat fish. But Love recommends a few ways in which consumers can navigate choice when shopping for seafood. Buying fresh fish locally helps shorten supply chains, which can lower the carbon impact of eating aquatic animals. “In our work, we’ve found that the big impact from transport is shipping fresh seafood internationally by air,” he said. Most farmed salmon, for example, sold in the U.S. is flown in

From both a climate and a nutritional standpoint, smaller fish and sea vegetables are also both good options. “Mussels, clams, oysters, seaweed — they’re all loaded with macronutrients and minerals in different ways” compared to fin fish, said Love. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The world is farming more seafood than it catches. Is that a good thing? on Jun 14, 2024.

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How hot weather can tamper with your words

Heat waves don’t just make you sweat — they can also mess with your brain. It’s been established that hot weather can result in lower scores on math tests and higher rates of aggression, ranging from mean-spirited behavior to violent crime. A small but growing body of research suggests it can also influence how people talk. 

Politicians tend to use shorter words in speeches when the temperature outside is 75-80 degrees Fahrenheit or hotter, according to a study published in the journal iScience on Thursday. The analysis looked at 7 million speeches across eight countries — the United States, the United Kingdom, Austria, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Denmark, Spain, and Germany — comparing them against the average temperature the day they were delivered. Cold days didn’t produce the same effect.

Understanding the consequences of heat on cognitive abilities is becoming particularly important as the climate warms, said Risto Conte Keivabu, a co-author of the study who researches climate change at the Max Planck Institute of Demographic Research in Germany. 

On days hotter than 81 degrees F, the simpler language politicians used was equivalent to losing half a month of education. That result is likely an underestimate, Conte Keivabu said, since the study tried to “disentangle the impact of heat from all the possible confounding factors in the most conservative way possible.” Looking at just the data from Germany, researchers found the effect was comparable to a four-month reduction in education, he said. The speeches were measured using Flesch-Kincaid readability tests, which assess how difficult a text is to understand based on the length of the words and sentences.

The study found that adults over 57 years old were more sensitive to heat, based on the German data, with temperatures in the range of 70-75 degrees F linked with changes in their speech. Heat is especially dangerous for older adults, who have a harder time cooling down because of weaker blood circulation and deteriorating sweat glands.

Other studies support the idea that heat can tamper with our words — though more for the reason that it can worsen your mood. Hate speech tends to rise with the thermometer: The number of tweets in the U.S. using pejorative or discriminatory language jumped by up to 22 percent during extreme heat, according to a study from 2022. Researchers have observed a similar phenomenon on Chinese social media, with people using more negative language on very hot days.

Unlike social media posts, however, speeches are typically prepared in advance, which makes politicians’ shift to less complex language on hot days more surprising. The researchers posit that the psychological effects of heat could “influence a speaker to simplify speech or diverge from prepared remarks due to impaired cognitive function and comfort.”

So how is it that a heat wave outside can alter the quality of speech indoors? The study puts forward a few theories. Maybe even a short exposure to heat can cause problems, like waiting for a train during a commute or taking a break outside; or, conversely, uncomfortable temperatures outdoors might lead people to stay inside where the lack of fresh air could hinder their cognitive abilities. Another possibility is that people tend to sleep worse when they’re hot, which makes it harder to think straight the next day.

Using simpler language isn’t necessarily bad — in fact, it’s often easier to understand. But when someone uses less complex language over time, that can indicate cognitive decline, according to Conte Keivabu. “We don’t know if this leads towards outcomes when it comes to the decision-making of politicians or how effective they are in conveying their messages,” he said. Researchers have found that using more generic wording can be an early warning sign of dementia, a pattern detected in authors’ books and politicians’ speeches.

Heat isn’t the only environmental factor that might subtly be influencing us to say one thing instead of another. A study in 2019 found that exposure to air pollution similarly led to a reduction in the complexity of speeches by members of the Canadian parliament, the equivalent of losing nearly three months of education.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How hot weather can tamper with your words on Jun 14, 2024.

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How to Set and Achieve ESG Goals Through ‘Next-Level’ Data

In today’s evolving business landscape, the importance of high-quality data to support ESG goals cannot be overstated. With increasing regulatory pressures, such as CSRD and SEC, companies must ensure their ESG reporting is both transparent and accurate.
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Switzerland’s Parliament Votes to Disregard Historic Climate Ruling Victory for Senior Women

In a blow to the increasing legal precedent in favor of citizens suing their governments over the adverse impacts of climate change, a vote by Switzerland’s parliament has rejected the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)’s historic climate ruling in favor of a group of older Swiss women.

The women — KlimaSeniorinnen, a group of more than 2,000 women over age 64 — won a lawsuit in April claiming that their country’s inadequate response to the climate crisis, particularly heat waves, had put their health at risk.

“The declaration is a betrayal of us older women – and of all those who are suffering from the real consequences of global warming today and in the future,” said Rosmarie Wydler-Wälti, KlimaSeniorinnen co-president, as The Guardian reported.

The original ruling was hailed as a huge win since it means countries belonging to the Council of Europe — the continent’s foremost human rights organization — are now susceptible to legal challenges when they are slow to make the transition to more renewable economic systems.

Even so, on Wednesday members of the lower house of Swiss parliament voted 111 to 72 to disregard the verdict. They argued that Switzerland’s response to the climate crisis had been sufficient and accused the judges of “inadmissible and disproportionate judicial activism.”

“This is terrible from a rule-of-law perspective,” said Corina Heri, a University of Zürich legal researcher, as reported by The Guardian. “The term ‘slippery slope’ is overused, obviously, but it is a dangerous precedent to create.”

If the Swiss women feel their country is not adhering to the ruling, they can complain to a Council of Europe committee that meets four times annually to monitor ECHR ruling compliance, Reuters reported.

Raphael Mahaim, a lawyer for the KlimaSeniorinnen, told Reuters the group was considering filing a complaint.

It is also possible for Switzerland to be expelled or leave the Council of Europe of its own accord if it does not want to act in accordance with the council’s directives. In March of 2022, Russia was removed from the council following its invasion of Ukraine.

Legal experts said the more likely outcome would be for Switzerland to be pressured to accept the judgment.

Isabela Keuschnigg, a London School of Economics legal researcher, said Switzerland’s refusal to carry out the ruling could “set a concerning precedent, undermining the role of legal oversight in democratic governance,” reported Reuters.

Joana Setzer, a climate litigation expert with the London School of Economics, said compliance was encouraged by the monitoring system and countries leaving the council would be subjected to “significant political and social repercussions.”

The post Switzerland’s Parliament Votes to Disregard Historic Climate Ruling Victory for Senior Women appeared first on EcoWatch.

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