photo: Shale gas drilling tower (Ruhrfisch)

Jeanne VanBriesen (2009) and her colleagues have found that wastewater generated by hydraulic fracturing for natural gas production contains potentially harmful pollutants, including salts, heavy metals, organic and inorganic compounds, oil, and grease, as well as naturally occurring radioactive material. They note that current treatment and disposal methods are inadequate to protect human health and the environment. Based on these findings, they recommend policy changes, stressing that stronger safeguards at the state and federal levels could better protect against the risks associated with this waste.

photo: Chi King

According to a long-term study on the Wolong Nature Reserve in China coauthored by Jianguo Liu (2001), the benefits of nature-based tourism often go mostly to a few local elites and rarely reach the poor. Liu and his colleagues also found that participating in tourism raises environmental awareness and acknowledgement of tradeoffs between conservation and tourism-focused development. For protected areas in developing countries, local people, especially the poor, should be included in the policy design process from the early phases, in order to reduce poverty and promote conservation effectively, the team says.

photo: Stephen Gold

Whendee Silver (2009) and her colleagues are partnering with California ranchers to learn how rangelands can be used to remove carbon dioxide from the air and reduce greenhouse gases. The team uses high-quality compost to grow grasses that absorb the carbon and pump it deep into the soil through the plants' roots. They have found that soil in the composted areas stores more carbon than soil in other areas. As a next step, the team is looking to other partners to help create financial incentives for more landowners join the project. "The endgame is to have a real impact on farms and on the climate," they say.

photo credit: David Hooper

A research team including David Hooper (2006), Emmett Duffy (2006), and Bruce Hungate (2004) has found that future loss of species could impact ecosystem health and productivity as much as global warming and pollution. They are the first group to make a comprehensive comparison of the impacts of biodiversity loss with the effects of other environmental changes. The team emphasizes the need for stronger efforts to protect biodiversity, which supports nature’s ability to provide services such as food, clean water, and a stable climate.

photo: PO3 Patrick Kelley

Chris Reddy (2006) reflects on his experiences dealing with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and finds gaps in approach toward the disaster among responders from media, government, and academe. He feels that, despite keen interest to help the situation, the stakeholders involved had no common language, timeframe, set of values, or pre-existing relationships. "We can take a lesson from Deepwater Horizon and start opening new lines of communication before the next disaster," he says.

photo: Daderot

Rashid Sumaila (2009) and his colleagues estimate that damage to the world's oceans from human activity will cost the global economy over 400 billion dollar per year in the next 40 years. They looked at impacts to fishing, tourism, and other economic activity from the top six threats to the ocean: acidification, warming, oxygen depletion, sea level rise, pollution, and the overuse of ocean resources. By putting a dollar value on services that the ocean provides to human, the authors hope to help people understand the risks and spur policy makers to take action to protect the ocean's irreplaceable resources.