Earth and environmental sciences
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How are migrating wild birds affected by H5N1 infection in the U.S.?
Each spring, roughly 3.5 billion wild birds migrate from their warm winter havens to their breeding grounds across North America, eating insects, distributing plant seeds and providing a variety of other ecosystem services to stopping sites along the way. Some also carry diseases like avian influenza, a worry for agricultural, environmental and public health authorities. […]
Team makes sustainable aviation fuel additive from recycled polystyrene
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study overcomes a key challenge to switching commercial aircraft in the U.S. from their near-total reliance on fossil fuels to more sustainable aviation fuels. The study details a cost-effective method for producing ethylbenzene — an additive that improves the functional characteristics of sustainable aviation fuels — from polystyrene, a hard […]
Study offers insight into chloroplast evolution
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — One of the most momentous events in the history of life involved endosymbiosis — a process by which one organism engulfed another and, instead of ingesting it, incorporated its DNA and functions into itself. Scientific consensus is that this happened twice over the course of evolution, resulting in the energy-generating organelles known […]
Study tracks PFAS, microplastics through landfills and wastewater treatment plants
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Most of the PFAS and microplastics that flow into wastewater treatment plants from sewers and landfills end up back in the environment, a new study finds.
How do hurricanes impact inland regions hundreds of miles from coastal landfall locations?
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — After making landfall, Hurricane Helene moved north and dumped an enormous amount of rainfall onto the mountainous regions of Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee, leading to catastrophic flooding hundreds of miles away from the storm’s initial landfall location. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor Jim Best, an earth science and environmental change expert, discussed the event and future ones like it with Illinois News Bureau editor Lois Yoksoulian.
Study: Good nutrition boosts honey bee resilience against pesticides, viruses
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In a new study, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign tackled a thorny problem: How do nutritional stress, viral infections and exposure to pesticides together influence honey bee survival? By looking at all three stressors together, the scientists found that good nutrition enhances honey bee resilience against the other threats.
Urban heating and cooling to play substantial role in future energy demand under climate change
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Existing global energy projections underestimate the impact of climate change on urban heating and cooling systems by roughly 50% by 2099 if greenhouse gas emissions remain high, researchers report. This disparity could profoundly affect critical sustainable energy planning for the future.
More than maps: New atlas captures the state of global river systems through human context
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The word “atlas,” may conjure images of giant books chock full of maps and a dizzying array of facts and figures. However, the new book “The World Atlas of Rivers, Estuaries, and Deltas” tells the story of these waterways long before human intervention and how they continue to evolve in the presence of — and often at odds with — human civilization. The new atlas is a highly visual guide to the most up-to-date research on the world’s river systems, with an emphasis on the mutual relationship between people and these vital landscapes.