https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. A new study has mapped out the gravitational basins of attraction in the local universe, offering fresh insights into the large-scale cosmic structures that shape the movement of galaxies. The study has been published in Nature Astronomy. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-advanced-gravitational-basins-movement-galaxies.html Astronomy Fri, 27 Sep 2024 05:00:01 EDT news646560661 The Delaware River Basin, a coastal watershed in the Mid-Atlantic region, has a long history of severe flooding with significant socioeconomic impacts. Recent research uses a process-based modeling approach to analyze hydrometeorological (like rainfall, snowmelt, and soil moisture) conditions during flood events over the past 40 years, revealing the spatial variability of flood mechanisms across the region. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-future-climate-shift-generating-mechanisms.html Environment Thu, 26 Sep 2024 16:37:06 EDT news646587423 The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission has snapped a souvenir of the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock desert in Nevada. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-image-festival-space.html Earth Sciences Fri, 20 Sep 2024 13:03:03 EDT news646056181 Recent satellite data reveal that the Konya Basin in the Central Anatolian Plateau of Türkiye is continually being reshaped over millions of years, according to a new analysis led by Earth scientists at the University of Toronto. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-geoscientists-earth-crust-beneath-trkiye.html Earth Sciences Wed, 18 Sep 2024 15:56:04 EDT news645893761 The Congo Basin rainforest is the second-largest tropical forest in the world, storing large volumes of carbon and hosting high levels of biodiversity. While these forests have historically stayed mostly intact, road development has recently become a critical threat. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-road-networks-congo-basin-forests.html Environment Mon, 16 Sep 2024 16:37:28 EDT news645723443 August 2024 was Earth's hottest August in NOAA's 175-year climate record. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-earth-hottest-august-year.html Environment Thu, 12 Sep 2024 15:11:30 EDT news645372687 Midwestern soils are among the most productive in the world, thanks in part to extensive tile drainage systems that remove excess water from crop fields. But water isn't the only thing flowing through tile drains. Nitrogen moves along with soil water into drainage ditches, streams, and ultimately into the Mississippi River Basin, where the nutrient contributes to massive algal blooms and hypoxic conditions that impact aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-legacy-corn-nitrogen-fertilizer-lengthy.html Agriculture Thu, 12 Sep 2024 14:22:20 EDT news645369735 University of Minnesota researchers have developed a new tool to measure ethane from space, leading to a better understanding of fossil fuel emissions worldwide. Ethane is commonly found in natural gas and is primarily used in plastics manufacturing. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-team-tool-fossil-fuel-emissions.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 11 Sep 2024 16:15:02 EDT news645290092 Human disturbance has altered the integrity and functionality of forests throughout the globe, with the greatest impact on regions characterized by historical human cultural development and long-term natural resource exploitation. This is the case in the Mediterranean Basin, where terrestrial ecosystems have been shaped and simplified for thousands of years. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-ecological-history-resilience-rewilding-tall.html Plants & Animals Ecology Thu, 05 Sep 2024 09:57:03 EDT news644749021 Droughts, fires, and floods can have devastating consequences for farmers' mental health. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-farmer-suicides-climate-australia.html Environment Mon, 02 Sep 2024 11:30:04 EDT news644495401 Securing the world's water supply is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Research at Stockholm University is now presenting an alternative method for quantifying the global risk of water scarcity. Results indicate higher risks to water supply than previously expected if accounting for the environmental conditions and governability where rain is produced. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-global-scarcity-greater-accounting.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 02 Sep 2024 09:31:03 EDT news644488261 What would happen if humans dried out the Mediterranean sea, turning it into a giant salt lake? Would its wildlife survive, and if so, how long would it take to recover? https://phys.org/news/2024-08-mediterranean-dried-million-years-sobering.html Earth Sciences Environment Sun, 01 Sep 2024 06:30:01 EDT news644232495 The 2015–2016 El Niño hit the Amazon basin hard, causing a drought that severely reduced aboveground vegetation and caused the basin to release nearly 1 gigaton of carbon into the atmosphere. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-amazonian-drought-effects-carbon.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 20 Aug 2024 12:57:03 EDT news643377421 The temperatures of the Mediterranean Sea in recent days have reached heat records set last summer, the main Spanish maritime research center told AFP Tuesday, with marine heat waves in some places exceeding 30 degrees Celsius. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-mediterranean-sea-temperatures.html Environment Tue, 13 Aug 2024 16:18:54 EDT news642784730 There's an important dividing line in the history of recent Texas earthquakes—those occurring before and after 2017, when the establishment of the Texas Seismological Network (TexNet) introduced the ability to monitor seismic events to much lower magnitude. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-revisits-texas-seismic-wastewater.html Earth Sciences Tue, 06 Aug 2024 12:09:30 EDT news642164966 To protect the Amazon and support the well-being of its people, its economy must shift from environmentally harmful production to a model built around the diversity of indigenous and rural communities, and standing forests. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-economy-amazon-people.html Ecology Tue, 06 Aug 2024 05:00:01 EDT news642090237 "Sometimes the crazy ideas lead to watershed improvements." That was a key takeaway from research conducted by Utah State University, published in the American Society of Civil Engineer's Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-collaborative-generates-lessons-lake.html Environment Wed, 31 Jul 2024 06:29:52 EDT news641626187 A new study addresses the urgent challenges in managing the water-energy-land nexus in the Zambezi River Basin, which is crucial for southern Africa's economic stability and environmental health. The authors of the article suggest strategies for economic development that protect environmental resources and adapt to climate and socioeconomic changes. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-solutions-sustainability-zambezi-river-basin.html Environment Tue, 30 Jul 2024 08:35:33 EDT news641547329 A consortium of researchers led by the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and Charles University, Prague have developed a new data-driven map which predicts substantially more peatland area in the Amazon basin than previously estimated. The high-resolution map provides the first field-data-driven extent of peatlands in the Amazon basin and will be useful for future research and policy on the vulnerability of peatlands to climate change and human impacts. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-driven-reveals-extensive-peatlands-amazon.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 29 Jul 2024 05:31:08 EDT news641449860 You would be hard-pressed to find a corner of the world free from microplastics, plastic particles measuring less than five millimeters. They contaminate our drinking water, accumulate in the food we eat and have been found in the human body, including in blood, organs, placenta, semen and breast milk. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-issue-microplastics-great-lakes-curb.html Environment Thu, 25 Jul 2024 11:40:01 EDT news641123142 To better predict long-term flooding risk, scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory developed a 3D modeling framework that captures the complex dynamics of water as it flows across the landscape. The framework seeks to provide valuable insights into which communities are most vulnerable as the climate changes, and was developed for a project that's assessing climate risk and mitigation pathways for an urban area along the Southeast Texas coast. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-scientists-human-element-term.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 17 Jul 2024 16:03:14 EDT news640450986 New research shows that ozone concentrations at Carlsbad Caverns National Park frequently exceed Environmental Protection Agency health standards, likely due to oil and natural gas development in the Permian Basin and surrounding region. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-oil-gas-permian-basin-source.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 16 Jul 2024 09:00:02 EDT news640338002 A study published in the journal Science China Earth Sciences integrates existing monitoring data to discuss the characteristics of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from reservoirs in the Yellow River Basin. While CO2 emission flux from reservoirs is lower than that from river channels, the emission fluxes of CH4 and N2O are 1.9 times and 10 times those from rivers, respectively, indicating that the emission of CH4 and N2O is significantly enhanced in reservoirs. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-greenhouse-gas-emissions-reservoirs-yellow.html Earth Sciences Environment Thu, 11 Jul 2024 14:57:03 EDT news639928621 Global water scarcity, a result of both quantity and quality change, challenges the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. An international team of researchers has now developed a novel modeling approach to identify cost-effective combinations of water management, promising a substantial reduction in future water scarcity. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-efficient-quality-future-scarcity.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 08 Jul 2024 10:17:12 EDT news639652629 Have you ever wondered what secrets the Amazon Basin holds beneath its murky waters? I'm Flavio Gallo Cardozo, a biologist from Bolivia, and I'm excited to share with you the journey of discovering a new piranha species, Serrasalmus magallanesi, from the Upper Madeira River System. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-piranha-species-amazon-basin.html Plants & Animals Ecology Wed, 03 Jul 2024 09:30:57 EDT news639217852 After several months of back and forth, officials announced on July 1st that Illinois had signed a partnership agreement that will allow construction of the $1.15 billion Brandon Road Interbasin Project to begin with significant federal funding. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-gov-pritzker-federal-state-agreement.html Ecology Tue, 02 Jul 2024 09:21:10 EDT news639130865 The Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that rivers that only flow in response to weather events—called ephemeral streams—do not fall under the protection of the Clean Water Act. Research published in the journal Science, led by University of Massachusetts Amherst recent doctoral graduate Craig Brinkerhoff and co-authored by colleagues at Yale University, suggests that this now leaves many U.S. waterways vulnerable to pollution. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-rivers-vulnerable-pollution.html Environment Thu, 27 Jun 2024 14:00:01 EDT news638692788 You would have learned about the "water cycle" in primary school—water's journey, from evaporation to rainfall to flowing in a stream or sinking into the ground to become groundwater. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-quickly-groundwater-recharge-deep-underground.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 25 Jun 2024 12:30:01 EDT news638536932 The Arctic Ocean is warming four times faster than the rest of the world's oceans, a trend that could potentially spill over to the rest of the world in the form of altered weather patterns and other climate consequences. Efforts such as the Synoptic Arctic Survey are studying the Arctic Ocean to better understand ocean currents, in the hope of allowing scientists to better predict future changes. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-radioactive-isotopes-hidden-arctic-currents.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 25 Jun 2024 07:19:33 EDT news638518770 The Aral Sea, located in Central Asia, has been shrinking in surface area due to climate change and human activities. This shrinkage has caused a regional ecological crisis, significantly affecting the key ecosystem services in the region. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-reveals-spatiotemporal-ecosystem-aral-sea.html Earth Sciences Environment Mon, 24 Jun 2024 08:27:34 EDT news638436451