Corn is problematic as a biofuel source material. It’s resource-intensive to grow, creates many environmental impacts, and is more useful as food. A study from Colorado State University finds new promise for biofuels produced from switchgrass, a non-edible native grass that grows in many parts of North America. Scientists used modeling to simulate various growing…

The update at Svalbard, an archipelago near the Arctic Circle, would cover “construction of a new, concrete-built access tunnel, as well as a service building to house emergency power and refrigerating units and other electrical equipment,” according to a statement from Norway’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food, The new work comes after a thaw of…

“It’s a really versatile method,” he said. “You could use it for nationwide pathogen mapping or look at the distribution of pathogens around the country. We started small, but this could have huge implications for testing soil health and disease.” Tanaka said it was important for this discovery to be available in an open-access video…

Earthquakes aren’t the only concern on the Pacific Coast. Though sea level rise is most often paired with Miami’s future, thousands of miles away, tidal wetlands along the West coast are vulnerable to sea level rise too, particularly in California and Oregon. Focusing on 14 estuaries on the West Coast, a new study published Wednesday…

But even the most optimistic case showed 85% of UK cities with a river, including London, would face increased flooding. In the high-impact scenario, some cities and towns in the UK and Ireland could see the amount of water per flood as much as double. The worst affected is Cork, which could see 115% more…

While the amount might sound alarming, it’s worth a reminder that there are about 326 million cubic miles of water. To put that roughly, if all the world’s ocean water was a basketball, 150 million gallons would be about the size of a head of a pin. The real danger, though, is what that amount…

Published in the journal Science Advances this week, the study found that the likelihood of extreme heat, dryness and precipitation will increase across as much of 90% of North America, Europe and East Asia if countries do not accelerate their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “We are not prepared for today’s climate, let alone…

MIPs, which use detailed climate and impact models to assess environmental and economic effects of different climate-change scenarios, require international coordination among multiple research groups, and use a rigid modeling structure with a fixed set of climate-change scenarios. This highly dispersed, inflexible modeling approach makes it difficult to produce consistent and timely climate impact assessments…

The world’s largest data platform on cities, launched by the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission’s science and knowledge service, reveals the planet is even more urbanized than we thought. With every high density area of at least 50,000 inhabitants covered, the city centres database shows growth in population and built-up areas over the past…

By 2100, arid cities like Phoenix will become hotbeds for heatwaves compared to their rural surroundings, while cities on the eastern seaboard will be less severely affected by heatwaves compared to theirs. The findings highlight the importance of heat-mitigation strategies and infrastructures such as green roofs. In terms of relative temperature increase, today’s eastern and…