research that can help the environment

Earth Day: 5 ways we’re working to heal our planet and combat climate change

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International Mother Earth Day is a chance to reflect on how humanity has been treating our planet, and let’s face it: we’ve been poor custodians. And while a steady stream of IPCC reports has painted a legitimately worrying picture of the current state of the planet, don’t lose hope – here's why: there are more innovative ideas for serious climate action than ever and around the world, people are working together on solutions to help repair the damage that’s been done to our fragile home.

But before we get to the exciting stuff, there’s no denying the gravity of the problem.

The Earth is facing a ‘triple planetary crisis’: climate disruption, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste.

“This triple crisis is threatening the well-being and survival of millions of people around the world. The building blocks of happy, healthy lives – clean water, fresh air, a stable and predictable climate – are in disarray, putting the Sustainable Development Goals in jeopardy”, the UN Secretary-General warns in a video message for Earth Day 2022.

The good news is that there is still hope, António Guterres stresses, reminding us that 50 years ago, the world came together in Stockholm for the pivotal UN Conference on the Human Environment , which kickstarted a global movement.

“Since then, we have seen what is possible when we act as one . We have shrunk the ozone hole. We have expanded protections for wildlife and ecosystems. We have ended the use of leaded fuel, preventing millions of premature deaths. And just last month, we launched a landmark global effort to prevent and end plastic pollution”.

We have proven that together, we can tackle monumental challenges.

The positive developments have not stopped there, the recently recognized right to a healthy environment is gaining traction and young people are more engaged than ever in the combat to take on our planetary threats.

“We have proven that together, we can tackle monumental challenges”, Mr. Guterres says.

Of course, much more needs to be done – and more quickly – to protect our home, but to celebrate Earth Day , we want to highlight five projects being implemented around the world right now aimed at repairing the damage we have caused.

These solutions are just some of the founding initiatives of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration , a global rallying cry launched last year to heal our planet. It aims to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and ocean.

So here are 5 ways that we (humans) are working to restore our ailing Earth:

1. Converting coal mines into carbon sinks

In Appalachia, a geographical and cultural region in the eastern United States that includes Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia and is named after the Appalachian Mountains, the NGO Green Forests Work (GFW) is restoring forests on lands impacted by coal surface mining projects.

Surface mining is a technique used when coal is less than 200 feet underground. Large machines remove the topsoil and layers of rock and expose coal seams. Miners might also dynamite the tops of mountains and remove them to access the seams.

Once the mining is completed, what was once a forest is often converted into grasslands often composed of non-native species. This means, of course, the loss of large tracts of forested areas and the displacement and even loss of species.

To reverse this incredible damage, since 2009, Green Forests Work has been restoring mined lands by planting nearly 4 million native trees across more than 6,000 acres.

“Many mined lands are among the best places to plant trees for the purposes of mitigating climate change. Because the soils of reclaimed mined lands initially have very little organic carbon, they can serve as carbon sinks for decades, if not centuries, as the forests grow and build the soils,” Michael French, GFW Director of Operations explains to UN News.

He adds that by restoring native forests to these lands, they are restoring the ecosystem services they provide to society, including clean air and water, improved wildlife habitat, climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration, as well as a sustainable economic resource base. 

“We at GFW hope that everyone is able to get out and experience the wonders of the natural world and make their own contribution to improving the world around them this Earth Day and every day,” Mr. French highlights.

2. Restoring ecosystem connectivity

Twenty years ago, a satellite photograph of Australia’s south-western corner showing the vast extent of natural vegetation lost due to human activity since the European settlement inspired a group of activists to form Gondwana Link.

The image showed how two-thirds of the vegetation in the region had been cleared across thousands of kilometres, and, over much of the agricultural region, many areas had less than 5-10 per cent of their original bushland (natural undeveloped areas) left.

They realized, however, that many biodiversity hotspots remained intact in conservation areas, although disconnected, across 1000 kilometres.

Even the largest patches of natural habitats are unable to guarantee the survival or continued evolution of species if they remain isolated from each other. Many bird and animal species are being reduced to small, isolated populations that are under stress, for example.

Unless these areas are reconnected , many species could be lost, something Godwana Link is working to prevent.

“Habitats are protected, managed, restored and reconnected throughout the climate gradient that wildlife will move along in the face of climate change, from semi-arid woodlands to tall wet forests. This work is being achieved in ways that support the aspirations of the Noongar and Ngadju people, who were dispossessed in colonial times but are now regaining the right and the ability to be land managers once again,” CEO Keith Bradby explains to UN News.

Mr. Bradby describes how significant gains have been made with the work of a broad range of groups, businesses and individuals contributing a 16-million-hectare habitat area now recognised as the Great Western Woodlands.

“Over 20,000 hectares of farmland has been purchased in the critical habitat gaps, with large swathes under restoration plantings and wildlife already returning. Our state government has announced the end of logging in our native forests”, he adds.

The work of the organization has been recognized globally as an example of what large-scale ecosystem restoration looks like.

“Every day can be Earth Day. We can do it – and the more the merrier”, says Mr. Bradby.

3. Transplanting ‘survivor’ coral fragments

The image above is from Laughing Bird Caye National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Belize. It shows a restored coral reef previously victim of a bleaching event and in danger of death.

Coral reefs are among the most biologically diverse and valuable ecosystems on Earth, harbouring 25 per cent of all marine life.

They are in danger of disappearing by the end of the century all over the world due to the rising temperature and acidity of our ocean’s consequence of climate change.

Their loss would have devastating consequences not only for marine life, but also for over a billion people globally who benefit directly or indirectly from them.

Fragments of Hope is successfully re-seeding devastated reefs by planting genetically robust, diverse and resilient corals in southern Belize.

As a diver, Lisa Carne, the organization’s founder, explains that besides massive coral bleaching events and hurricanes in the region, she saw some corals bouncing back.

“These are the stronger survivors that we are propagating and replenishing the reef with,” she tells UN News.

Since the early 2000’s, Ms. Carne and other women divers and marine biologists from the NGO have been growing healthy corals in nurseries and them transplanting them by hand in shallow water.

“Our work is important because we are striving to prevent the extinction of the Caribbean acroporids corals which are listed as critically endangered which is one step away from extinct in the wild. We think it is also important to educate and inspire people to do more to understand reefs and the threats to them such as climate change,” she explains.

Today, over 49,000 nursery-grown coral fragments have been successfully out-planted in Laughing Bird Caye National Park, turning it once again into a vibrant tourism destination with thriving corals and abundant marine life. These corals have over six years survivorship and are considered the longest documented in the Caribbean.

New nursery and out-plant sites include Moho Caye (over 11,000 corals out-planted) and South Silk Caye (over 2,000 corals out-planted).

“Our message for this Earth Day 2022 is that we as a global society need to do better. What we’ve been doing so far is not working for our planet. We often think about ecosystems and biomes on a small scale but on a larger scale, business as usual is not working, so we all need to do our part to radically change our ways to protect our planet earth,” urges Ms. Carne.

4. Restoring watersheds affected by the climate crisis in the Andes

Another example of large-scale restoration and conservation efforts is happening in the Andes mountains in South America where local communities across five different countries are working together to grow and plant native trees and protect their water sources.

“Native forests have been largely lost in the Andes over the last 500 years following the Spanish conquest. With the last Andean glaciers melting rapidly, water security is now becoming a major issue for local communities and even major South American cities,” Constatino Aucca Chutas, co-founder of the NGO Acción Andina tells UN News.

Mr. Aucca explains that native forests, especially the Polylepis species [shrub and trees that are endemic to the mid- and high-elevation regions of the tropical Andes] and wetlands help create and store large amounts of water around their roots, soils and moss.

“They are our best allies to adapt to climate change and will help secure water for our livelihoods in the next decades to come. But we have to bring them back”, he highlights.

And that’s exactly what Accion Andina is doing: by the end of 2022, they will have planted more than 6 million native trees across the Andes . Their goal is to protect and restore one million hectares of high Andean forests in the next 25 years.

“We have found a unique way to do so: we are reviving the ancient Inca traditions of “ Ayni and Minka – which stands for collaboration and community services in our local Quechua culture. With our growing network of local NGO partners, we help communities protect remaining forests; we invest in local nurseries to grow new native forests; we organize community planting festivals – our renowned Queuña Raymi – to plant up to 100,000 trees in a single day; and we are supporting communities to make an additional living from these new restoration opportunities,” Mr. Aucca explains.

He says that while world leaders are still just talking about possible solutions to climate change, thousands of people are already acting on the ground.

“Mobilizing thousands of people to restore forests and achieve immediate climate action is possible… Our Mother Earth is tired of seeing all this hypocrisy, comfort and ego of the leaders who can decide and put on the ground the solutions to have a healthy planet. Local communities and the planet claim for more action, is time to take action for the sake of all of us,” Mr. Aucca urges in his message for Earth Day.

5. Restoring carbon absorbing seagrass

Seagrass provides food and shelter for many marine organisms. They are multifunctional ecosystems and are often referred as nursery habitats because they usually harbour young fish, smaller species of fish and invertebrates.

Because they are plants, seagrasses photosynthesise in the same way terrestrial plants do, using sunlight to synthetise nutrients from carbon dioxide and water and releasing oxygen.

This means that they are an essential tool in combating climate change, on top of their biological functions.

In the last 40 years, the world has lost one third of seagrass meadows due to sustain pressure from coastal development, water quality decline and of course, climate change.

Project Seagrass in the United Kingdom has been working for a decade to reverse that trend.

With the help of over 3000 volunteers, they have been able to plant over a million seagrass seeds and create awareness of the importance of these plants.

“With two full hectares of seagrass successfully restored, our organization has proved that large-scale seagrass restoration in the UK is possible. We are using a mix of cutting-edge technologies to assess sites and plan field trials”, the organization explains.

That’s not all folks

These are just five examples of the more than 50 projects registered with the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. There are thousands of people and organizations already on the ground and making a difference to protect our Earth.

When the UN General Assembly meets this September, we will find out the first 10 World Restoration Flagships , the most promising examples of large-scale and long-term ecosystem restoration.

Bringing back ecosystems from the brink of degradation and loss is possible – and people around the world are already making it happen.

“Because we have only one Mother Earth. We must do everything we can to protect her”, the UN chief reminds us.

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CERN Accelerating science

Environmentally responsible research

CERN is fully committed to environmental protection and transparent reporting . It is also committed to developing technologies that could help society to improve the health of the planet.

"I believe CERN should become a role model for an environmentally aware scientific laboratory."   – Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General of CERN

Over the decades, CERN has become a byword for excellence in research, establishing itself as a model for scientific collaboration across borders, technological innovation, training and education.

Today, environmental responsibility joins this list. Good environmental stewardship stands prominently among the Management’s objectives and is embedded in every corner of the Organization, with a strategic, proactive approach across the Laboratory and among CERN’s worldwide scientific community.

Contributing to the achievement of several of the environment-related UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a natural continuum in this context, for example by improving our performance, forging partnerships with others and developing innovative solutions using CERN technologies .

Driven by this commitment to environmentally responsible research, CERN has implemented many initiatives over the years that have helped to reduce the impact of its activities on the environment. This page provides more information on these activities across different thematic areas.

CERN is fully committed to environmental protection and transparent reporting. CERN's public environment reports set out reporting frameworks, setting and monitoring concrete goals for constant improvement.

CERN and the environment (Video: CERN)

During the period covered by the latest environment report, 2021-2022, CERN saw the completion of the second long shutdown and the restart of the accelerator complex (Run 3) with a view to reaching the new collision energy of 13.6 TeV at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In some domains environmental indicators may be very different during shutdown years compared to operation years, so they are shown for both years to highlight this, where relevant.

In 2021 and 2022, CERN consumed 991 and 1215 GWh of electricity and 67 and 51 GWh of energy generated from fossil fuels respectively.

The Laboratory is committed to increasing energy reuse and to limiting rises in electricity consumption to 5% up to the end of Run 3 (baseline year: 2018), while delivering significantly increased performance of its facilities.

184 173 tCO 2 e

In 2021 and 2022, CERN’s direct greenhouse gas emissions (scope 1) were 123 174 and 184 173 tonnes of CO 2 equivalent (tCO 2 e) respectively. Indirect emissions arising from electricity consumption (scope 2) were 56 382 and 63 161 tCO 2 e . In addition, indirect emissions from business travel, personnel commuting, catering, waste treatment and water purification (scope 3) amounted to 7813 and 8956 tCO 2 e . Emissions arising from procurement (scope 3), which are reported for the first time, amounted to 98 030 and 104 974 tCO 2 e .

CERN’s objective is to reduce direct emissions by 28% by the end of Run 3 (baseline year: 2018).

In 2021 and 2022, CERN used 2661 and 3234 megalitres of water respectively.

The Laboratory is committed to keeping its increase in water consumption below 5% up to the end of Run 3 (baseline year: 2018), despite a growing demand for water cooling at the upgraded facilities.

< 0.01 mSv

In 2021 and 2022, the actual dose received by any member of the public living near the Laboratory was less than 0.01 mSv , which is more than 100 times lower than the average annual dose received from medical exposure per person in Switzerland.

CERN is committed to keeping its contribution to no more than 0.3 mSv per year .

69% recycled

In 2021 and 2022 respectively, CERN disposed of 5111 and 8812 tonnes of non-hazardous waste, and of 1544 and 1295 tonnes of hazardous waste, including 307 and 519 tonnes of radioactive waste. The recycling rate rose from 56% (baseline year: 2018) to 69% .

CERN’s objective is to increase its recycling rate for non-hazardous waste.

45 dBA at night

In 2021 and 2022, average noise levels measured on the boundaries of CERN’s sites are typically around 50 dBA during the day and 45 dBA at night . CERN implemented measures to improve its noise management , including the installation of an online real-time monitoring system.

CERN is committed to restricting noise at its site perimeters to 70 dBA during the day and 60 dBA at night.

18 species of orchids

In 2022, a new species of orchid was discovered on CERN’s sites, bringing the total to 18 species , as well as 62 species of Lepidoptera and 32 species of Orthoptera.

8 environmental projects

In 2022, CERN launched the Innovation Programme on Environmental Applications (CIPEA) and eight projects were selected for implementation with the financial support of external partners or the Knowledge Transfer fund.

CIPEA spans four focus areas where CERN’s know-how can be of use, namely renewable and low-carbon energy ; clean transportation and future mobility ; climate change and pollution control ; and sustainability and green science.

Continue for more information on CERN's environment reports

Environment reports

Environmental domains at cern, protection of natural resources, air protection, water protection, soil protection, environmental noise, energy management, waste management, hazardous substances, ionising radiation, non-ionising radiation, prevention of environmental accidents, latest related news, cern's edge ai data analysis techniques used ..., you see an empty field we see an “open sky l..., abb and cern identify 17.4% energy-saving opp..., cern publishes its environment report for 202..., managing energy responsibly: cern is awarded ..., cern to implement additional energy-saving me..., environmental awareness: biodiversity at cern, promising start for future environmental appl..., environmental awareness: exploring cern’s bio....

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The science and technology that can help save the ocean

With only 19% of the ocean mapped and climate risk increasing, scientists and policy makers look for sustainable solutions from critical data.

• MIT Technology Review Insights archive page

In association with Esri

Here on Earth, we have more detailed maps of Mars than of our own ocean, and that’s a problem. A massive force for surviving climate change, the ocean absorbs 90% of the heat caused by emissions and generates 50% of the oxygen we breathe. “We have the ocean to thank for so many aspects of our safety and well-being,” says Dawn Wright, oceanographer and chief scientist at geographic information system (GIS) provider Esri, who notes the ocean also provides renewable energy, a major food source, and a transportation corridor for not only ships but submarine internet cables.

Now, the same type of smart maps and geospatial technology guiding outer space exploration support the quest to better understand and protect our ocean. “For the first time, our knowledge of the ocean can approach our knowledge of the land,” Wright says. “We can turn the unknown deep into the known deep.”

GIS—the location intelligence technology businesses and governments use for everything from risk mitigation to crisis response, market analysis to operational efficiency—also applies to the ocean. The logic is simple: the ocean supports a sustainable planet and economy, and data-rich maps can support a sustainable ocean.

‘Tons and tons of beautiful data’

More than 80% of the ocean floor remains unmapped, yet comprehensive ocean maps will be essential for stemming the problems of overfishing, habitat destruction, pollution, and biodiversity loss. It’s easy, and at this point cliché, to say “save our ocean,” but a data-driven map compels people to see why the ocean needs saving, where to start, and what needs to be done. “Seeing the ocean in its true depth and complexity is exactly what we need if we hope to reduce the risk of critically damaging or exhausting marine resources,” Wright says.

Since its release in 2017, the world’s first 3D ocean map spurred a revolution of innovation in ocean-related data and sustainability solutions. The 3D digital ocean map sorts global water masses into 37 distinct volumetric regions, known as ecological marine units, defined by factors in ecosystem health and recovery: temperature, salinity, oxygen, and nutrient levels. Scientists, environmental managers, fishers, and shippers, as well as citizen scientists can use the map to virtually navigate and explore the ocean.

What makes the 3D map of the world’s ocean possible is the enterprise technology capable of collecting and processing data that comes in massive volume and variety. And there’s more data on the way. “This whole idea of marine robotics is one of the big future visions for the ocean,” Wright says. “Robotics and sensors and other instruments are creating tons and tons and tons of beautiful data.”

Once collected, those volumes of data go into a GIS where they are managed and processed, using artificial intelligence (AI) to quickly identify and classify information. The output of GIS, often called location intelligence, comes through as smart maps, spatial analytics, and real-time dashboards—the same kind seen across the world this past year to track and analyze the coronavirus pandemic. These GIS-powered interactive data visualization tools bring clarity even to the most complex of issues and help steer policy and commercial decisions based on a solid grasp of what’s happening now and what will happen next. “We can even make predictions in terms of what the data will be telling us in 2030,” Wright explains. “How warm will the coast of Florida be in 2050? Will those temperatures kill off the sea grass in that area? Will those temperatures result in a red tide around Tampa that will be so toxic it will kill all of the fisheries there?”

‘The ocean is vulnerable’

Growing up on the Hawaiian Islands and working in American Samoa, Wright understands the ocean as a sacred place. That sentiment guides her work now with fellow scientists, government leaders, and business executives. “I want people to understand that the ocean is vulnerable,” Wright says. “What we’re doing to the ocean right now is having huge consequences. Our day-to-day weather and our long-term climate fully depend on the ocean.”

For Wright, the establishment and enforcement of marine protected areas, such as Cook Islands Marine Park off of New Zealand and Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the US, represent a triumph in keeping the ocean protected. So far only 7% of the ocean has been marked as protected, compared to 15% of the land. “Even though we have about 7% of the ocean protected in these parks or reserves, less than half of that is an area where you’re not allowed to fish or take the corals or take the pretty rocks,” Wright explains. “So, we have a long, long, long way to go there.”

Protected areas, predictive maps, and pleas from scientists certainly make an impact on corporate and policy decisions. Add to that increasing climate risk and global pressure for social responsibility. These incentives, and the GIS tools needed to respond, are motivating leaders to implement new initiatives.

For example, shipping companies are working to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by designing more efficient vessels , a move that furthers the sustainability cause while reducing business expense. Industries such as retail and manufacturing are putting circular economy principles in place to reclaim or recycle materials after the product has completed its original use. Aquaculture companies are selecting prime locations for responsible fish farming to help reduce overfishing, encourage aquatic ecosystem restoration, and recover endangered species.

Such efforts are moving us toward the vision of a sustainable ocean and thus a sustainable planet. Although Wright feels certain with so much advanced technology—“it’s a great time to be mapping”—what’s less certain is whether the work scientists, governments, and companies are doing will be enough or cede results soon enough.

‘The ocean isn’t too big to fail’

Concerned about mounting threats to the ocean, the United Nations has declared 2021 to 2030 the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. “It’s like the Paris Climate Accord for the ocean,” Wright says. “To me, it’s the moonshot … to have something this focused for everybody—governments, universities, nonprofit organizations—this is a really big push.”

A number of important ocean mapping projects are already in various stages of development and execution. For example, Seabed 2030 has the ambitious goal to map the entire ocean floor by the year 2030. The Map of Biodiversity Importance shares habitat models for more than 2,200 at-risk species in the contiguous United States, featuring AI predictor layers for species viability based on development plans and environmental factors. And the Ocean Health Index annually assesses ocean health by looking at social, ecological, and economic benefits to speed progress on ocean policies.

Such projects will aid socially responsible companies (those building sustainability solutions to match business opportunities) in achieving profit while preserving the ocean. Their work often revolves around complex and real-time data, stored and processed with GIS, and presented on smart maps and data visualizations with GIS. Location intelligence helps companies—especially shipping, energy, logistics, and fishing industries—questions like the following:

• Where would offshore wind turbines have the least impact on commercial fishing?
• Where should a new transatlantic submarine communications cable go to avoid interference with scallop beds, rare deep-sea coral habitat, or sand mining areas needed for beach restoration?
• Where are appropriate areas for ships to transit in the Arctic (now that it's no longer covered with ice year-round) to minimize the impact on sensitive ecosystems?

As the world slowly emerges from the pandemic and enters the United Nations’ Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, it can do so knowing companies, scientists, and policy makers have the power to make smarter choices for people and the planet.

Those choices will be guided by comprehensive data about the ocean, the technology to map crucial information, and the understanding how, when, and where to intervene. The linchpin will be making sustainability choices in time. “It turns out that the ocean is not too big to fail, unfortunately,” Wright says. “The good news is that it’s also not too big to fix.”

This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.

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Human Impacts on the Environment

Humans impact the physical environment in many ways: overpopulation, pollution, burning fossil fuels, and deforestation. Changes like these have triggered climate change, soil erosion, poor air quality, and undrinkable water. These negative impacts can affect human behavior and can prompt mass migrations or battles over clean water.

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Peak Water: Do We Have Enough Groundwater to Meet Future Need?

Though vast stores of groundwater persist below Earth’s surface, the climbing cost of accessing it is on track to significantly reshape the geography of trade and drive users toward alternative water sources

When and where might groundwater extraction peak? In new work, researchers explore the question, finding that many regions that heavily rely on groundwater resources may face increasing costs of groundwater and food production. 

Image by severija | Shutterstock.com

RICHLAND, Wash.—A new study finds that, by mid-century, nearly half the global population could live in areas where groundwater will become so costly as to raise regional food prices and significantly alter the geography of trade and crop production. Nine percent of the world’s water basins appear to have already reached such a state of near depletion. The new research, led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory , suggests an additional 11.5 percent could reach this point by 2030, with another 22 percent joining by mid-century.

The authors of the new work sought to identify when and where water withdrawals from many of the world’s aquifers could “peak,” as in, when external forces could drive groundwater extraction to reach its maximum. Similar peaks have been observed in other resources, like fossil fuels or minerals.

But, until now, no study has observed and quantified the same behavior in groundwater. This new work marks the first time anyone has projected the peak and decline of water withdrawals in relation to demand from human-driven systems. It represents “the most extensive, large ensemble experiment focused on future global groundwater extraction to date,” said lead author and Earth scientist Hassan Niazi.

Though water is conserved within Earth’s hydrosphere and never truly “lost,” the new work affirms that groundwater does behave as a non-renewable resource, constrained in part by the cost of retrieval. Those who study groundwater recognize this, said coauthor and Earth scientist Tom Wild.

“While it’s not new for us to show that groundwater behaves like a nonrenewable resource,” said Wild, “our work provides a very stark and visible reminder of groundwater’s finite nature, given how similar our projected groundwater patterns are to other resources that are in the process of being exhausted.”

Yet the rate at which groundwater is extracted globally, said Niazi, runs counter to this idea. Withdrawal rates, after all, continue to rise.

“About a fifth of the world’s food is grown using groundwater,” said Niazi. “So, it’s important to recognize that groundwater, particularly that in deep aquifers, is finite, much like oil or copper. And understanding when this depletable resource will peak and decline can help us carve out an informed path forward, as many regions face the imminent challenge of reducing their groundwater reliance. That’s important because groundwater is tied to so many essential functions of society, from irrigation to energy and, inseparably, to the well-being of our environment.”

The new work was published recently in the journal Nature Sustainability.

What drives a peak?

Though vast stores of water persist beneath Earth’s surface, the cost of extracting it climbs as water tables fall lower. More energy must be spent to overcome gravity when pumping groundwater to the surface.

When an aquifer’s level falls so low that its water can no longer be reached or the toll of doing so grows too costly, groundwater extraction reaches a point of either physical or economic infeasibility. Past this point, groundwater withdrawals typically decline as people look toward alternatives.

Other forces, too, can influence when such a peak may come. New technology like more efficient irrigation systems could dial down the amount of water people need in a region, offsetting a potential peak. Or groundwater-reliant populations could grow smaller, meaning there’s less demand. A complex system of factors stands to affect when basins peak and decline.

And that is exactly the complexity the researchers behind this new work sought to capture. Much of the research on groundwater depletion investigates when and where aquifers may physically “run dry.” Yet this is only one part of a complicated picture.

Peak water: when and where

Niazi and his coauthors examined 235 water basins across the globe. Complex simulations allowed them to probe the many factors that could drive basins to depletion across a range of hypothetical futures. Population growth, electricity demand and water use efficiency, among other socioeconomic factors, stand to shape when and where basins could peak.

To capture the uncertainty at play, the authors considered 900 total scenarios. They identified hotspots where peaks are most likely to pop up. In nearly all simulations, global groundwater reserves show a distinct peak and decline signature this century.

The timing and location of peaks differ depending on the nature of each scenario. Some basins, however, show a peak and decline signature across almost all scenarios.

Which are on track to peak in the coming decades? Those basins land within the Western United States, Mexico, India, Pakistan, China and several countries in the Middle East and Mediterranean. These are the same regions at the center of the Green Revolution, where crop production swelled in the early 20th century.

These same basins still serve as breadbaskets for most of the world. Yet, at the same time, the authors point out that these regions are responsible for most of the world’s unsustainable groundwater withdrawal. They are positioned to be on the receiving end of groundwater stress, should current withdrawal trends continue.

“At the very least, key basins in many of the nations responsible for the past 50 years of global agro-economic productivity could be forced into a transition away from groundwater use,” said Wild. “Our findings highlight imminent transformations in the way these regions conduct trade and manage water.”

Roughly half the basins under study do not peak and decline in any scenario. These include regions like the Amazon, where inexpensive surface water is sufficiently plentiful to meet projected demand, or areas where water needs are anticipated to be quite low, like in the higher latitude areas of Canada. Twenty-one basins have already peaked or are in the midst of peaking, including those in California and Missouri.

Peak and decline: what follows

What happens when a region peaks? With water supplies becoming increasingly limited, climbing water costs can cascade across sectors, causing food prices to rise — this could spark shifts in international trade as nations seek to import crops or water from less expensive regions. While not specifically addressed in this study, many prior studies have shown that as groundwater demand increases, aquatic ecosystems could face greater stress, water contamination could spread, and the land above diminished aquifers could sink into the earth more often—a phenomenon known as land subsidence.

The authors add that competing interests for water stem from many sectors: energy, manufacturing, agriculture, livestock, etc. Each of these can face unforeseen stress due to increasing demand for water within a region, driving a resultant rise in groundwater extraction.

“There’s great value in considering multiple sectors and their interactions in an integrated way,” Niazi added. “These analyses can help us to make more informed decisions when we face challenges not only in the realm of groundwater, but also challenges related to sustainable agriculture systems, or with planning a resilient grid.”

The authors highlight that nations with previously untapped ground or surface water resources could help to meet a gap in demand. Afflicted regions may need to expand rainfed croplands, or import crops through international trade, or seek less water-intensive power plant cooling technology, among other strategies.

Niazi and his coauthors point out some limitations of their work. More thorough records of groundwater withdrawals would strengthen future analyses. Considering other forms of adaptation, too, could better capture future paths on offer.

“Water is, of course, among the most important resources we manage,” said Wild. “Understanding our future with groundwater—all water, really—requires that we must understand it holistically. That means understanding how water withdrawal interacts with energy demand, with food production, with the extraction of raw materials, and more. And that’s what we’ve set out to show in this work.”

This work stems from the Joint Global Change Research Institute , a partnership between the University of Maryland and PNNL. There, researchers from a wide range of disciplines collaborate to model human and Earth systems, from those that harness and deliver energy into our homes to those that govern extreme weather. Their research helps provide decision-relevant information for management of emerging global risks and opportunities.

In addition to Niazi and Wild, authors of this work include Neal Graham, Son Kim, Mengqi Zhao, Sean Turner, Mohamad Hejazi, Siwa Msangi, and Jonathan Lamontagne. This work was supported by DOE's Office of Science.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory draws on its distinguishing strengths in chemistry , Earth sciences , biology and data science to advance scientific knowledge and address challenges in sustainable energy and national security . Founded in 1965, PNNL is operated by Battelle for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE’s Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://www.energy.gov/science/ . For more information on PNNL, visit PNNL's News Center . Follow us on Twitter , Facebook , LinkedIn and Instagram .

Published: May 9, 2024

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10 things you can do to help save our planet

The scale of the challenges facing our planet can seem daunting, but we can all do something. Here are 10 simple ways you can help reduce your impact, and help in the fight against climate change. 

We are the first generation to know we’re destroying the world, and we could be the last that can do anything about it. Speaking up is one of the most powerful things you can do especially if it’s to the right people.

We’ve been promised a better world – but our leaders are not on track to deliver. We need decisive action now. We’ll use your support to hold the UK Government to account on its promises. Your voice is powerful. Together, we can show we need urgent action on climate and nature.

It’s not just about speaking to the people in charge. Talk to your friends, neighbours and colleagues and get them to make positive changes too. Speak up, speak to everyone, and make your voice heard.

One of the best things you can do is to keep yourself informed – the more you know the better. It leaves you better equipped to have those conversations with your friends and family and the people you want to influence. Get yourself clued up on the facts, stay up to date with recent news on the state of our natural world and work out what you can do. 

We have the world at our fingertips, so learn from influential people, keep up with the news and research organisations that are working to make our planet a better place. 

Everyone in the UK over the age of 18 can vote for their MP. This is an opportunity to vote for someone who is representative of you and your views and will make the environment a top priority.

Being politically engaged is not limited to voting and it certainly isn’t limited by how young you are. Every year more and more young people are working together to show our political leaders that they want change.

We need to ensure we hold our politicians accountable. You can do that by contacting your local MP or attending constituency meetings where you will have an opportunity to make your voice heard. Find out who your MP is and how you can contact them .

One of the most efficient ways of lowering your environmental impact is by travelling responsibly. This means, whenever you can, choosing a more sustainable way to get from A to B - walk or cycle when you can. 

Transport is one of the most polluting sectors in the UK. But holidaying closer to home can make a big impact on your carbon footprint. One short haul return flight can account for 10% of your yearly carbon emissions, and long-haul flights can completely determine your carbon impact.

If you have the time you can usually get trains to European destinations to cut your carbon footprint. Get creative and try to find alternate ways to travel.

If you do choose to go abroad and are looking to see the local wildlife, keep in mind how to go about it ethically. Attractions that involve you being able to pet, hold or feed animals for money are generally a no-go. Be wary of attractions involving any unnatural interactions with animals. As a rule: observe animals from afar in their natural habitat and look to support local conservation projects. 

Food production is a major driver of wildlife extinction. What we eat contributes around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and is responsible for almost 60% of global biodiversity loss.

Farming animals for meat and dairy requires space and huge inputs of water and feed. Today, one of the biggest causes of forest loss is the expansion of agricultural land for animal feed production, such as soy. And producing meat creates vastly more carbon dioxide than plants such as vegetables, grains and legumes. 

Moving away from a meat-dominated diet towards a more plant-based diet can lower your impact on the environment. Vegetarian and vegan foods are massively on the rise and becoming far more common in restaurants, cafes and supermarkets, so you’ll rarely struggle. 

Not only that, but cutting down on meat and dairy products can reduce your weekly food bills. 

We need to make wasting our resources unacceptable in all aspects of our life.  Every product we buy has an environmental footprint and could end up in landfill. The impact of plastic pollution on our oceans is becoming increasingly clear, having drastic impacts on marine life.

Recycling what we can reduces the amount of new materials we are making, and upcycling is a creative way to make old items into something more valuable. This could be reusing a jam jar as a candle holder, or using old tins as plant pots – the possibilities are endless!

It’s not just the products we buy. It’s estimated that a third of all food produced in the world is lost or wasted. Do your bit by eating up leftovers and use any ingredients you have spare to make interesting meals. Try to waste as little food as possible, and compost the organic waste you can’t eat.

Download the WWF My Footprint App

We can all do more to be more conscious about what we buy, and where we buy it from. Buying less will save you money, reduce waste and improve your environmental footprint. Living a less consumerist lifestyle can benefit you and our planet.

Use your purchasing power and make sure your money is going towards positive change. By supporting eco-friendly products which are less damaging to the environment, you’re encouraging companies to source and produce their products in a sustainable way.

Our amazing supporters are helping us to restore nature and tackle the main causes of nature’s decline, particularly the food system and climate change. We rely on generous donations to carry out our projects all around the world.

There are lots of ways to give. Become a member of WWF, adopt an animal, take on a challenge for Team Panda or encourage your family and friends to donate by setting up a Facebook birthday fundraiser.

WWF’s most comprehensive study to date, the Living Planet Report 2022, shows global wildlife populations have plummeted by 69% on average since 1970. This means that nature loss is not being halted, let along reversed.

The solutions exist, but time is running out to act. We're now in a race to bring our world back to life - and we know it's a race we can win. 

Volunteering can be daunting, and expensive if you don’t know where to look. But it doesn’t need to be this hard to do good.

Often local nature reserves or parks are looking for regular volunteers, which can give you practical conservation experience as well as helping to restore nature your local area.

We want everyone to have the opportunity to help and kickstart a career in conservation. We have a network of youth internship schemes across the world where you can work on a placement with a WWF team or with one of our projects in the field. It’s an exciting opportunity to be able to work in the front line of nature conservation.

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Environmental Changes Are Fueling Human, Animal and Plant Diseases, Study Finds

Biodiversity loss, global warming, pollution and the spread of invasive species are making infectious diseases more dangerous to organisms around the world.

By Emily Anthes

Several large-scale, human-driven changes to the planet — including climate change, the loss of biodiversity and the spread of invasive species — are making infectious diseases more dangerous to people, animals and plants, according to a new study.

Scientists have documented these effects before in more targeted studies that have focused on specific diseases and ecosystems. For instance, they have found that a warming climate may be helping malaria expand in Africa and that a decline in wildlife diversity may be boosting Lyme disease cases in North America.

But the new research, a meta-analysis of nearly 1,000 previous studies, suggests that these patterns are relatively consistent around the globe and across the tree of life.

“It’s a big step forward in the science,” said Colin Carlson, a biologist at Georgetown University, who was not an author of the new analysis. “This paper is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that I think has been published that shows how important it is health systems start getting ready to exist in a world with climate change, with biodiversity loss.”

In what is likely to come as a more surprising finding, the researchers also found that urbanization decreased the risk of infectious disease.

The new analysis, which was published in Nature on Wednesday, focused on five “global change drivers” that are altering ecosystems across the planet: biodiversity change, climate change, chemical pollution, the introduction of nonnative species and habitat loss or change.

The researchers compiled data from scientific papers that examined how at least one of these factors affected various infectious-disease outcomes, such as severity or prevalence. The final data set included nearly 3,000 observations on disease risks for humans, animals and plants on every continent except for Antarctica.

The researchers found that, across the board, four of the five trends they studied — biodiversity change, the introduction of new species, climate change and chemical pollution — tended to increase disease risk.

“It means that we’re likely picking up general biological patterns,” said Jason Rohr, an infectious disease ecologist at the University of Notre Dame and senior author of the study. “It suggests that there are similar sorts of mechanisms and processes that are likely occurring in plants, animals and humans.”

The loss of biodiversity played an especially large role in driving up disease risk, the researchers found. Many scientists have posited that biodiversity can protect against disease through a phenomenon known as the dilution effect.

The theory holds that parasites and pathogens, which rely on having abundant hosts in order to survive, will evolve to favor species that are common, rather than those that are rare, Dr. Rohr said. And as biodiversity declines, rare species tend to disappear first. “That means that the species that remain are the competent ones, the ones that are really good at transmitting disease,” he said.

Lyme disease is one oft-cited example. White-footed mice, which are the primary reservoir for the disease, have become more dominant on the landscape, as other rarer mammals have disappeared, Dr. Rohr said. That shift may partly explain why Lyme disease rates have risen in the United States. (The extent to which the dilution effect contributes to Lyme disease risk has been the subject of debate, and other factors, including climate change, are likely to be at play as well.)

Other environmental changes could amplify disease risks in a wide variety of ways. For instance, introduced species can bring new pathogens with them, and chemical pollution can stress organisms’ immune systems. Climate change can alter animal movements and habitats, bringing new species into contact and allowing them to swap pathogens .

Notably, the fifth global environmental change that the researchers studied — habitat loss or change — appeared to reduce disease risk. At first glance, the findings might appear to be at odds with previous studies, which have shown that deforestation can increase the risk of diseases ranging from malaria to Ebola. But the overall trend toward reduced risk was driven by one specific type of habitat change: increasing urbanization.

The reason may be that urban areas often have better sanitation and public health infrastructure than rural ones — or simply because there are fewer plants and animals to serve as disease hosts in urban areas. The lack of plant and animal life is “not a good thing,” Dr. Carlson said. “And it also doesn’t mean that the animals that are in the cities are healthier.”

And the new study does not negate the idea that forest loss can fuel disease; instead, deforestation increases risk in some circumstances and reduces it in others, Dr. Rohr said.

Indeed, although this kind of meta-analysis is valuable for revealing broad patterns, it can obscure some of the nuances and exceptions that are important for managing specific diseases and ecosystems, Dr. Carlson noted.

Moreover, most of the studies included in the analysis examined just a single global change drive. But, in the real world, organisms are contending with many of these stressors simultaneously. “The next step is to better understand the connections among them,” Dr. Rohr said.

Emily Anthes is a science reporter, writing primarily about animal health and science. She also covered the coronavirus pandemic. More about Emily Anthes

Explore the Animal Kingdom

A selection of quirky, intriguing and surprising discoveries about animal life..

Indigenous rangers in Australia’s Western Desert got a rare close-up with the northern marsupial mole , which is tiny, light-colored and blind, and almost never comes to the surface.

For the first time, scientists observed an orangutan, a primate, in the wild treating a wound  with a plant that has medicinal properties.

A new study resets the timing for the emergence of bioluminescence back to millions  of years earlier than previously thought.

Scientists are making computer models to better understand how cicadas  emerge collectively after more than a decade underground .

New research questions the long-held theory that reintroduction of Yellowstone’s wolves caused a trophic cascade , spawning renewal of vegetation and spurring biodiversity.

To protect Australia’s iconic animals, scientists are experimenting with vaccine implants , probiotics, tree-planting drones and solar-powered tracking tags.

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What are the most powerful climate actions you can take? The expert view

Voting tops the list for the world’s leading climate scientists in a year when billions of voters go to the polls

• Climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target
• ‘Hopeless and broken’: why the scientists are in despair

Many people, faced with the worsening impacts of the climate emergency, want to know what they can do personally to fight global heating. The Guardian asked hundreds of the world’s top climate scientists for their views.

What is the most effective action individuals can take?

Most experts (76%) backed voting for politicians who pledge strong climate measures, where fair elections take place . The recommendation is powerful in a year when voters in countries including the US, UK, India, the EU, Mexico and South Africa and more all go to the polls.

“I feel the reason behind the lack of response to date is the nervousness of politicians,” said Prof Bill Collins, at the University of Reading in the UK. “Polls suggest voters are actually more willing for governments to take stronger climate action.” Another expert highlighted the danger of a second Donald Trump presidency to climate action.

The survey sought the view of every contactable lead author and review editor of reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 2018, with 380 of 843 responding. Overall the scientists were extremely pessimistic about the prospects of holding global temperature rises below internationally agreed targets.

“The science is there, but the lack of will of politicians worldwide is retarding climate change [action],” said Prof Alexander Milner, at the University of Birmingham in the UK.

What about reducing flying?

The second choice for most effective individual action, according to the experts, was reducing flying and fossil-fuel powered transport in favour of electric and public transport. This was backed by 56%, and two-thirds said they had cut their own number of flights.

Flying is the most polluting activity an individual can undertake and makes up a large part of the carbon footprint of the rich. Globally it is a small minority of people who drive aviation emissions, with only about one in 10 flying at all . Frequent-flying “super emitters” who represent just 1% of the world’s population cause half of aviation’s carbon emissions, with US air passengers having by far the biggest carbon footprint among rich countries.

Can eating less meat help?

Meat production has a huge impact on the environment . Most people in wealthy countries already eat more meat than is healthy for them and more than 60% of the scientists said they had cut their own meat consumption. Almost 30% of the experts said eating less meat was the most effective climate action, while a similar proportion backed cutting emissions from heating or cooling homes, by installing heat pumps, for example.

Is protesting an effective form of climate action?

Almost a quarter of the scientists said they had participated in climate protests, as citizens who are deeply worried about global heating. This included scientists from every continent, including those from the US, Argentina, Germany, Bangladesh, Kenya and Australia.

Having fewer children was backed by 12% of the experts but many made further suggestions. Everyone should “talk about climate as the leading existential threat to societal stability”, said one. Shifting savings or pension funds away from fossil fuel investments and towards green ones was also mentioned by multiple experts.

Prof Vanesa Castán Broto, at the University of Sheffield in the UK, suggested a blunt action for one particular group: “Stop working for the fossil fuel industry.” And a scientist from Cameroon advocated avoiding products responsible for deforestation, such as some beef, timber and cocoa.

Can individual action really help?

Many of the experts were clear on the limits. “It can only go so far. Deep, rapid cuts in carbon emissions from oil and gas, as well as other sectors such as transport, are needed, which are outside the control of the average individual,” said Dr Shobha Maharaj, a climate impacts scientist from Trinidad and Tobago.

“Individual action can only amount to a drop in the bucket – only systemic changes will be sufficient,” said Prof David Wrathall, at Oregon State University in the US. But Prof Hiroyuki Enomoto, at Japan’s National Institute of Polar Research, said that while individual actions have a small impact, they are important in increasing collective awareness of the problem.

Are the scientists walking the talk themselves?

Yes. Many foresee catastrophic levels of global heating and are shifting their focus away from the physics of the climate system towards action that slows global heating and work that protects people against the climate impacts they now see as unstoppable.

“I work more on projects with vulnerable communities so they improve their adaptation to climate change, whose impacts we already experience and which will increase in the future,” said Prof Carolina Vera at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina.

Numerous scientists said they had given their time as expert witnesses in legal cases on climate change and others said they were helping groups to develop new climate policies.

Maharaj now chooses to spend at least half her time turning science into action, as the science director of a company implementing responsible reforestation. “There are so many people on the ground who care and who want to make a difference; that is truly encouraging and really drives me,” she said.

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Can heavy snowfall trigger earthquakes? A new study suggests a link

A new theory suggests that heavy snowfall could be a factor in triggering swarms of earthquakes — evidence that what’s happening on and above the Earth’s surface may play a role in events underground. 

That’s according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances , which points to a potential link between heavy snowfall on Japan’s Noto Peninsula and thousands of quakes measured there since late 2020.

It’s one of the first studies to link changes in weather or climate to earthquake activity. 

"Those big snowfall events seem to correlate well with the start of these big earthquake swarms," said William Frank, an author of the study and an assistant professor of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We shouldn’t forget the climate itself can also play a role in changing the stress state at depth where earthquakes are happening." 

The study does not say that changes in climate or weather are directly causing earthquakes. Instead, it suggests that the rate of earthquakes in a given area could increase or decrease because of changes in how water is moving beneath the surface and how much pressure the weight of the snow exerts. 

David Shelly, a research geophysicist with the United States Geological Society, said the study raises interesting questions, but more research is needed to validate its findings. 

“What they’re showing is that seismicity seems to initiate and ramp up following these times of snowfall. It’s an intriguing observation, I’m not sure it’s conclusive,” he said. 

Still, Shelly expects other seismologists to be keenly interested in the research.

“The sequence is a subject of a lot of interest in the community. This is the first paper that suggests there might be an environmental factor,” Shelly said. 

The study evaluated thousands of earthquakes on Japan’s Noto Peninsula, which is located about 190 miles northwest of Tokyo on the Sea of Japan. In 2021, after a heavy snow, the rate of earthquakes in the area rose substantially — with hundreds recorded each day. 

“They were seeing a factor-10 increase in the number of earthquakes in this region compared to what was happening previously,” Frank said. 

The biggest in the swarm was a magnitude-7.5 earthquake on New Year’s Day of this year. More than 240 deaths were linked to this mainshock event, according to the Japanese Red Cross Society . 

The timing of the swarm was also unusual compared to a typical sequence of aftershocks, according to Frank. 

“They have this statistical signature of earthquakes being driven by something else,” he said. 

He and the other study authors compared the pattern of earthquakes in the Noto Peninsula with a model of pressure within pores under the Earth’s surface. The model accounts for above-ground factors that change the pressure within the rock underneath — such as seasonal sea-level changes, fluctuations in atmospheric pressure and heavy rain or snow events.

The results indicated that the weight of the snowpack on the Noto Peninsula increased the pressure in those pores. Pressure changes from adding and removing weight as snow accumulates and then melts can destabilize pre-existing faults, the researchers think. 

“If you have enough snow, you’ll actually be pushing the earth down and if you take the snow off, it will bounce back up,” Frank said. 

Some previous research has also suggested that environmental factors can play a role in initiating earthquakes. In a 2019 study , Shelly and his colleagues found that spring snowmelt flowing into cracks in the earth near a caldera in the area around Mammoth Lakes, California, likely triggered a swarm of earthquakes. 

The snowmelt recharged groundwater rapidly, and the pressure changes appeared to trigger activity on relatively shallow faults. The researchers found that seismic activity in the region was historically about 37 times more likely during wet periods than dry.  

Research like this has piqued scientists’ curiosity about whether climate change could have a small influence on earthquake behavior. 

“There are more studies that show a connection in some cases between the timing of earthquakes and these processes happening on the surface,” Shelly said. “What I understand of climate change forecasts is that there’s more extreme weather, more periods of prolonged drought and extreme wet periods. That might make these effects more obvious.” 

Evan Bush is a science reporter for NBC News. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Environmental Factor

Your online source for niehs news, niehs-supported research can help people with asthma breathe better.

Recent scientific advances help to identify root causes of and new treatment approaches for asthma, a chronic respiratory disease.

By Janelle Weaver and Caroline Stetler

In recognition of Asthma Awareness Month, Environmental Factor shares the latest discoveries made by NIEHS scientists and grant recipients related to the chronic respiratory disease.

Asthma, which is characterized by coughing, wheezing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath, affects about 25 million people in the United States, including 4.7 million children and adolescents. In 2021, more than 3,500 people across the country died from asthma-related causes.

The following examples of recently published research aim to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of asthma by better understanding the environment’s role in the disease.

Majority of clinicians do not frequently assess environmental asthma triggers

Environmental assessment and recommendations to patients vary considerably among asthma care providers, according to NIEHS researchers and their collaborators. A higher percentage of specialists assessed asthma triggers at home, school, or work than primary care or advanced practice providers. However, 46%-76% of clinicians, depending on clinician type, reported not assessing triggers almost always during asthma visits. Read the full summary .

Citation : Salo PM, Akinbami LJ, Cloutier MM, Wilkerson JC, Elward KS, Mazurek JM, Diette GB, Mitchell TA, Williams S, Zeldin DC. 2023. Environmental management of asthma in clinical practice: results from the 2012 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey . J Allergy Clin Immunol Glob 3(1):100192.

Plasma proteomic signatures of adult asthma

A large-scale proteomics study identified more than 100 plasma proteins associated with asthma in adults, according to NIEHS researchers and their collaborators. In addition to validating previous associations, the researchers identified many novel proteins that could inform the development of diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets in asthma management. Read the full summary .

Citation : Smilnak GJ, Lee Y, Chattopadhyay A, Wyss AB, White JD, Sikdar S, Jin J, Grant AJ, Motsinger-Reif AA, Li JL, Lee M, Yu B, London SJ. 2024. Plasma protein signatures of adult asthma . Allergy 79(3):643-655.

Targeting the root cause of asthma

Housing policy may be a tool to reduce childhood asthma disparities, according to recent findings from the NIEHS-funded Mobility Asthma Project . As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, children who move to neighborhoods with lower rates of poverty experience significant improvements in asthma symptoms, in part by reducing stress. Read the full article .

Citation : Pollack CE, Roberts LC, Peng RD, Cimbolic P, Judy D, Balcer-Whaley S, Grant T, Rule A, Deluca S, Davis MF, Wright RJ, Keet CA, Matsui EC. 2023. Association of a housing mobility program with childhood asthma symptoms and exacerbations . JAMA 329(19):1671-1681.

Why anti-thromboxane therapies have failed in asthma clinical trials

Thromboxane A2 (TXA2) can dampen the immune response in the allergic lung, which may have important therapeutic consequences, according to NIEHS researchers and their collaborators. In contrast to its acute, pro-inflammatory, and bronchoconstrictive effects, TXA2 also has longer-lasting immunosuppressive effects that attenuate Th2 and Th9 cell differentiation that drives asthma progression. These results help explain the failure of anti-thromboxane therapies and suggest that targeting the TXA2/TP receptor signaling pathway may lead to the development of novel asthma treatments. Read the full summary .

Citation : Li H, Bradbury JA, Edin ML, Gruzdev A, Li H, Graves JP, DeGraff LM, Lih FB, Feng C, Wolf ER, Bortner CD, London SJ, Sparks MA, Coffman TM, Zeldin DC. 2024. TXA2 attenuates allergic lung inflammation through regulation of Th2, Th9 and Treg differentiation . J Clin Invest e165689 [Online 14 Mar 2024].

Community-level characteristics modify childhood asthma risk

Early-life air pollution exposure is associated with increased childhood asthma incidence, with higher risk among minoritized families living in densely populated communities, according to NIEHS-funded researchers. Their results suggest that exposure to fine particulate matter (PM) smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) may play a role in the development of asthma by early and middle childhood in communities characterized by fewer opportunities and resources and multiple environmental exposures. Read the full article .

Citation : Zanobetti A, Ryan PH, Coull BA, Luttmann-Gibson H, Datta S, Blossom J, Brokamp C, Lothrop N, Miller RL, Beamer PI, Visness CM, Andrews H, Bacharier LB, Hartert T, Johnson CC, Ownby DR, Khurana Hershey GK, Joseph CLM, Mendonça EA, Jackson DJ, Zoratti EM, Wright AL, Martinez FD, Seroogy CM, Ramratnam SK, Calatroni A, Gern JE, Gold DR; ECHO Children’s Respiratory and Environmental Workgroup. 2024. Early-Life exposure to air pollution and childhood asthma cumulative incidence in the ECHO CREW Consortium . JAMA Netw Open 7(2):e240535.

Additional resources to explore

• For resources on the prevention, treatment, and management of asthma, check out the NIH Learn More Breathe Better® program .
• Lower allergen levels in your home by reviewing these tips on the NIEHS asthma webpage .
• Join an asthma study to help scientists understand how bacteria and other factors in the environment affect people who have moderate to severe asthma.
• Learn about new research exploring the asthma-air pollution connection .
• Check out the asthma research portal from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

(Janelle Weaver, Ph.D., is a contract writer for the NIEHS Office of Communications and Public Liaison. Caroline Stetler is Editor-in-Chief of the Environmental Factor, produced monthly by the NIEHS Office of Communications and Public Liaison.)

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Just a Standard Blog

NIST Research Is Setting the Standard to Help Buildings Withstand Tornadoes

Tornadoes are dramatic and deadly natural disasters. Over 1,200 tornadoes touch down in the U.S. every year — causing dozens of deaths. Until recently, a common perception among structural engineers was that tornadoes were too intense to design buildings to withstand them. 

But thanks to decades of research at NIST , that misconception has changed. 

For the first time, the 2024 version of the International Building Code (IBC) contains a section on tornado resiliency. The IBC is a reference document that’s widely used to create local building code laws. These new building codes will save lives.

In recognition of their work on tornadoes, Long Phan and Marc Levitan have been named finalists for the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal , also known as the Sammie. The Sammies recognize federal employees for outstanding public service.

As Sammies finalists, Long Phan and Marc Levitan are also eligible for the Sammies’ People’s Choice Awards. Vote every day to support their nomination on the Partnership for Public Service’s website.

Phan is the leader of the Structures Group at NIST, where he has worked for nearly 40 years studying how buildings and structures respond to extreme hazards. 

Levitan is a wind and structural engineer. He is the lead research engineer for the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program. 

Both have played a critical role in changing minds about designing for tornadoes by conducting groundbreaking research and advocating for changes to building codes and standards.

The Taking Measure blog sat down with Phan and Levitan to ask them about their careers and the remarkable journey to make our communities more resilient to tornadoes. 

What does a wind engineer do? 

Marc Levitan: We study wind effects on buildings and infrastructure. Basically, it’s how wind interacts with the building and how that creates stress on the structure, known as loads. We study how the building resists those loads. 

Long Phan: I tend to focus on research areas that potentially have a practical impact. For example, with tornadoes, we kept seeing the same type of damage occurring tornado after tornado. We started saying, “Let's develop standards to allow the engineering community to design for tornadoes for the first time.” That was a very lofty goal. 

What about tornado research pulls you in?

Marc Levitan: I was fascinated with windstorms even when I was a child. We lived in Pennsylvania. Hurricane Agnes hit, and I remember there was a tiny little creek in our neighborhood. I watched that turn into a raging river that swallowed up and damaged the houses across the street. Then the water rose in our basement. I saw all my toys floating around. My mom was all scared and worried about it, but I was like, “This is pretty interesting!” 

As I went through school, I also became interested in construction, and those two things sort of came together.

In particular, I saw the chance to study something that wasn’t as well studied as it needed to be and the chance to have a significant impact on engineering practice.

Why study natural disasters?

Long Phan: Nature is a kind of a super laboratory, right? There is no better way to learn from your structural design than by looking at how it performs under extreme conditions.

Natural disasters bring a lot of devastation and loss of life. But they also provide us with unique opportunities to test our knowledge of how we design structures.

So, when there’s a natural disaster, we like to learn from it. What worked? Why did one building stand up and the next building fall down?

Also, natural disaster research is more persuasive to the engineering community. People cannot argue with evidence from a real building.

Do tornadoes only happen in the United States?

Marc Levitan: No. Tornadoes occur in many places around the world. But because of our unique geography in the United States, tornadoes are more frequent and more intense here than in any other place. 

What makes them so dangerous?

Marc Levitan: A combination of factors. The average warning time is only about 13 minutes. And sometimes it’s much less than that. And until very recently, we didn’t have any requirements for tornado loads in the building code.

With a combination of poor construction and an intense tornado, you can have complete destruction of a house. Even the debris is gone, and there’s nothing left but the slab. There are cases in which a whole house can slide off its foundation or tumble away.

Most tornadoes are not that intense. Wind speeds of 130 mph or less will do a lot of damage to a house but typically wouldn’t lead to complete destruction of the building.

Why do tornadoes tend to lift roofs off of buildings?

Marc Levitan: As the air accelerates to go over the roof of the building, you get some uplift pressure. It’s similar to wind flow over an airplane wing. This wind-induced uplift occurs in all types of windstorms.

Tornadoes, though, have two additional phenomena affecting loads on the roof. Strong updrafts near the core of the tornado accentuate the wind-induced uplift. The other component is atmospheric pressure change. In the core of a tornado, there is lower atmospheric pressure. When that tornado moves across a building that is relatively well sealed, higher atmospheric pressure inside the building can push up on the roof and push out on the walls. 

How could you change a building’s design to keep that from happening?

Marc Levitan: The key thing to prevent the roof from coming off is you need to have a strong load path. So that means you have to connect all the pieces from each individual shingle on the roof, all the way down to the foundation. 

That sounds pretty expensive. How much does it cost to make these upgrades?

Marc Levitan: No, it’s not very expensive at all. It may cost maybe $500 or $1,500 extra on new construction to tie all that together for a typical-size home.

How are building codes created?

When buildings fail to keep their occupants safe or even come close to failing during a catastrophic event — natural, human-caused or a mix of both — organizations step up to study what caused the failure. Then, government and industry organizations take action through established processes to etch those lessons into building codes. Learn more about how building codes are created and NIST’s role in keeping you safe in buildings .

What was the moment that you realized that the building codes for tornadoes needed to be updated?

Long Phan: Not updated. There was nothing there before. We had to develop a brand-new provision chapter in the building code.

In 1997, a big tornado hit Jarrell, Texas . 

At the time, the National Weather Service rated tornadoes using the Fujita scale. The Fujita scale estimates tornado wind speed by assessing the damage it caused. It assumes that more damage means there was a higher wind speed. The Jarrell tornado was rated as an F5, the highest possible Fujita rating.

As a structural engineer with experience in structural failure, when I looked at the Jarrell tornado, I just didn’t think that the damage was necessarily caused by extremely high wind speed. So, I began to think, “OK, the Fujita scale might not be accurate.” 

So, the original scale said that tornadoes were much faster than they were in reality?

Long Phan: Yes. Because of the old Fujita scale, engineers thought the typical tornado was extremely powerful. That made the engineering community throw up their hands and say, “Hey, these tornado wind speeds are so high, there’s no way we can economically design structures to withstand them. A building would have to be a stone pyramid or something to be able to resist it.” People gave up right away on designing for tornadoes.

So, our finding that the Fujita scale wasn’t accurate was great news. That was the first step in starting a paradigm shift. It’s not hopeless. Yes, we can design for tornado resiliency.

So I wrote an article a year after the Jarrell, Texas, tornado, together with Emil Simiu. For the first time, we showed that the wind speed that caused the damage was much slower than what the Fujita scale said. We said, “We need to improve the Fujita scale.”

NIST then funded Texas Tech University to try to calculate the wind speed more accurately. Eventually that led to the Enhanced Fujita scale , which is more accurate. It’s a major improvement in tornado rating. The Weather Service adopted the scale in 2007.

The Enhanced Fujita scale is more accurate than the original Fujita scale because it takes new details into account. One of these new details is construction quality. If part of a building is poorly constructed, it will be destroyed by a less severe tornado. It seems like a simple idea, but in extreme cases like the Jarrell tornado, this insight could mean the difference between a rating of 3 and 5.

Marc Levitan: The Enhanced Fujita scale rates tornadoes from EF0 through EF5. 

EF0 is the lowest intensity. And that’s going to be modest damage, like damage to tree branches, gutters coming off of a building, things like that. 

The other end of the scale is EF5. That’ll have the highest wind speeds. At that point, all except for the most well-built homes will be destroyed, and maybe there won’t even be any debris, just a slab left.

Long Phan: Ninety-seven percent of the tornadoes in the country are of lower wind speed, EF2 or lower. And those are wind speeds that we can easily design for. 

We started questioning the common perception that we can’t prepare buildings for tornadoes. Are tornadoes really so strong to the point where we throw up our hands and never design for them?

These ideas marinated over many years until the 2011 Joplin, Missouri, tornado.

Tell me about the Joplin tornado.

Marc Levitan: The Joplin tornado was an EF5 tornado. The Weather Service estimated speeds of 200-plus mph. It struck right through the heart of the city of Joplin, a town of about 50,000 people. It damaged or destroyed about a third of that city, nearly 8,000 buildings. There were 161 fatalities due to the storm and a cost of $3 billion. That made it the single deadliest and the single costliest tornado since we began keeping official records in 1950.

Two days after the tornado hit, NIST had a team on the ground in Missouri trying to understand the damage and understand what the failure mechanisms were. 

Would you say that the new building code stems from the Joplin research?

Marc Levitan: Yes. At the conclusion of our study, we published a technical report in 2014. And as part of that report, we had a series of recommendations for next steps, including working toward new building codes and standards. We immediately started a long-term follow-up project to implement those recommendations. 

A decade of tornado research led by NIST resulted in a new set of tornado hazard maps for the U.S. and a chapter on tornado load requirements in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Standard for Minimum Design Loads on Buildings and Other Structures, called ASCE 7.

Then, we worked with ASCE and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to propose changes to the International Building Code (IBC) to incorporate those requirements into the 2024 IBC.

What’s different about the new model building code?

Marc Levitan: For the first time, the building code includes requirements for the design of many conventional buildings to resist tornadoes. Those requirements apply to certain types of important structures in the community, what the building code identifies as Risk Categories 3 and 4. 

Risk Category 3 would be things like schools, nursing homes and high occupancy buildings, such as theaters. Risk Category 4 includes essential facilities: fire and police stations, hospitals, EMS facilities, etc. 

How does it feel to have all this work finally come out into the International Building Code?

Long Phan: It’s immensely satisfying. It was beyond our wildest imagination. When we developed the Joplin Recommendation Implementation Project in 2014, we outlined the plan to get here. 

But we don’t have total control of the process. The wind-engineering community could easily say, “No. We have not designed for tornadoes before. We don’t want to design for tornadoes now.” We had to convince people about the need for tornado resiliency. 

We hoped that we could start a paradigm shift in building standards , but realistically, in 2014, we didn’t know we could get here. And so, it’s just amazing.

What’s next for you and your research?

Marc Levitan: We still have a lot of work to do on tornadoes. We have only just now gotten a first version of tornado loads in the standard and code. We still have a lot more to learn about tornadoes to fill in knowledge gaps and improve our tornado load requirements in future editions of the standard and code. 

Not only do we have to develop these standards, but we also have to work to help get them adopted. And so that means providing support for state and local communities to be able to better understand and adopt those tornado requirements that are in the model building codes.

Long Phan: I’m leading a project on how climate will affect future codes and standards. We need to work with climatologists and meteorologists to project the changing hazards in the future.

Buildings typically last for 50 or 100 years. By then, the environmental hazards might be different because of climate change. Tornadoes might be more intense, for example. There are also subtle changes. For example, higher temperatures might affect the performance of construction materials and alter buildings’ expected performance in future conditions.

So, we are trying to project the effects of climate on these hazards and plan for it so that buildings will remain resilient in the future.

About the author

Brian Gutierrez

Brian Gutierrez is a public affairs specialist covering energy, climate, fire and wildfire science, buildings and construction, community resilience, robotics, and manufacturing research. Prior to working at NIST, he worked as a podcast producer for institutions including National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal and Freakonomics Radio. In his free time, he enjoys reading science fiction, tinkering with electronics and playing with his dog, Olive.

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Air Cleaners, HVAC Filters, and Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Portable air cleaners (also known as air purifiers) may be particularly helpful when additional ventilation with outdoor air is not possible without compromising indoor comfort (temperature or humidity), or when outdoor air pollution is high.

Caution: The use of air cleaners alone cannot ensure adequate indoor air quality, particularly where significant pollutant sources are present and ventilation is insufficient. Read EPA’s “Guide to air cleaners in the home" (PDF).

When used properly, air cleaners and HVAC filters can help reduce airborne contaminants including viruses in a building or small space. By itself, air cleaning or filtration is not enough to protect people from COVID-19. When used along with other best practices recommended by CDC and other public health agencies, including social distancing and mask wearing, filtration can be part of a plan to reduce the potential for airborne transmission of COVID-19 indoors.

Air cleaners and HVAC filters are designed to filter pollutants or contaminants out of the air that passes thru them. Air cleaning and filtration can help reduce airborne contaminants, including particles containing viruses. 

In order for an air cleaner to be effective in removing viruses from the air, it must be able to remove small airborne particles (in the size range of 0.1-1 um). Manufacturers report this capability in several ways. In some cases, they may indicate particle removal efficiency for specific particle sizes (e.g. “removes 99.9% of particles as small as 0.3 um”). Many manufacturers use the Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR) rating system to rate air cleaner performance. Others indicate they use High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters. In order to select an air cleaner that effectively filters viruses from the air, choose: 1) a unit that is the right size for the space you will be using it in (this is typically indicated by the manufacturer in square feet), 2) a unit that has a high CADR for smoke (vs. pollen or dust), is designated a HEPA unit, or specifically indicates that it filters particles in the 0.1-1 um size range.

Air Cleaners and HVAC Filters in Homes

Choose a portable air cleaner that is intended for the room size in which it will be used and be sure it meets at least one of the following criteria:

• it is designated as High-Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA),
• it is CADR rated for smoke, or
• the manufacturer states that the device will remove most particles in the size range below 1 um.

Most manufacturers provide this information on the air cleaner packaging, label or website description.

Do not use air cleaners that intentionally generate ozone in occupied spaces or that do not meet state regulations or industry standards for ozone generation.

Where to place a portable air cleaner in your home

Choosing where in your home to place a portable air cleaner to help protect from airborne infections depends on the situation. Put the air cleaner in the room where most people spend most of their time (e.g., a living room or bedroom) unless: 

• Someone in a household is especially vulnerable to the risks from infection, then, place the air cleaner where they spend most of their time or
• If someone is isolating because of an active infection, then, place the air cleaner where they are isolating.  See CDC Website 
• Read  EPA’s “Guide to air cleaners in the home”  for more information on HVAC filters and placing and operating a portable air cleaner.
• Use CDC's  Interactive Ventilation Tool  to learn how to decrease levels of virus particles during and after a guest visits a home.

Air Cleaners and HVAC Filters in Offices, Schools, and Commercial Buildings

The HVAC systems of large buildings typically filter air before it is distributed throughout a building, so consider upgrading HVAC filters as appropriate for your specific building and HVAC system (consult an HVAC professional). The variety and complexity of HVAC systems in large buildings requires professional interpretation of technical guidelines, such as those provided by ASHRAE and CDC . EPA, ASHRAE and CDC recommend upgrading air filters to the highest efficiency possible that is compatible with the system and checking the filter fit to minimize filter air bypass.

Consider using portable air cleaners to supplement increased HVAC system ventilation and filtration, especially in areas where adequate ventilation is difficult to achieve. Directing the airflow so that it does not blow directly from one person to another reduces the potential spread of droplets that may contain infectious viruses.

Air cleaning may be useful when used along with source control and ventilation, but it is not a substitute for either method. Source control involves removing or decreasing pollutants such as smoke, formaldehyde, or particles with viruses. The use of air cleaners alone cannot ensure adequate air quality, particularly where significant pollutant sources are present and ventilation is insufficient. See ASHRAE and CDC for more information on air cleaning and filtration and other important engineering controls. 

• See CDC's Interactive School Ventilation Tool to learn how to improve ventilation.

Air Cleaning Devices That Use Bipolar Ionization, Including Portable Air Cleaners and In-duct Air Cleaners Used in HVAC Systems

Some products sold as air cleaners intentionally generate ozone. These products are not safe to use when people are present because ozone can irritate the airways. Do not use ozone generators in occupied spaces . When used at concentrations that do not exceed public health standards, ozone applied to indoor air does not effectively remove viruses, bacteria, mold, or other biological pollutants.

Bipolar ionization (also called needlepoint bipolar ionization) is a technology that can be used in HVAC systems or portable air cleaners to generate positively and negatively charged particles. Provided manufacturers have data to demonstrate efficacy, manufacturers of these types of devices may market this technology to help remove viruses, including SARS-2-CoV, the virus that causes COVID-19, from the air, or to facilitate surface disinfection of surfaces within a treated area. This is an emerging technology, and little research is available that evaluates it outside of lab conditions. As typical of newer technologies, the evidence for safety and effectiveness is less documented than for more established ones, such as filtration. Bipolar ionization has the potential to generate ozone and other potentially harmful by-products indoors, unless specific precautions are taken in the product design and maintenance. If you decide to use a device that incorporates bipolar ionization technology, EPA recommends using a device that meets UL 2998 standard certification (Environmental Claim Validation Procedure (ECVP) for Zero Ozone Emissions from Air Cleaners).

Please note that there are many air cleaning devices that do not use bipolar ionization – the device packaging or marketing materials will typically indicate if bipolar ionization technology is being used.

DIY Air Cleaners

Do-it-yourself (DIY) air cleaners are indoor air cleaners that can be assembled from box fans and square HVAC (or furnace) filters. They are sometimes used during wildfire or other events when air quality is poor and other indoor air filtration options are unavailable.

Evidence from multiple studies indicates that well-built DIY air cleaners can be of comparable effectiveness to commercial air cleaners in reducing airborne particles (including viral particles). However, their performance does vary based on the design selected and the quality of materials and assembly. Each time a DIY air cleaner is re-assembled after changing a filter, its performance may be different. Commercial devices, on the other hand, are tested for performance, and this performance information can be used to match them to the size of a room.

Therefore, EPA does not recommend the routine use of DIY air cleaners as a permanent alternative to products of known performance (such as commercially available portable air cleaners). However, this recommendation should not be interpreted to discourage the use of DIY air cleaners in circumstances when commercially available portable air cleaners or other products of known performance are not available. Using a DIY air cleaner that was inadequately designed or assembled does not worsen indoor air quality and may still offer some benefits.

To address concerns that box fans in DIY air cleaners might be associated with increased risk of fire, EPA and Underwriter Laboratories evaluated the use of DIY air cleaners and the risk of fire. Fans that were built since 2012 and met UL standard 507 did not pose a fire hazard under the conditions tested in the study. (See Research on DIY Air Cleaners to Reduce Wildfire Smoke Indoors for more information.

Tips - If You Choose to Use a DIY Air Cleaner

• Initial costs for single filter designs can be lower than designs that use multiple filters, but operation costs for single filter designs may be higher, for the same performance.
• Multi-filter designs can be harder to put together, and it can be harder to replace their filters. They are also bulkier, and more difficult to move around than single filter designs. However, multi-filter designs generally have superior performance, and they can be more cost effective.
• Using multiple single-filter units in the same room is also worth considering, when balancing performance, costs, space, and ease of assembly for your specific needs.
• Spanish version (pdf)
• One filter flat against the fan (from the Washington Dept of Ecology)
• Two filters taped with cardboard to form a triangle against the fan (from the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation)
• Four filters used to create an air filtration box, also known as the Corsi-Rosenthal box (pdf) (from the University of California, San Diego)
• Use a newer box fan (made since 2012) with a UL (Underwriters Laboratory) or ETL (Intertek) logo because they have verified safety features to reduce the risk of the fan overheating. EPA recommends not using DIY air cleaners built with older model box fans (built before 2012), because their fire hazard is unknown. If older fans are used, they should not be used unattended or while sleeping.
• Use filters of approximately the same shape and size as the box fan. Filters that only partially overlap the fan will result in reduced performance. Filters that are bigger than the fan may be unnecessarily more expensive.
• When assembling a DIY air cleaner, choose a high-efficiency filter, rated MERV 13 or higher, for better filtration. Align the arrows on the filter to be in the same direction of the air flow through the fan. Create a good seal between the fan and the filter.

Features That Can Improve DIY Air Cleaner Performance

• Increase the number of filters in the design. Some designs can have 2, 3, 4 or 5 filters. This feature generally improves performance the most. 
• Use a thick HVAC filter that is 2” or 4” thick instead of a 1” filter. Generally, thicker filters are more expensive than thinner filters, but need to be changed less often. Thicker filters generally provide a large improvement in performance. 
• Cover the outside corners of the front of the box fan  so that air flows only through the center part of the fan where the blades are visible. This approach generally provides a large improvement in performance. You can use cardboard, duct tape, or wood to make the cover – some DIY fan designers call these “shrouds”. This cover can also be made from the cardboard box in which the fan was packaged, at no additional cost. 
• Improve the seal where the filters are attached to the fan or each other. Seal the edges using duct tape, for example, instead of ties or clamps. This is less important for performance than the other features listed above. 

Tips For Operating a DIY Air Cleaner

• Run the device whenever the room is occupied.
• Make sure the device is free from obstructions and air can flow through it.
• Run the device at the highest speed setting acceptable to you.
• Check the filter(s) regularly and replace when dirty.  

Air Cleaner Operation

• Place DIY air cleaners in the rooms where people are spending the most time, in general. To protect especially vulnerable people, place the air cleaner where they spend most of their time.  If someone is isolating because they could be transmitting an infectious disease (such as COVID-19 or flu), place the air cleaner nearest them. 
• Make sure air can flow to the device and away from it, keeping it clear from obstructions. A central place in a room works best, but it is not essential as long as air flow is free. Do not operate an air cleaner inside a closet, as this would limit its effectiveness. 
• Consider running DIY air cleaners the entire time a space is occupied. The longer they run, the more particles they will likely remove.
• Consider running the fan at higher speed settings. Air cleaning performance improves at higher fan speeds, although noise and air movement in the room also increase.
• Change the filters periodically. Longer run times, higher fans speeds, and higher levels of air pollution will mean that the filter will be removing more particles from the air, but the filter will also get dirty more quickly. Change the filter when it appears dirty. When changing the filter(s), wear gloves, an N-95 respirator or similar, and goggles (without holes) for personal protection. Remove the filters gently - outdoors if possible. Avoid shaking or banging the filters to minimize the release of accumulated dust. Dispose of the filters in garbage bags.

Additional Information

• See EPA Air Cleaners and Air Filters in the Home for more information.
• Schools and universities (pdf)  (1.93 MB)
• Commercial buildings (pdf)  (1.32 MB)
• Multifamily owners/managers (pdf) (1.19 MB)
• Core Recommendations for Reducing Airborne Infectious Aerosol Exposure (pdf)  (152.72 KB) 
• Improving Ventilation in Your Home
• CDC Interactive Ventilation Tool (for Homes)

Return to Indoor Air and Coronavirus (COVID-19).

• Indoor Air Quality Home
• Learn about Indoor Air Quality
• IAQ by Building Type
• Network and Collaborate
• Popular IAQ Topics
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Dieback hits Tasmanian forests after dry summer as researchers investigate impact on trees' future

Huge patches of forest in Tasmania have rapidly turned brown over recent months, with many trees dying after a dry summer.

But what this signals for forests in the future as the climate continues to warm is unclear.

From February to the end of April, parts of the state received the lowest rainfall since records began.

Hobart just endured the third-driest summer on record.

"This is putting amazing stress on our trees," The Tree Projects lead researcher Jen Sanger told ABC Radio Hobart's Kylie Baxter.

The extensive sudden tree death in Tasmania is the result of a phenomenon called dieback.

Dieback can be caused by stress due to fungus or other diseases, but in this case it has been driven by drought, Dr Sanger said.

"We're seeing patches of trees dying, which is really distressing … especially in areas that have got shallower soils or rocky soils or north-facing slopes," she said.

Surveys have not yet been done to assess the extent of the dieback in Tasmania.

As forests brown on the island state, ecosystems in southern Western Australia and on mainland Australia's east coast are also experiencing dieback – this includes iconic and culturally significant jarrah and bunya pine forests .

Dieback can make forests vulnerable to bushfire — before the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20, huge areas of forest in the east of mainland Australia experienced dieback.

And as climate change causes hotter and drier summers, can we expect more tree death in the future?

The future of our forests

The quest to quantify how climate-induced dieback might threaten forests in the future puts University of Tasmania plant physiologist Tim Brodribb in a precarious situation – dangling from a rope 70 metres above the forest floor, attaching scientific instruments to a Eucalyptus regnans. 

Otherwise known as the mountain ash or swamp gum, the species is the tallest flowering plant in the world, sometimes exceeding heights of 100 metres.

When it comes to predicting when dieback could strike, Professor Brodribb says "we really are floating in the unknown".

"Are half the forests on Earth going to die on their feet or is it 20 per cent?" he said.

"These are really fundamental questions.

"There's a lot of talk of urgency, but there's not really any metric on the urgency."

Taking the pulse of trees

In the treetops, Professor Brodribb is attaching a device invented by his team — called a 'cavicam' — to the dainty leaf of a giant.

This will measure the strength of the tree's 'pulse'.

Plants create their own food via photosynthesis, where they use energy from the sun and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make glucose (a sugar) and oxygen.

During this process water is moved through the vascular system from the roots before evaporating through pores in the leaves.

The plant's water transport system, or xylem, doesn't require the plant to use any energy.

Instead, it relies on the water tension created as water is pulled from the roots to the leaves.

A tree's pulse is created by the predictable rhythm of increasing and decreasing tension throughout the day.

A resting heartbeat of an adult human is generally between 60 to 100 beats per minute – with no powerful muscular heart, the once-a-day pulse of a tree is far more sedate.

"When the water comes under too much tension, that system breaks and the xylem water snaps," Professor Brodribb said.

Less water in the ground means less water for the trees, essentially pulling the water in the vascular system tight.

Professor Brodribb likens this to "hypertension" for plants.

"The tree is getting what we call xylem embolisms. It's like a pulmonary embolism, it's just a blockage of the vascular system and the tree dies really quickly," he said.

Trees might look like they are moving slowly but zoom in on their leaves and they are as responsive and dynamic as any animal.

Cells in the leaf measure light, humidity and damage, as well as rates of water loss and photosynthesis.

They use this information to decide whether to close their pores to prevent water from escaping or to open them to allow photosynthesis.

"It's an extraordinary example of coordinated and continuous regulation as these little valves are just constantly maintaining the plant in a safe place," Professor Brodribb said.

The cavicams, or pulse monitors, give a live view of how the plant is reacting to its environment.

"That's the pulse of [the tree], and the strength of the pulse tells you how happy the plant is and how much water it's able to lose," he said.

The work Professor Brodribb is doing to understand how much water a tree can lose before it dies is useful for researchers who want to model how climate change may drive dieback, according to Western Sydney University professor Brendan Choat, who also studies dieback.

"Under heat, drought and a combination of heat and drought it helps predict which species are going to die, where and what the implications are for management of forests, and the management national carbon budgets," Professor Choat said.

Giant trees particularly vulnerable

Plants have to transport water against gravity, so the taller the tree the greater the challenge.

"When you think about the weight of a column of 100 metres of water … that's a major feat," Professor Brodribb said.

While attaching a cavicam, Professor Brodribb can get a different perspective on the forest.

"All these giants are emerging all around you, and you notice that all the tops of them are dead," he said.

Tasmania hosts ancient plants as well as giants, being a refuge for water-loving cool weather species that evolved during the time of the dinosaurs.

"Tasmania is in a particularly fragile position … these are the last places that these fabulously old flora have survived," Professor Brodribb said.

On the mainland, species can move south or be planted further south in cooler, more favourable conditions, but Tasmania is at "the edge of the world, you can't go further south".

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Australia’s construction industry must help build a sustainable future

Financial viability alone is no longer enough, the building sector must look at its carbon budget

By Judy Too, Associate Professor Felix Kin Peng Hui and Dr Nilupa Herath, University of Melbourne

For decades, the construction industry has been largely driven by financial feasibility – focusing on cost optimisation and return on investment.

But a paradigm shift is under way, as the world’s environmental crisis intensifies and regulations become stringent . Financial viability alone is no longer enough. Projects are facing increasing scrutiny, based on their carbon footprint.

So, is the construction industry ready to build beyond financial budgets and embrace a new era of carbon-conscious construction?

While Victoria’s regulations, incentives and certifications are nudging the construction industry towards sustainable construction practices, there remains a significant gap between ambition and action.

Despite the ambition to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, buildings are yet to be designed and delivered according to a project-level carbon budget . While there are ambitious targets, the building sector still has a long way to go to bridge the gap between this ambition and action.

A solution to engineering energy-saving smart materials

What exactly is a carbon budget.

Unlike a project’s financial budget, a carbon budget sets a limit on the emissions a project can generate throughout its entire lifecycle – from cradle to grave.

This is not an annual expense but a cumulative sum. Once the allocated global carbon budget is exhausted, net emissions must be maintained at zero.

Engineers and designers use this threshold to guide their material and design choices, and the success of this approach is then evaluated by comparing the actual project’s emission levels to the projected carbon budget at different project lifecycle phases.

Why the carbon gap?

While adopting a carbon budget approach is considered best practice, it is not yet an industry standard.

Our research found significant obstacles impeding progress towards this. A primary barrier is the lack of regulatory frameworks that emphasise adherence to carbon budgets.

This shortfall contributes to a lack of awareness among construction professionals about the importance of carbon budgeting and the environmental impact of their choices. Typically, short-term financial considerations are prioritised over the environmental and financial gains that could be realised in the long term.

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Although choosing low-carbon options could lead to long-term financial benefits through decreased energy use and lower operational costs, these options require a higher initial outlay.

Our research found that many developers are often reluctant to bear these high investment costs due to a phenomenon known as ‘split incentives’. This is when the parties responsible for making design and construction decisions do not directly benefit from the incentives, which makes it challenging to justify the initial investment.

Typically, the benefits of energy efficiency, like reduced energy bills and building operational costs, accrue to the building’s occupants or owners over time, rather than to the developers who fund the initial construction.

So, developers may not see the immediate value in allocating additional funds to improve the building’s performance. This misalignment of costs and benefits, combined with the lack of regulatory enforcement, poses challenges for the industry in effectively adopting low-carbon solutions and implementing sustainable practices.

Building projects require the collaboration of architects, engineers, contractors and suppliers, each contributing to distinct phases of the construction process, and sticking to a carbon budget requires seamless coordination by them all.

But the absence of explicit incentives or penalties for exceeding carbon budgets, along with these coordination challenges, makes it even more complex to integrate carbon-efficient strategies.

On top of this, measuring and verifying emissions across a building’s entire lifecycle is an extra challenge.

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Navigating this complex data and monitoring these procedures often leads to imprecise estimations and, in some cases, a complete lack of accurate data.

Environmental responsibility and business viability

Investors are increasingly prioritising environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors as well as financial metrics.

This shift tells us that a project’s carbon budget could ultimately outweigh its financial budget in importance.

We could see stakeholder discussions change from “What can be achieved within budget X?” to “What can be accomplished within carbon limit X?”

To do this, we need innovative solutions that reduce emissions while meeting project objectives, only then will we ensure the industry’s future success in both environmental and economic fronts.

This shift requires a balance between environmental responsibility and business viability. But additional risks on construction companies through overly stringent regulations and insufficient support will be counterproductive.

Instead, the government should encourage this shift by:

• Focusing on collaborative solutions that provide clear and phased regulatory frameworks that offer businesses sufficient time to adapt and innovate;
• Implementing targeted financial incentives and subsidies, like tax breaks, grants and loan guarantees, to ease the initial burden of adapting to these changes;

Lifting standards in Victoria's building industry

• Fostering knowledge sharing and collaboration between industry stakeholders, policymakers and researchers to develop cost-effective and efficient carbon-reduction strategies; and
• Investing in research and development for new technologies and materials that can make sustainable construction more affordable and accessible.

Embracing carbon budgets alongside financial ones is not an option, but an imperative. The question is not if the industry will adapt, but how quickly and effectively.

By making these changes, the construction industry can not only help to mitigate climate change, but also unlock new opportunities for innovation, resilience and long-term prosperity.

Banner: Getty Images