News clips of forests burning in California, conflagrations on hillsides, black smoke billowing into communities, got me thinking about alternatives to the merits of planting trees to fight climate change. Trees store carbon that photosynthesis has pulled from the air as carbon dioxide. Plants take energy from the sun to break CO2 molecules into carbon…
Tasiilaq on Amassalit Island was our first encounter in East Greenland, having crossed the Denmark Strait in a following sea from Iceland. With a population of about 1,000 people – one of the largest in East Greenland – Tasiilaq rises steeply out of the water. Red, yellow, green, and blue wooden houses pop like dice…
The air here is so clear that it is incomprehensible, friend. We are sailing on the vessel Tecla, with the swirled gray gneiss and black granites of Greenland rising vertically before us. A whale surfaces, blows, black back wheels revealing a sickle fin before sliding back beneath the waves. It looks like a minke whale,…
I recently returned from a research sail through the Denmark Straits and I couldn’t be more in awe of mother nature. We sailed aboard the gaft-rigged ketch Tecla out of Isafjordur, Iceland, bound for Greenland. We were thirteen women and men on a hundred-foot steel-hulled sailing vessel. As we cleared the steep-sided fjord and sailed…
In July, we took ORI’s Clean Water and Healthier Lawns Campaign to Martha’s Vineyard. ORI’s summer intern Jessie McIsaac led the initiative because of her multi-generational ties to the island. Morgan Berman, the other ORI summer intern, assisted Jessie both in the office and on the Vineyard. Nitrogen pollution has long been an issue for…
An ice cube in a pint glass demonstrates how the shrinking polar ice cap gives more flow to a stronger Gulf Stream, while an ice cube in the adjacent pint glass demonstrates why Gulf of Maine seawater is not warming faster than any other water body. On the hot bricks of Boston’s City Plaza at…
No one wants to wake up early to snag an expensive parking spot at the beach, only to be confronted by garbage. People go to the beach seeking fresh, salty air, warm sun, the cold refreshing waves, and perhaps some ice cream. Finding more evidence of man’s encroachment in the form of a beach strewn…
Lake Erie, (photographed above in June 2018) the 2nd smallest of the great lakes which borders Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York is facing another summer of serious algal blooms. The algae is capable of shutting down water systems, closing beaches, and disrupting the tourist economy. Although this summer’s bloom isn’t predicted to be as serious…
