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Category: Oceans

12 Oct

Why the Salton Sea is turning into toxic dust

by TMR Desk
Oceans
Study identifies cause of lake's water loss The Salton Sea, California's most polluted inland lake, has lost a third of its water in the last 25 years. New research has determined a decline in Colorado River flow is the reason for that shrinking. As the lake dries up, the concentration of salt and chemicals in the remaining water has increased dramatically, causing a mass die-off of fish and birds, including endangered species. The dry lakebed, coated in the salty, toxic water, becomes dust that causes respiratory problems for nearby residents. "It is an environmental catastrophe," said Juan S. Acero Triana, UCR hydrologist and lead author of a new study focused on understanding water movement on and below Earth's surface near the Salton Sea,...
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28 Sep

An ocean inside Earth? Water hundreds of kilometers down

by TMR Desk
Education, Oceans
The transition zone (TZ) is the name given to the boundary layer that separates the Earth's upper mantle and the lower mantle. It is located at a depth of 410 to 660 kilometres. The immense pressure of up to 23,000 bar in the TZ causes the olive-green mineral olivine, which constitutes around 70 percent of the Earth's upper mantle and is also called peridot, to alter its crystalline structure. At the upper boundary of the transition zone, at a depth of about 410 kilometres, it is converted into denser wadsleyite; at 520 kilometres it then metamorphoses into even denser ringwoodite. "These mineral transformations greatly hinder the movements of rock in the mantle," explains Prof. Frank Brenker from the Institute for Geosciences...
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15 Sep

Shallow-water mining is not a sustainable alternative to deep-water mining, scientists argue

by TMR Desk
Oceans, Water
Shallow-water mining projects are already underway in Namibia and Indonesia, and projects have been proposed in Mexico, New Zealand, and Sweden, but the effects of these projects haven't been fully investigated. Scientists publishing on September 13 in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution argue that shallow-water mining needs more rigorous environmental evaluation before it can be declared safe and sustainable. The mining, which takes place at depths less than 200 meters, has been touted as less destructive than terrestrial mining and less risky than mining in poorly understood deep-water ecosystems, but the authors cast doubt on this assertion. "Claims of reduced environmental impacts of shallow-water mining are not backed by credible evaluations but by hopes and assumptions that support a pro-mining narrative,"...
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15 Sep

Are we missing a crucial component of sea-level rise?

by TMR Desk
Climate Change, Oceans
Recent efforts using computational modeling to understand how melting ice in Antarctica will impact the planet's oceans have focused on ice-sheet geometry, fracture, and surface melting -- processes that could potentially trigger or accelerate ice-sheet mass loss. Now, researchers have identified an additional process that could have a similarly significant effect on the ice sheet's future: thawing of the bed, known as basal thaw, at the interface of the land and the miles-thick ice sheet above it. The new study identifies areas that are not currently losing large amounts of mass but could be poised to match some of the largest contributors to sea-level rise -- such as Thwaites Glacier -- if they thawed. Antarctica is roughly the size of the...
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