#environmental science

[oceanography-com]

The Science of Tides: How They Work and Why They Matter

Tides, driven by the Moon and Sun, cause regular rises and falls in ocean water. These movements shape coastlines, influence marine life, and affect currents. Understanding tides is crucial for coastal safety, navigation, and ecosystem health.

Read more: oceanography.com

[scienceguy22]

Nope, the Swedish crows are off duty—Sweden says they never hired the birds to clean up discarded cigarette butts.

A behavioral scientist did propose an idea in 2022 to train wild crows in Sweden to pick up cigarette butts & drop them into special machines that would reward them with food, but the city never approved or implemented the project. There's no doubt that crows are famously intelligent—capable of counting, recognizing faces & using tools—so people found it believable. Their problem-solving, memory, & reasoning skills often fall in the range of a 3-5-year-old child. Crows can remember human faces for years across seasons. A crow's brain is only about the size of a walnut, but it has extremely dense neurons; its forebrain functions like a mammalian prefrontal cortex, so it packs a lot of power into 3 oz (85 g).

A Science Week demonstration in 2022 showed the concept of crow cleanup crews for cigarette butts, & a startup called Colrvid Cleaning pitched the idea. Social media amplified the claim until it looked like an official Swedish program. Although Sweden never did this, in 2018 a French historical theme park used trained birds to pick up cigarette butts. This only highlights that cigarette butt filters are one of the most common, most toxic, & most environmentally persistent forms of litter on Earth. They're everywhere; they don't biodegrade & they leach chemicals into soil & water. The fact that people even imagined outsourcing cleanup to birds shows how badly humans are failing at managing this waste stream. Globally, 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are discarded each year. That's enough to fill hundreds of Olympic swimming pools. They're the #1 most littered item on Earth—more common than plastic bags, bottles, or straws.

Filters are plastic, not cotton. They leak nicotine, arsenic, lead, cadmium, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic chemicals & tar residues into soil, lakes, rivers, & beaches. A single butt can contaminate 1-2 gallons (4-8 L) of water to harm aquatic life. Wildlife mistake them for food. We need better waste management & better human behavior, not birds.

[mazingamazingly]

Why Do Lakes Lose Oxygen in Late July?

Thermal stratification creates three distinct water layers—epilimnion (25-30°C), thermocline, and hypolimnion (4-8°C)—that trap oxygen below and prevent surface mixing until autumn turnover. Algae blooms consume 80-90% of available oxygen during bacterial decomposition in just 2-4 weeks, dropping di

Read the full story →

[mazingamazingly]

Why Do Lakes Lose Oxygen in Late July?

Thermal stratification creates three distinct water layers—epilimnion (25-30°C), thermocline, and hypolimnion (4-8°C)—that trap oxygen below and prevent surface mixing until autumn turnover. Algae blooms consume 80-90% of available oxygen during bacterial decomposition in just 2-4 weeks, dropping di

Read the full story →

[mazingamazingly]

Why Do Lakes Lose Oxygen in Late July?

Thermal stratification creates three distinct water layers—epilimnion (25-30°C), thermocline, and hypolimnion (4-8°C)—that trap oxygen below and prevent surface mixing until autumn turnover. Algae blooms consume 80-90% of available oxygen during bacterial decomposition in just 2-4 weeks, dropping di

Read the full story →

[livvyremmings]

I talk about the Salish Sea like she’s my dead wife.

[sophiplextravelis]

I've been pondering death a lot for a person who touches grass professionally

[un-rot]

the vulture conservation post made me look into trophic cascade again, so here's the page I read.

@uzmacchiato for the dividers