July 2014 – globalchange

Monday, July 21, 2014
By Tonia Moxley, at The Roanoke Times

DANVILLE — Virginia Tech researchers hope a $25,000 National Science Foundation grant will help them find better ways to trace the long-term effects of coal ash spills like the one in February that fouled 70 miles of the Dan River from Eden, North Carolina, to Kerr Lake in Virginia.

The NSF RAPID grant will “help us get a snapshot of what’s going on,” said Madeline Schreiber, a Tech hydrogeosciences professor and lead researcher on the project. The Dan River grant was funded on April 4, two months after the coal ash spill, according to the NSF award notice. Tech environmental nanoscientist Marc Michel and geochemist Ben Gill are co-researchers on the project.

This first-step NSF grant will allow the team to gather data to apply for larger science grants that could lead to sophisticated ways to monitor long-term effects of this and other coal ash spills, Schreiber said.

Read the full story at the Roanoke Times

Image credit: Waterkeeper Alliance

Our Bees, Ourselves

From the New York Times Opinion Pages: July 14, 2014

AROUND the world, honeybee colonies are dying in huge numbers: About one-third of hives collapse each year, a pattern going back a decade. For bees and the plants they pollinate — as well as for beekeepers, farmers, honey lovers and everyone else who appreciates this marvelous social insect — this is a catastrophe.

But in the midst of crisis can come learning. Honeybee collapse has much to teach us about how humans can avoid a similar fate, brought on by the increasingly severe environmental perturbations that challenge modern society.

Honeybee collapse has been particularly vexing because there is no one cause, but rather a thousand little cuts. The main elements include the compounding impact of pesticides applied to fields, as well as pesticides applied directly into hives to control mites; fungal, bacterial and viral pests and diseases; nutritional deficiencies caused by vast acreages of single-crop fields that lack diverse flowering plants; and, in the United States, commercial beekeeping itself, which disrupts colonies by moving most bees around the country multiple times each year to pollinate crops.

Read the entire article

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