Showing posts with label pollution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pollution. Show all posts

Friday, September 4, 2015

In the News: Birds of a Feather

Fig.1. House Finch-eggs (Credit: Rich Mooney via Flickr, 2005)

Between Victorian egg collecting and modern day plastic production, humans have endangered bird populations around the world. Living collections and dried specimens found in museums help us to paint a picture of both their ancient relationship with people and future survival:

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Secrets of the Deep


Fig.1. The National Ice Core Laboratory holds 17,000 meters of ice cores from Antarctica, Greenland, and North America. The typical tube contains a one meter ice core section (Credit: Eric Cravens, National Ice Core Lab, USGS)

During the early morning hours of July 16, 1945, an atomic bomb was detonated for the first time ever. This test, completed in a remote corner of New Mexico by scientists with the U.S. Army, marked a significant point in human history. One study contends that this date is the beginning of the Anthropocene, while others believe that the “Age of Humans” may stretch back to around 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture. A recent study, however, hopes that work with ice cores may help to inform this debate, as well as show how humans affect the world around them.