Mississippi River Keeps Flooding and Humans Are to Blame, Data Show
by Allie Nicodemo
Transforming the Mississippi River to its current state has been like domesticating a wild wolf. The river today is generally calm, easy to navigate, and friendly to people living and farming nearby. But without billions of dollars in engineering over hundreds of years, we’d be dealing with a...
Northeastern Co-Hosts Capitol Hill Briefing on Coastal Sustainability
by Jason Kornwitz
Northeastern co-hosted a Capitol Hill briefing on coastal sustainability on Wednesday afternoon, convening a panel of stakeholders to discuss the threats facing coastal communities and the best practices for keeping them secure.
Coastal communities are facing increasing threats related to...
Science and Politics: Finding Common Ground
by Thea Singer
Science and politics: The relationship is hotly debated in the news these days, with both lawmakers and the public noting a great divide between support for research among Republicans and Democrats.
But two papers by Northeastern researchers point to a subtler—more conciliatory—...
NU Talks: Creating Cleaner, Safer, Smarter Coastal Communities
by CSI Staff
On sustainability, professor Geoffrey Trussell, director of Northeastern’s Marine Science Center and chair of the Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences, addresses the “collision between humanity and the environment.” How, he asks, can we create cleaner, safer, smarter coastal...
Where Environmental Science and Policy Collide: A Look at the New Master’s Program
by Sage Wesenberg
When it comes to environmental issues, there has always been a lot to learn and a lot of potential for action. Scientific understanding of ozone depletion led to the banning of CFCs. Climate research has helped us to understand the contributions of fossil fuel burning and greenhouse gas emissions to global warming.
Can Infrastructure and Tourism Endure Triple-Digit Temperatures, Extreme Weather During ‘Danger Season’?
by Cynthia McCormick Hibbert
The heat wave striking Europe has sent temperatures in Britain above 40 degrees Celsius–or 104 Fahrenheit—for the first time ever, caused wildfires in France and killed more than 1,000 people in Spain and Portugal. Northeastern University professors say it is a sign of more to come as climate change continues to create extreme weather challenges.
The Coldest Rivers on Earth May Hold Clues to a Warming Globe
by Allie Nicodemo
Flowing through frigid eastern Siberia, the Kolyma River is the largest river in the world that is completely underlain by frozen, icy soil called permafrost. Aron Stubbins traversed 15 time zones, making a pit stop in Yakutsk, Russia—one of the coldest cities in the world, with record...
Northeastern Divers Combed Cozumel’s Coral Reef for Exotic Species. Here’s What they Found, and Why it Matters
by Allie Nicodemo
A massive Nassau grouper, four species of black corals, and a spotted drum fish were among the aquatic treasures Northeastern divers found on their expedition to Cozumel, Mexico. The drum fish was an especially lucky discovery—drums are nocturnal feeders that rarely leave the protection of...
Robot Shellfish May Tell Us About Climate Change’s Impact on Marine Species
by Nathan Hurst
Out in a bed of mussels, off the Monterey coast in California in a space exposed at low tide, a handful of green LEDs blink, indicating the location of a cohort of robomussels.
The Deep Unknown: Visualizing the Ocean’s Mysteries
by Lia Petronio
Northeastern’s Ocean Genome Legacy maintains a collection of marine DNA and tissue samples that is unlike anything else in the world.
‘Unicorn’ Shipworm Could Provide Clues About Human Bacterial Infections
by Thea Singer
Northeastern professor Daniel Distel and his colleagues have discovered a dark slithering creature four feet long that dwells in the foul mud of a remote lagoon in the Philippines. They say studying the animal, a...
Water Withdrawals May Lead to Decline of Florida Oyster Fishery
by Carole McCauley
Research by assistant professor David Kimbro has been considered in a water rights battle that made it all the way to the US Supreme Court recently. Kimbro’s work studying oyster populations in Apalachicola Bay, Florida,...
New Interdisciplinary Faculty Brings Expertise and Accolades
by Gwendolyn Schanker
When Aron Stubbins first arrived in Boston during the first week of January 2018, he received a snowy and cold welcome. It was a big adjustment from the weather at his previous home at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in...
Researchers Inhibit Transmission of Disease Affecting Tropical Corals
by Carole McCauley
Recent research published in Environmental Microbiology by Rebecca Certner and her advisor, Steve Vollmer, contributes to the emergent field of quorum sensing as a mechanism for coral disease development, specifically for white band disease in the critically endangered...
Assessing Oyster Reef Restoration’s Longer-Term Impact on Ecosystem Services
by CSI Staff
The ecosystem services provided by restored seagrass, salt marsh, and oyster reef habitat will likely continue to evolve for decades, but post-restoration monitoring of these projects is often limited to the time frame of grants, which are often funded just for one or two years. Research from...
Zooplankton May Transmit White Band Disease to an Endangered Coral
by Carole McCauley
Tropical corals are severely threatened by white band disease, which can destroy the tissues of several species in the Caribbean. Researchers from the Vollmer and Patterson Labs, working from a base at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, have explored the possibility that...
Snails Shown to Pass Along Fear of Predation to Offspring
by Carole McCauley
The Trussell Lab has been studying the “ecology of fear” for some time now, and the extent to which parents pass along their fear of predation to their offspring. Sarah Donelan, a postdoctoral researcher, recently...
Bridging the ‘Practice Science Gap’ to Optimize Restoration Projects
by Lori Lennon
As restoration projects throughout Massachusetts and the country focus on restoring natural ecosystems, researchers are looking for ways to better bridge the “practice science gap” between practitioners and biodiversity research in an effort optimize these types of projects. The findings...
Robotic Mussels Track Rising Temperatures for Climate Research
by Tatiana Schlossberg, The New York Times
If you were to stare down into one of a few dozen intertidal pools at low tide, as waves glide in and out, you might have a hard time spotting the robots.
That’s because they look just like the real mussels that surround them.
“It’s a problem finding them again,” said Brian...