Latest Debris Stories
WASHINGTON, June 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Fishing for Energy, the unique partnership providing fishermen with a cost-free solution for recycling and recovering energy from old fishing gear, is commemorating World Ocean's Day this year with the achievement of a significant milestone - collecting one million pounds of old fishing gear and marine debris since the program's inception in 2008. A partnership among Covanta Energy Corporation, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), the...
Use your smart phone to tackle a growing problem Summer is around the corner and millions of people worldwide will be heading to beaches and waterways for sun and fun. Will they find clean beaches and clear waterways?With bottles, cans, abandoned or lost fishing gear and other marine debris washing up on our shores each year, the University of Georgia and NOAA have teamed up to create a new, innovative cell phone reporting mechanism to combat the marine debris problem. This high-tech tool, or...
The huge tsunami triggered by the 9.0 Tohoku Earthquake destroyed coastal towns near Sendai in Japan, washing such things as houses and cars into the ocean. Projections of where this debris might head have been made by Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Maximenko has developed a model based on the behavior of drifting buoys deployed over years in the ocean for scientific purposes.The debris first spreads out eastward...
A Pentagon report warned that space is so littered with debris that a collision between satellites could set off an "uncontrolled chain reaction" capable of destroying the communications network on Earth. Scientists said that the volume of abandoned rockets, shattered satellites and missile shrapnel in Earth's orbit is reaching a "tipping point" and is now threatening the $250 billion space services industry. The report said that a collision between two satellites or large...
According to research supported by green campaigners, about 250 billion microscopic pieces of plastic are floating in the Mediterranean, creating a biological hazard that reverberates up the food chain. French and Belgian marine biologists who analyzed water samples in July from France, northern Italy and Spain performed the research. "The rough estimate is that there are roughly 250 billion pieces of micro-debris in all the Mediterranean," Francois Galgani, of the French Institute...
Southampton scientists along with colleagues in New Zealand have used a sophisticated optical mapping technique to identify and accurately measure changes in coastal morphology following a catastrophic series of landslides."Our findings are important for assessing geological hazards and reducing the dangers to human settlements," said geophysicist Professor Jon Bull of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science based at the National Oceanography Centre,...
According to researchers studying the impacts of debris on marine life, one in three loggerhead turtles in the Adriatic Sea has plastic in its intestine. The shallow waters in the Adriatic Sea are an important place for the turtles to feed as they develop into adults. However, the seafloor there is one of the most polluted in Europe. Researchers studied the bodies of dead sea turtles that had been stranded or accidentally caught by fishing vessels. The team found that animals ranging from...
Global Aerospace Corporation (GAC) announced recently that Dr. Kristin L. Gates will present a paper on de-orbiting space junk at the August 2 Artificial and Natural Space Debris session of the AIAA Astrodynamics Specialists Conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Gates will describe GAC's Gossamer Orbit Lowering Device (GOLD) for safe and efficient removal from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) of dangerous space objects. The patented GOLD system concept uses a very large ultra thin balloon envelope...
Debris from a Chinese satellite that had concerned scientists earlier Thursday is now not expected to pose a threat to the International Space Station, according to NASA officials. NASA said the debris will come no closer than 5 miles to the space station. It said no crew action is necessary and operations will not be affected. Mission Control gave the Expedition 24 crew the all-clear at 12:45 pm EDT. Earlier on Thursday, NASA reported that a piece of debris from a Chinese satellite may pass...
Countless studies and reports exist describing how a landscape is impacted after logging Douglas-fir: What is the impact on the soil? Should one leave the debris in place? Pile it? Burn it or haul it offsite in preparation for replanting the area in the future?However, few studies have examined this hypothesis: Is it possible, that the debris remaining on the ground after logging may actually suppress competing vegetation resulting in a positive effect on the survival of Douglas-fir...
