Nutrient Pollution

South Florida's drinking water has become increasingly threatened by shrinking wetlands, algal blooms, and now, saltwater intrusion.

One of the world's tiniest fern species, Azolla filiculoides may be one of our greatest tools for lowering agricultural pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

In March, officials in Postville shut down its water treatment facility for two days as city employees worked to prevent polluted water from a meatpacking plant from entering the water supply.  Agri Star Meat and Poultry had discharged more than 250,000 gallons of untreated food processing waste — blood, chemicals and other solid materials — […]

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…

Anyone who's researched ways to lower their environmental impact has likely heard they should eat less meat, particularly beef. Even at scale, cows are an inefficient way to feed people—it takes nearly four tons of water to recoup one ton of beef, and many farming practices emit greenhouse gases and pollutants.

Cut-flower farms could be a sustainable option for mitigating water pollution.

Farmer and agriculture groups say they want to mitigate nutrient pollution but conservation practices are costly, resources are lacking and climate change is working against them.

Testing soil for soil pH, organic matter and minerals is a critical step that can help gardeners avoid wasting time, money and resources.

As temperatures warm, harmful algal blooms will likely blossom even more, posing a threat to wildlife, human health and could even affect drinking water.

They may be close to parking the "Busload of Lawyers." That was the moniker given to Oklahoma v. Tyson Foods filed in the federal District Court for the

Across the country, marshes, swamps and bogs quietly soak up flood water and filter pollutants. Ecologists agree they are one of the best natural defenses against climate change.

It's the first time an integrated environmental justice index was included in the center's evaluation of the health of the nation's largest estuary.

A report on the Chesapeake Bay has found strong disparities between communities in different parts of the bay's watershed in terms of health, economics and social justice concerns

What if you could grow fresh food where it is most needed, cost-effectively reduce heat-related deaths, and create green space for the local community? What if you could also reduce flooding and help mitigate climate change? These questions and more are at the heart of a report on the many possibilities of urban agriculture that the Stanford-based Natural Capital Project (NatCap) is presenting this week to a San…

Most of the troubles plaguing the subtropical waters of Florida and the Caribbean revolve around disappearing marine life: coral reefs, fish populations, sea grass beds. It's decidedly the opposite case with sargassum, the floating brown seaweed that has exploded in record-setting mass throughout the region.

Healthy, undisturbed soil sinks carbon, storing what's generated when plants and other living things decompose so it doesn't get released as a planet-warming greenhouse gas.

A new look at the history of water quality in the Chesapeake Bay sheds light on how the estuary has responded to nutrient reduction efforts and why improvements have remained a major challenge. University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science researchers looked at the Bay's historic response to efforts to reduce nutrients to minimize dead zones—areas with too little oxygen to support marine life—and found…

A new study by Stony Brook University researchers published in Global Change Biology demonstrates that warming waters and heat waves have contributed to the loss of an economically and culturally important fishery, the production of bay scallops. As climate change intensifies, heat waves are becoming more and more common across the globe. In the face of such repeated events, animals will acclimate, migrate, or…

Better management on agricultural lands to reduce nitrogen losses to the environment costs only a fraction of what it provides. This could yield nearly $500 billion in societal benefits globally for both food supply and human health, ecosystems and the climate. And this at a net cost of nearly $20 billion. That's according to a study published today in the scientific journal Nature.

Lakes across the Midwest are losing cold, oxygenated habitat as a result of climate change and nutrient pollution. This loss of critical habitat has negative consequences for water quality, fish, and the production of greenhouse gases. While data show that effectively managing watershed land use at a local scale can protect coldwater, oxygen-rich habitats and reduce nutrient pollution in Midwestern lakes,…