The status of soil can be represented by many properties. However, how well they represent soil status depends on the level of rainfall in the area. Researchers in Spain found that in wet regions soil status is strongly linked to biological factors, such as vegetation cover and biodiversity. In drier regions, status has a stronger link to the physical properties of the soil.

Santa Monica Beach, a very wide, artificially built, and regularly maintained beach. Photographed on September 9, 2019 in Santa Monica, California.; Credit: James Bernal for KPCC

Jacob Margolis

You may not know this, but oftentimes in newsrooms we write obituaries ahead of time so that they're ready to publish when the person passes away. But what if the obit wasn't for a person, but for a place that's been the home of magical memories for generations?

Sea levels could rise by more than three feet by the end of the century, and that's going to mean many things you love about our coast are not going to be around much longer.

As part of our Covering Climate Now collaboration, we thought it was appropriate to start preparing an obit for one of Southern California's most prized areas of Pacific Coast Highway: Santa Monica to Malibu. 

It's slated to run in 80 years or so - the year 2100. 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A man walks past Low Library on the Columbia University campus in New York City on March 9.; Credit: Mark Lennihan/AP

Anya Kamenetz | NPR

On Thursday, Columbia University and Pace University joined a growing number of colleges — including University of Miami, Drexel University and the University of Arizona — facing legal complaints aimed at their response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Thursday's suits were filed in federal court on behalf of Xaviera Marbury, a student at Pace, and an unnamed student at Columbia. Both complaints say students are owed reimbursement as well as damages for services that are no longer available now that campuses are closed. In both cases, those services include:

I. Face-to-face interaction with professors, mentors, and peers;
ii. Access to facilities such as computer labs, study rooms, laboratories, libraries, etc.;
iii. Student governance and student unions;
iv. Extra-curricular activities, groups, intramurals, etc.;
v. Student art, cultures, and other activities;
vi. Social development and independence;
vii. Hands-on learning and experimentation; and
viii. Networking and mentorship opportunities.

Marbury's complaint says her dorm rent costs $9,380 for the semester; she lost access to her dorm for approximately half the semester, the complaint says, but Pace is only offering to reimburse $2,000. Similarly, the Columbia complaint says that the student was refunded just 11% of their mandatory fees for the semester. The complaints also claim that though classes continue, their degree will eventually be worth less on the job market.

Marie Boster, a spokeswoman for Pace University, pointed out that the college is still offering services like tutoring and counseling along with classes remotely. "The faculty, staff and leaders of Pace continue to work tirelessly to support our students during this challenging time," she says. Columbia University had no comment on the suit.

The complaints, filed by a personal injury law firm in South Carolina, seek class action status on behalf of Columbia and Pace students. That same firm, Anastopoulo Law Firm, is also behind the suits against the University of Miami and Drexel.

"Universities are not delivering those services that students and their families have paid for," Anastopoulo attorney Roy T. Willey IV tells NPR. "It's not fair for the universities with multi-million dollar endowments to keep all of the money that students and their families have paid."

If the suits gain traction, the resulting damages would be a further blow to colleges already reeling from the financial impacts of the coronavirus. As NPR's Elissa Nadworny has reported, college endowments have taken a hit, some schools have begun to announce hiring freezes and others are looking at merging or closing their doors.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Michelle Obama in "Becoming".; Credit: Netflix/"Becoming" (2020)

FilmWeek®

Larry Mantle and KPCC film critics Claudia Puig, Peter Rainer and Christy Lemire review this weekend’s new movie releases.

• "Becoming" on Netflix

• "Rewind" on VOD (iTunes) & on PBS May 11th (check your local listings)

• "Spaceship Earth" on virtual cinemas (Laemmle's & The Frida), streaming on Hulu, and VOD

• "Arkansas" on VOD (Spectrum On Demand, DirecTV on Demand, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play, FandangoNOW & Amazon Prime)

• "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind" on HBO & Amazon Prime

• "Driveways" on VOD (Amazon Prime and Google Play)

• "Walkaway Joe" on VOD (iTunes, Google Play, FandangoNOW & Vudu)

• "Intrigo: Dear Agnes" on VOD (iTunes, Google Play, FandangoNOW & Vudu)

• "Valley Girl" on VOD (iTunes, Google Play & Amazon Prime)

• "On a Magical Night" on virtual cinemas, including Laemmle's & The Frida

• "The Delicacy" on SOMM TV

Guests:

Claudia Puig, film critic for KPCC and president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA); she tweets @ClaudiaPuig

Christy Lemire, film critic for KPCC, RogerEbert.com and co-host of the ‘Breakfast All Day’ podcast; she tweets @christylemire

Peter Rainer, film critic for KPCC and the Christian Science Monitor

 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A still from "Spaceship Earth".; Credit: Neon/"Spaceship Earth" (2020)

FilmWeek®

Two months is a long time to be quarantined in one place. Just ask, well, pretty much anyone in the era of COVID-19. But imagine if you were quarantined for two years instead of two months, all in the name of science, and it was by choice!

In 1991, eight researchers did exactly that in Oracle, Arizona as part of a first-of-its-kind mission called BIOSPHERE 2. No, there was no failed BIOSPHERE 1 mission -- BIOSPHERE 1 is planet Earth. The mission’s goal was to create a living ecosystem inside a massive glass and steel facility to show that human life could be sustained in outer space. The idea was that whenever humanity finally did gain the ability to travel deeper into space and colonize another planet, a biosphere would need to be built first so that life could be sustained. But what started as a science experiment quickly evolved into a cultural phenomenon, and while some watched with bated breath to see whether the researchers could really create a living ecosystem in a controlled environment, others saw the project and those who were involved as a cult of sorts. Director Matt Wolf explores BIOSPHERE 2  the researchers (“biospherians”) who carried the mission out, what ultimately happened and the good and bad ways in which it became a cultural phenomenon.

Today on FilmWeek, “The Frame” host John Horn talks with Wolf about the making of the film and what can be learned from the biospherians about our current situation staying at home because of COVID-19.

Guest:

Matt Wolf, director of the documentary “Spaceship Earth"

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A recent study has demonstrated that it is possible to identify which human pressures, such as fisheries and environmental pollution, are causing changes in Marine and Coastal by combining the trends in different indicators. This approach can be used as a tool for integrated ecosystem assessment and management.

Understanding the impacts of human activities on Marine and Coastal is important to ensure their sustainability. New research has indicated that seafloor ecosystems are less likely to recover from fishing if they are in rocky or reef habitats and if dredging and bottom trawling equipment is used for shellfish and various fish species. When fishing is combined with the extraction of aggregate for mineral resources, the impacts are even more damaging.

The effects of seafloor trawling can extend further than the immediate fishing grounds, affecting delicate deep-sea ecosystems, new research suggests. In this Mediterranean study, the researchers demonstrated that clouds of sediment from trawling reached deeper habitats, increasing water-borne sediment particle concentrations to a hundred times that of background levels.

Seabed fishing grounds in the UK are made up of intensively fished core areas surrounded by more rarely used marginal areas, new research shows. Excluding these margins, which contain only 10% of the total fishing activity, approximately halves the total area of fishing grounds. Thus reducing the fishing footprint by closing the marginal areas will disproportionately reduce the seabed impact of fishing activity.

People using a coworking space.; Credit: Cross Campus

Brian Watt

In a sign of increased desire of professionals to work remotely, the successful Santa Monica shared workspace Cross Campus is opening a second location in Pasadena later this month, and the company hopes to open eight others in Southern California and beyond in the next two years. 

Dubbed by one user as  the “nerve center” of the Silicon Beach tech scene, Cross Campus opened its membership-based workspace facility in Santa Monica in 2012.   

But co-founder Ronen Olshansky said the shared workspace phenomenon isn't limited to coders. 

"Fewer and fewer people are making the traditional drive into the corporate office," Olshansky said. "They're working remotely as professionals, going off on their own as freelancers, or they're starting their own companies as entrepreneurs."  

A forecast from Forrester Research says that 43 percent of workers will telecommute by 2016, compared to estimates of about a quarter of the workforce telecommuting last year. 

Olshansky said that, for many people, working from home or in a coffee shop isn't productive. 

That's led shared workspaces to pop up in Los Angeles, Culver City and Santa Monica. Among them: Maker City L.A., WeWork, NextSpace, Coloft and Hub LA.  

Los Angeles-based tech investor David Waxman said these kind of shared spaces are crucial for the early stages of tech ventures.

"When you’re just starting out, and capital is very scarce, having not to commit to an entire office but having part of an office is very important," Waxman said.  “There comes a collective energy when a bunch of entrepreneurs get together in the same space, even if they’re not working on the same project."

And he said Pasadena is a good choice for a shared workspace.

"It is the home of Caltech, the Arts Center, and IdeaLab — probably the world’s first tech incubator — started there," he said.

But he said the need isn't limited to Pasadena.

"In Silver Lake, in South Pasadena, in Glendale, you see a lot of little pockets of  people getting together, and as soon as there’s a critical mass, we’ll see co-working spaces like Cross Campus come into being," said Waxman, who named his investment firm TenOneTen after the two freeways that connect Santa Monica and the Westside to Pasadena. 

Alex Maleki of IdeaLab in Pasadena is happy a well-known company is opening up in his city. 

"Anything that helps attract talent and capital to the region," Maleki said, "is absolutely fantastic."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Urban planning policy has had a powerful influence on the amount of green space in cities, according to a recent UK study. It found that a change in planning policy in 2000 led to a decline in urban green space in nine cities between 2001 and 2006, although the amount of green space in all but one of the cities studied has increased overall since 1991.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills, which consist of everyday consumer items, are potential long-term sources of emissions that could threaten the environment and human health if they are not managed carefully after closure. New research has presented a methodology to estimate future emission levels for closed MSW landfills and the impact of different aftercare strategies.

A recent study has assessed the lifecycle environmental impact during the production and use phase of three battery types for plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and full performance battery electric vehicles (BEV). The study indicates that newer lithium-ion (Li-ion) technologies outperform current nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries and identifies processes contributing to 13 environmental impacts

For the first time, researchers have applied a carbon footprint analysis to calculate carbon sequestration by an urban green space. Their results indicate that urban green space can act as a carbon sink, but its design and maintenance influence the amount stored.

A new tool has been developed, with input from the public, to measure and compare the quality of green spaces in urban areas. A UK case study suggests that litter and vandalism are among the factors most likely to prevent local residents from using and benefiting from green spaces.

Even small areas of semi-natural vegetation, farmlands and abandoned farmlands provide important ecosystem services in urban environments. However, there is widespread loss of these non-urbanised areas (NUAs) owing to poor planning and urban sprawl. A new five-step process has now been developed that can inform effective planning to protect and enhance the value of urban green spaces.

Researchers have developed a new model to assess the health-related external costs arising from air pollution from ten major emission sectors. Applying the model at national and Europe-wide levels, they suggested that the major contributors to costs were industrial power production, agriculture, road traffic and domestic combustion.

The global production, trade and use of goods and services has a significant impact on the environment — and rates of consumption are rising. A new study combines two assessment methods to quantify the impact of European trade on the environment. It finds that, overall, the EU was a net importer of environmental impact from 2000 to 2010, that machinery, equipment and vehicles contributed most to the EU’s export impacts and that the EU’s trade balance (import impact minus export impact) is increasing over time. The two assessment methods complement one another well and could form the basis for future country or region-wide studies, suggest the researchers, by enabling a detailed analysis of individual steps within a product’s trade flow, while also providing a larger picture of the overall process.

As 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing (AM), begins to replace conventional manufacturing, the environmental impacts of its implementation must be assessed. This study conducted a life cycle assessment (LCA) to investigate the environmental and resource implications of using AM to manufacture the metal parts of an engine in a light distribution truck. In the LCA, the impacts of both present and possible future states of AM technology were compared with current conventional manufacturing. The results suggest that there are potential environmental and resource benefits1 to AM technologies, but that these benefits rely on the achievement of a clean energy source and further technological development.

New research has compared the environmental impact of four alternative methods of water supply in Copenhagen. Results indicated that rain and stormwater harvesting is the most environmentally sound approach, whilst desalination currently has a large environmental impact, mainly due to electricity use. However, if freshwater extraction is included as an impact, the environmental credibility of desalination is improved.

A recent study has compared the environmental impact of a range of building materials. Energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions and water demand can all be reduced by switching to renewable sources of energy, improving technologies and promoting eco-friendly alternative materials.

New research has assessed the environmental impact of gold production using life cycle assessment and estimated embodied energy and greenhouse gases, embodied water and solid waste burden that each tonne of gold produces, using various processes.

Increasing the use of recycled materials could substantially reduce the carbon footprint of plastic packaging, research suggests. A new study of the life-cycle of plastic trays has shown that increasing the proportion of recycled material could lead to a significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

As the media environment changes, the way scientists communicate their work must also evolve. This study explored the effect of public communication on the scientific ‘impact’ of America’s most highly cited nanotechnology researchers. It provides the first evidence that outreach activities, such as speaking to journalists and being mentioned on Twitter, can increase a scientist’s impact.

Sea level rise may cause soils in coastal regions to become more saline. In a recent study, reproduction in soil invertebrates was impaired in soils containing salt levels below the threshold used currently to define saline soils. The authors recommend community-level studies to further investigate the salt concentrations that are harmful to soil organisms.

New Dutch research has investigated the composition and strategies of local activist groups who oppose changes to land use. The results indicated that activists tend to have a higher level of education and live in densely populated areas. They most frequently use awareness-raising strategies, especially when fighting new housing projects.

Even small areas of semi-natural vegetation, farmlands and abandoned farmlands provide important ecosystem services in urban environments. However, there is widespread loss of these non-urbanised areas (NUAs) owing to poor planning and urban sprawl. A new five-step process has now been developed that can inform effective planning to protect and enhance the value of urban green spaces.

Researchers at the Stowers Institute have established a definitive link between the makeup of the microbiome, the host immune response, and an organism's ability to heal itself.

read more

Parts of Africa and the Asia-Pacific region may be vulnerable to outbreaks of the Zika virus, including some of the world's most populous countries and many with limited resources to identify and respond to the mosquito-borne disease, a new study says.

read more

A recent EU-supported study has analysed the development of volunteer or ‘rogue’ GM (genetically modified) maize plants in a conventional crop field. It finds that their numbers are low and do not exceed the EU’s threshold of 0.9 per cent for incidental GM content.

A recent study has compared the chemical environmental impacts of using the weed controller glyphosate on glyphosate-tolerant (GT) crops, with the use of other herbicides on non-GT crops. Glyphosate used on GT crops had lower environmental impacts than herbicides used on non-GT crops, but the persistence of AMPA (a break-down product of glyphosate) in soils could be a problem in the future.

The number and impacts of disasters have increased in Europe in the period 1998-2009, a new report by the European Environment Agency (EEA) concludes. The report assesses the frequency of disasters and their impacts on humans, the economy and ecosystems and calls for better integrated risk management across Europe.

The damaging health impacts of some key air pollutants can occur at lower atmospheric concentrations than indicated by the most recent World Health Organization (WHO) Air Quality guidelines, set in 2005 and currently used in Europe. This is according to a new WHO report, which assesses scientific evidence to help inform European air pollution policies.

Exposure to excessive noise is recognised as a major environmental health concern. This Thematic Issue examines the impact of noise on human health and outlines how policy initiatives may limit health effects from noise annoyance - and improve wellbeing.

Exposure to aircraft noise at night for more than 20 years could increase the risk of heart disease and stroke, according to research conducted around six European airports. Risk also increased for those constantly exposed to road traffic, but this may have been caused by air pollution rather than noise.

People living close to road, rail and aircraft noise are likely to experience negative health effects. Long-term noise exposure may lead to problems with their heart and circulatory (cardiovascular) system and night-time noise is particularly disruptive of sleep patterns, which in turn may lead to cardiovascular health problems, a review of research into the effects of noise on cardiovascular diseases has found.

While occupational exposure to noise has declined, ‘social’ exposure in the form of personal music players or rock concerts is estimated to have tripled for young people since the 1980s. A new review examines studies that have investigated noise sources, including environmental (e.g. traffic) and social (e.g. via headphones) sources. The review also explores research into the range of health effects beyond hearing impairments, such as annoyance and cardiovascular problems.

Standards for environmental management, such as EMAS and ISO 14001, aim to help organisations become more sustainable, but they have received little evaluation. A new Italian study is the first to quantitatively compare the impacts of these two standards. Its results suggest that EMAS's stipulation that organisations must report their ongoing performance may bring sustained environmental benefits in the longer term.

Species will have to shift their range much faster in some areas of the world than others to keep pace with climate change, according to new research. Those that live in certain areas, such as mangroves, tropical basins and deserts, may not be able to move fast enough over the next 100 years to survive.

New insights into the impact of dredging on the environment highlight the distinction between small, frequent deposits of sediments arising from maintenance dredging, and larger one-off capital deposits. Understanding this distinction is crucial for effective licensing and monitoring of dredging.

Environmental impact studies which are conducted early on in the development of wave and tidal-power schemes allow the schemes' technology to be adapted to consider their impacts on marine ecosystems, according to a recent study which reports on a Swedish research wave park.

A recent study in Finland suggests new building regulations will lead to a substantial reduction in the total energy demand and CO2 emissions in new apartment buildings. This could have an impact on the source of energy used for new buildings. In particular, the demand for space heating will fall, which could have an impact on the source of energy used for new buildings.

A new study highlights the environmental impact of beef produced from specialist meat production based on suckler herds, as opposed to that based on the calves of dairy cows. According to the study, beef produced in this way has a greater impact in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, acidification and eutrophication potential, and on land use.

The impact of climate change on electricity consumption is important to both adaptation and mitigation policies. New research has estimated that over the next 100 years climate change could cause up to a 20 per cent decrease in demand for electricity for heating in Northern Europe and up to a 20 per cent increase in demand for electricity for cooling in Southern Europe.

A new study assesses the potential impacts of climate change on human health in the Netherlands. The researchers conducted a survey, asking health experts to rate the level of uncertainty attached to different health impacts of climate change, which highlighted heat-related deaths and vector-borne diseases as particularly relevant to climate change adaptation.