ScienceDaily: Earth & Climate News

The tiny, pale surf clam about the size of a fingernail that most people have seen and collected on beaches around the world holds clues in its shell to Earth's past. For the first time, researchers have been able to identify the monthly, and even weekly, ocean temperatures recorded in these smooth clam shells. Because ancient civilizations consumed these ubiquitous clams and left the shells at archeological sites, researchers now have a new way to reconstruct climate and its fluctuations from nearly 3,000 years ago.

Thinning treatments reduce the risk of wildfire and provide ecological benefits for California's forests, but they also generate wood residues that are often burnt or left to decay, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A new analysis shows how incentivizing industries that convert wood residues into useful products -- including biofuels and construction-quality engineered lumber -- could fund forest thinning treatments while preventing the release of carbon.

Plastics found in electronic waste (e-waste) are rarely recycled due to their complex composition and hazardous additives, but scientists have now developed a new use for them -- by repurposing them as an alternative to the plastics used in laboratory cell culture containers, such as petri dishes.

Scientists have developed a new simple, inexpensive and fast method to detect and measure very low concentrations of agricultural lime in soils, which is generally a time consuming and difficult exercise.

The supply of farmed seafood such as salmon and mussels are projected to drop 16 per cent globally by 2090 if no action is taken to mitigate climate change, according to a new study. Ocean-farmed seafood or mariculture is often seen as a panacea to the problems of depleted stocks of wild fish and growing human demand, and is expected to grow substantially in the coming years. But the new modelling study highlights the industry is as vulnerable to the effects of climate change as any other. If we continue to burn fossil fuels at our current rate, the amount of seafood such as fish or mussels able to be farmed sustainably will increase by only eight per cent by 2050, and decline by 16 per cent by 2090.

In an oceanic omen for climate change's intensifying effects, new research shows that seagrass suffers from a lesion-filled wasting disease through large swaths of intertidal meadows in the Pacific Northwest. The grasses' once-vibrant plant root systems are deteriorating, too.

Many bats die at wind turbines when colliding with the spinning blades. Currently it is unclear whether all age cohorts or sexes are equally vulnerable. A comparison of age, sex and geographic origin of Nathusius' pipistrelles killed at wind turbines and living conspecifics from nearby populations now reveals that juveniles are killed more frequently than adults compared to their proportion in local populations. Females are killed more frequently than males -- yet in line with their higher proportion in local populations. The high number of killed females and the elevated vulnerability of juveniles may have a negative effect on the long-term survival of populations, indicating that the current practice of wind energy production may not be ecologically sustainable.

Range anxiety with electric commercial vehicles is real, since running out of battery can have serious consequences. Researchers have developed tools to help electric delivery-vehicles navigate strategically to use as little energy as possible. The secret lies in looking beyond just the distance traveled, and instead focusing on overall energy usage -- and has led to energy savings of up to 20 per cent.