EarthScape

A volcano erupts and the world seems to end. What happens afterwards? May 18 marks the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state and scientists to this day use what’s being learned there to challenge established thinking about how landscapes evolve and rebound.

The US Environmental Protection Agengy (EPA) is currently issuing a new proposal to cut mercury emissions by more than half as well as other pollutants from boilers, process heaters, and solid waste incinerators. Toxic air emissions have been shown to cause cancer and other serious health problems for affected people. The main purpose of this…

New wind resource maps and wind potential tables for the lower 48 states were recently released by AWS Truewind in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). This new data marks the first state-by-state comprehensive update of wind energy potential since 1993. Accurate information about the wind resources available in each state will help…

BP Plc sought to stem the damage from a giant oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico with technology, welding torches and money on Tuesday as crude kept spewing from an offshore oil well deep in the Gulf of Mexico that ruptured almost two weeks ago. The British oil company, under pressure from Washington to…

While MerleFest 2010, presented by Lowe’s, is now officially another one for the history books, initial figures show that aggregate attendance over the festival’s four days exceeded 76,000 people, who attended the celebration of “traditional plus” music on the campus of Wilkes Community College from Thursday, April 29 to Sunday, May 2. MerleFest is the…

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is restricting fishing for a minimum of ten days in federal waters most affected by the BP oil spill, largely between Louisiana state waters at the mouth of the Mississippi River to waters off Florida’s Pensacola Bay. The closure is effective immediately. The off shore fisheries provide food…

It is a major part of what separates us from the animals, the ability to verbalize our thoughts and understand the verbalizations of others. However, this evolutionary miracle is not exclusive to human beings – other species like dolphins and birds communicate regularly. Humans, however, have taken communication to such an advanced degree that we…

By inserting a 43,000-year-old woolly mammoth gene into Escherichia coli bacteria, scientists have figured out how these ancient beasts adapted to the subzero temperatures of prehistoric Siberia and North America. The gene, which codes for the oxygen-transporting protein hemoglobin, allowed the animals to keep their tissues supplied with oxygen even at very low temperatures. “It’s…

A huge oil slick caused by an underwater leak continued to creep toward the U.S. Gulf Coast on Monday as the Obama administration pressed energy giant BP Plc to stem the oil gushing from its ruptured offshore well. The direction of the slick has been pushed around by strong winds in the Gulf of Mexico…

President Obama traveled to Louisiana Sunday to assure coastal residents that the government is doing all it can to control the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico — he had little good news to offer, though. Obama flew over the marshes of Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish, where rich oyster and shrimp beds are jeopardized by…