all environments stories

Over the river, through the woods

jake — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 11:43:32 -0400

For close to 30 Hyde Park preschool children, a recent trip to the Arnold Arboretum, the majestic 265-acre botanical garden run by Harvard University in Jamaica Plain, meant a journey to a world alive with natural wonders and surprises.

In a grove of horse chestnut and buckeye trees flooded with late afternoon sunlight and autumn’s shades of ginger and honey, the eager 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds filed off a bus and paired with volunteer guides from the arboretum. Together they explored their colorful environment, examining the leaves on the trees, inspecting their trunks, and carefully studying the fallen chestnuts that littered the ground.

Harvard brings the Earth to high school

jake — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:16:26 -0400

Steam vents in Yellowstone National Park are part of the area’s unique environment, seen in a case study exploring Yellowstone and the reintroduction of wolves into the park. This case study is part of a new environmental science course for high school science teachers.

Harvard scientists and media specialists unveiled an online environmental science course Monday (Oct. 1) aimed at high school teachers and, through them, high school students — the future inheritors of the Earth’s environmental problems.

The course, called “The Habitable Planet: A Systems Approach to Environmental Science,” features a scientific “dream team” of experts from Harvard and elsewhere who describe their fields, relevant problems, and potential solutions in a series of online videos.

Harvard launches major initiative to help design international climate agreements

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 09:54:08 -0400

Harvard University announced in early July a two-year project to help identify key design elements of a future international agreement on climate change, drawing on the ideas of leading thinkers from academia, private industry, government, and advocacy organizations, both in the industrialized world and in developing countries.

Oceans are back on Mars

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:40:25 -0400

Since spacecraft sent back the first close-up images of Mars more than 30 years ago, some experts have insisted that oceans once existed on the now dry, cold planet. Critics have maintained for decades that such an idea is the product of unrestrained imaginations. Now, a study published in the June 14 issue of the British journal Nature reports new evidence that our neighbor in space once boasted an ocean or oceans as big, relative to planet size, as the Atlantic on Earth. "We were able to lay to rest one of the main objections to the idea that there once were oceans on Mars," says Taylor Perron, a postdoctoral fellow in Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

New tourism threatens desert ecosystems worldwide

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:57:54 -0400

The Department of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) hosted a conference April 4-5 titled “Desert Tourism: Delineating the Fragile Edges of Development.” Panel discussions with leading architects, planners, and developers explored the relationship between tourism, social development, and the architecture and landscapes of arid regions around the world.

The discussions began with the premise that deserts have lost their stigma as inhospitable, inaccessible places and are becoming an ever-more popular tourist destination. The growth of tourism, however, jeopardizes the deserts’ fragile ecosystems and strains their scarce resources, affecting both the landscape and the local population.

Warming may not spark tree growth

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:21:22 -0400

A bright spot in the gloomy global warming picture has been scientists’ predictions that at least some carbon dioxide will be removed from the atmosphere by a burst of growth from tropical forests.

New research from the Arnold Arboretum, however, questions that prediction, finding that trees in two forests on opposite sides of the world have been growing dramatically slower, not faster, as temperatures have risen over the past 20 years.

Kenneth Feeley, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Tropical Forest Science, a partnership between the arboretum and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, examined tree growth data from forest plots in Panama and Malaysia.

Arctic hit by global warming first

50443248 — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:28:30 -0400

Scientists from the eight nations bordering the Arctic recently enlisted representatives of the region's native peoples to help assess climate change there. What they found put a human face on a debate often involving distant projections and abstract numbers.

Less snow, less sea ice, freezing rain in winter, and the appearance of mosquitoes and robins, creatures so foreign the native residents have no word for them.

The experience of the Arctic peoples is a harbinger of things to come, according to James McCarthy, the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography.

"It's the canary in the mine, a glimpse of what's going to happen at lower latitudes," McCarthy said.

World's largest oil firm chief touts research to make fossil fuels 'cleaner'

50443248 — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:39:26 -0400

The head of the world's largest oil company said that renewable sources can't meet the world's growing energy needs so research dollars should be aimed at both developing renewable sources and at making fossil fuels cleaner.

Abdallah S. Jum'ah, president and chief executive officer of the Saudi Arabian Oil Co., also known as Saudi Aramco, said that expected growth in the industrialized world coupled with a growing global population and industrialization of the developing world will significantly increase global energy needs over the next 25 years.

Negative vibes from space

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:28:27 -0400

Astronomers have discovered the first negatively charged molecule in space, identifying it from radio signals that were a mystery until now. While about 130 neutral and 14 positively charged molecules are known to exist in interstellar space, this is the first negative molecule, or anion, to be found.

"We've spotted a rare and exotic species, like the white tiger of space," said astronomer Michael McCarthy of the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

By learning more about the rich broth of chemicals found in interstellar space, astronomers hope to explain how the young Earth converted these basic ingredients into the essential chemicals for life.

Mode of seed dispersal shapes placement of rainforest trees

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:21:43 -0400

The apple might not fall far from the tree, but new research shows that how it falls might be what is most important in determining tree distribution across a forest. A recent study of the seed dispersal methods of rainforest trees demonstrates that these methods play a primary role in the organization of plant species in tropical forests.

Joshua B. Plotkin, a junior fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and co-author Tristram Seidler published the results of their study on seed dispersal methods in the journal Public Library of Science - Biology (PLoS Biology).

Astronomers nab culprit in galactic hit-and-run

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:46:46 -0400

The Andromeda galaxy, the closest large spiral to the Milky Way, appears calm and tranquil as it wheels through space. But appearances can be deceiving. Astronomers have new evidence that Andromeda was involved in a violent head-on collision with the neighboring dwarf galaxy Messier 32 (M32) more than 200 million years ago.

"Like a CSI team, we gathered clues and reconstructed the scene of the crime," said Pauline Barmby (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), a member of the research group that made the discovery. "The evidence clearly shows that M32 is guilty of committing a hit-and-run."

This discovery was reported in the Oct. 19, 2006, issue of the journal Nature.

Dramatic proof of the galactic smash-up came from images taken by the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Those images revealed a never-before-seen dust ring deep within the Andromeda galaxy. When combined with a previously observed outer ring, the presence of both dust rings suggests a long-ago disturbance whose effects are still expanding outward through Andromeda.

French fries, other vegetable oil products help fuel recycling effort

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 11:16:00 -0400

Harvard Recycling and Waste Management fueled its truck with used vegetable oil from the Annenberg Hall kitchen this past Tuesday (Sept. 19) - marking a first for a Facilities Maintenance Operations (FMO) vehicle. According to recycling and waste management supervisor for FMO Rob Gogan, the oil performed "identical to diesel."

Up until recently, Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) collected and shipped off the used oil from Harvard's deep fryers for use in cosmetics and animal feed. Now, Harvard's recycling truck will use about half of Annenberg's waste oil to fuel trips across campus picking up bulk recyclables such as computers, clothing, and scrap metal, and donations to Harvard Habitat for Humanity.

Strange new planet baffles astronomers

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:28:15 -0400

Using a network of small automated telescopes known as HAT, Smithsonian astronomers have discovered a planet unlike any other known world. This new planet, designated HAT-P-1, orbits one member of a pair of distant stars 450 light-years away in the constellation Lacerta.

"We could be looking at an entirely new class of planets," said Gaspar Bakos, a Hubble fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). Bakos designed and built the HAT network and is lead author of a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal describing the discovery. That paper is available online at http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609369.

With a radius about 1.38 times Jupiter's, HAT-P-1 is the largest known planet. In spite of its huge size, its mass is only half that of Jupiter.

"This planet is about one-quarter the density of water," Bakos said. "In other words, it's lighter than a giant ball of cork! Just like Saturn, it would float in a bathtub if you could find a tub big enough to hold it, but it would float almost three times higher."

HAT-P-1 revolves around its host star every 4.5 days in an orbit one-twentieth of the distance from Earth to the Sun. Once each orbit, it passes in front of its parent star, causing the star to appear fainter by about 1.5 percent for more than two hours, after which the star returns to its previous brightness.

HAT-P-1's parent star is one member of a double-star system called ADS 16402 and is visible in binoculars. The two stars are separated by about 1500 times the Earth-Sun distance. The stars are similar to the Sun but slightly younger - about 3.6 billion years old compared to the Sun's age of 4.5 billion years.

Major funding for HATnet was provided by NASA.

Heat waves deadliest for blacks, diabetics

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:22:13 -0400

Heat waves, like the one that scorched the country in July, are more deadly for some people than for others.

Poor blacks and diabetics fare the worst. As you might guess, extreme heat is also hard on the elderly. But as you might not guess, extreme cold has a greater impact.

Also, the increase in risk on extremely hot days is smaller for deaths due to heart disease, such as heart attacks, than for other causes. Conversely, the increase in risk of dying from heart disease on extremely cold days is greater. Deaths from cardiac arrest show the largest increase at such times.

Deep-sea sediments could safely store man-made carbon dioxide

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:13:59 -0400

An innovative solution for the man-made carbon dioxide fouling our skies could rest far beneath the surface of the ocean, say scientists at Harvard University. They've found that deep-sea sediments could provide a virtually unlimited and permanent reservoir for this gas that has been a primary driver of global climate change in recent decades, and estimate that seafloor sediments within U.S. territory are vast enough to store the nation's carbon dioxide emissions for thousands of years to come.