A new study in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization shows how hot spots of lead contamination in soil can be pinpointed in order to safeguard children against drastic health effects. Researchers led by geochemist Alexander van Geen of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, studied soil around two Peruvian mining towns, and found high lead concentrations [...]
Keep an eye on State of the Planet over the next week for updates on the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
The Center for Environmental Research and Conservation provides executive training in environmental sustainability through science, policy, and economics; we invite you to learn from our leading experts and practitioners to become an effective environmental leader and decision-maker.
The water documentary “A Thirsty World” combines French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s aerial photography with down-to-earth messages, a mélange that calls attention to problems of water security on a global scale.
I am staying with a friend’s family in Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, and tomorrow will meet up with my climbing partner, Pablo Puruncajas, to prepare for our expedition. I am here to collect tree ring samples and put up a weather station on Chimborazo, Ecuador’s tallest peak, to provide climate data about this region, which relies heavily on Chimborazo’s glaciers for water.
For our final installation, we had to go from the edge of the Bay of Bengal almost to Bangladesh’s northern border with India, a trip of over 350 miles. Along the way we stopped at Humayun’s childhood home, had several flats and picked up a student of Humayun’s from the town where we installed it. After getting the GPS set up at the site he selected, we concluded with a feast at his home, driving by signs of the upcoming Hindu and Muslim festivals, and our own final celebration.
We traveled by boat to the south part of the Sundarbans near the Indian Ocean to install a GPS at Hiron Point, this isolated facility also hosts a tide gauge recording long-term water level changes due to rising sea level and land subsidence. Our GPS will help distinguish how much of each there is in the midst of the world’s largest mangrove forest.
Polder 32 is one of the many inland islands in Bangladesh that was enclosed by an embankment to protect it from flooding. When that embankment failed during Cyclone Aila in 2009, the island was flooded for almost 2 years. Subsidence of the ground inside the embankment with no sedimentation to compensate made it worse. We are installing a GPS at a school there to monitor the subsidence.
Biologist Marina Cords has been studying monkey social behavior in western Kenya’s protected Kakamega Forest since 1979. Her work has led to insights about how primates manage conflicts, mate and carry out other social functions closely related to human behavior.
Taking a big step towards helping companies accurately label the carbon footprint of their products, researchers at the Earth Institute have developed new software that can calculate the carbon footprints of thousands of products simultaneously.
State of the Planet is a forum for discussion on varying viewpoints. The opinions expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Earth Institute or Columbia University.
