Category: Coastal News

Negotiators are Urged to Get Down to Business as Climate talks in Baku Enter Second Week

11/27/2024 - By Sibi Arasu, Melina Walling and Seth Borenstein. United Nations climate talks resumed Monday with negotiators urged to make progress on a stalled-out deal that could see developing countries get more money to spend on clean energy and adapting to climate-charged weather extremes. U.N. Climate Change executive secretary Simon Stiell called for… SEE MORE

How to Produce Hydrogen Gas as Cleanly as Possible

11/26/2024 - By Brian Owens. Green hydrogen? More like electrification with extra steps. As humanity works to slash greenhouse gas emissions and stem the pace of planetary warming, scientists, governments, and industry leaders are looking for low-carbon alternatives to fuel the future. Alongside renewables such as solar and wind energy, hydrogen gas… SEE MORE

Helicopter fitted with cameras for aerial mapping. The cameras are in the gray box mounted to the underside of the cockpit in front of the landing skids. Credit: Atlantic Salmon Federation/Valerie Ouellet

Where Do Atlantic Salmon Go to Beat the Heat?

11/25/2024 - By fisheries.noaa.gov. As a key river habitat warms, researchers race to protect cold water patches critical to salmon survival. Researchers have successfully used cameras operated from a helicopter to map surface water temperatures in Maine’s Narraguagus River. This is an important step toward habitat conservation for endangered Atlantic salmon and… SEE MORE

Image Credits: The Australian Institute of Marine Science.

Marine Weather Forecasts Are Getting an AI Upgrade

11/24/2024 - By Vanessa Minke-Martin Machine learning systems—powered by new data—are taking some of the guesswork out of maritime safety. Jake Spink fished British Columbia’s craggy coast for four decades. Now, as the president of the British Columbia Coast Pilots—an association of highly trained captains that guide thousands of tankers, cruise ships,… SEE MORE

For an Ecosystem in Crisis, Recovery Can Take Ages

11/23/2024 - By Moira Donovan. A massive environmental calamity rocked the ancient Mediterranean. It took millions of years for the ecosystem to recover. In the late Miocene epoch, roughly 5.9 million years ago, calamity befell the Mediterranean Sea. In a period of roughly 600,000 years, tectonic uplift sealed the gateway between Europe… SEE MORE

Is Deforestation Supercharging Cyclones?

11/22/2024 - By Erica Gies. The airborne water cycle, destabilized by industrial logging and other land use, may be a hidden force behind growing superstorms. Hurricane Helene devastated the southeastern United States at the end of September 2024, dumping unprecedented levels of rain. Then, just two weeks later, Hurricane Milton rapidly revved… SEE MORE

Listening In on the Mysterious Marbled Murrelet

11/21/2024 - By Moira Donovan. Applying machine learning to forest soundscapes helps researchers pinpoint rare and threatened birds. The marbled murrelet is an elusive creature. At sea, the stubby seabird dives at the first sign of predators. On land, it lays its eggs high in the mossy branches of the Pacific Northwest’s old-growth forests—a… SEE MORE

Environmental Protection, with a Side of Small Business

11/20/2024 - By Brian Owens. Conservation takes cash, and philanthropic funding is notoriously fickle. To secure the future of its environmental efforts, this Dominican nonprofit is trying something new: making booze. When Hurricane Maria swept through the Caribbean in 2017, tiny Dominica was hit particularly hard—howling winds and torrential rain damaged or… SEE MORE

Wetlands provide a buffer from wave energy for shorelines and communities behind them. But sea level rise, storms, and other challenges are causing wetlands to erode. We’re working to restore these important habitats. Photo: Chesapeake Bay Program/Will Parson.

Protecting and Restoring Habitat in Virginia’s Middle Peninsula

11/19/2024 - By fisheries.noaa.gov. Healthy wetlands and oyster reefs support fish, wildlife, and communities. Virginia’s Middle Peninsula is a beautiful part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed—both on and off the water. But it faces challenges due to climate change, a lack of capacity to restore habitat, and rural coastal economic hardship. While the Middle… SEE MORE

Sardine collected on the 2023 Coastal Pelagic Species Survey. Pacific and Japanese sardine look so similar that they can only be distinguished by genetics. Genomic analysis later revealed that the catch contained both species. Photo Credit: NOAA Fisheries/Kelsey James

Surprise! Japanese Sardines Astonish Scientists by Crossing the Pacific to the West Coast

11/18/2024 - By fisheries.noaa.gov. Next generation genomic sequencing of Pacific sardine reveals not one, but two species of sardine in the California Current in 2022 and 2023. When research scientist Gary Longo first saw the results of his genomic analysis of sardines, he thought he must have mixed up his samples. Besides… SEE MORE