How Can Pesticides Affect the Development of Aquatic Life?

Agriculture uses pesticides to maintain continuous food production. But what is the effect of these chemicals on aquatic animals? With this in mind, researchers from Brazil collaborated to study the effect of one of the most used pesticides in the country on zebrafish.

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Modelling nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture once fertilizer leaves the field

Countries need to keep track of their national greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to meet targets to combat climate change. Even though carbon dioxide gets most of the attention, nitrous oxide is the most potent of the top three greenhouse gases that contribute to current global warming, having 300 times the warming strength of carbon dioxide. In many countries agriculture is the largest source of nitrous oxide emissions. Keeping track of these emissions after they leave the farm fields via water pathways is difficult.

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To bugs in streams, fine sediment is not so fine

Clearing land for agriculture often leads to decreased flow velocities and in increase in fine sediment additions in nearby streams. While many stream bugs rely on small fine sediments, too much of it can detrimentally affect them. Changes to flow velocities and inputs of fine sediment in affected streams are not always equal in magnitude, so an experiment was run to see the responses of aquatic macroinvertebrates to various combinations of flow and sediment conditions. The scientists found fine sediments negatively impacted almost all stream bugs and that low flows exacerbated the problem.

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Pollution in Polish Rivers, and the Cucumber Solution

Pollution is dangerous, both to humans and the ecosystems we care about. But researchers in Poland have studied the sources and dynamic movement of pollutants in rivers, and may have found potential in cucumbers to help improve the system.

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Streamside Vegetation Can Capture Pesticides

Blueberries and other crops are being impacted in the Pacific northwest by a new invasive species. Pesticide use to combat this problem may impact nearby aquatic life. Researchers studied agriculture areas with and without woody vegetation along stream banks to understand if they could play a role in keeping pesticides out of streams. Sites with woody vegetation reduced 96% of pesticide measured in the stream on average compared to sites without. Increasing woody vegetation next to streams could help farmers fight off invasive species while still protecting water quality.

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Red, White, and Blue-Green Algae: Harmful Algal Blooms Block Summer Plans, and Could Become More Common Without Action

Recent harmful algal blooms in the Northeast US have thwarted holiday plans for many lake-goers, and climate change might make such blooms more common. If we could have tighter control on the nutrients flowing into the lake, we may have a chance at preventing blooms in the future.

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Are we accidentally treating fish with anti-depressants? Pharmaceuticals in our surface waters

The ever-growing and expanding pharmaceutical industry is overwhelming wastewater treatment plants, making the release of pharmaceuticals into the environment a big problem. A recent study illustrates that the presence of anti-depressants in streams can change the behavior of mosquitofish. The potential effects of pharmaceutical pollution on wildlife should make us think carefully about how we dispose of our leftover medicines.

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Improvements in Water Quality Offset Climate Debt in UK Rivers

By analyzing over 20,000 samples of aquatic macroinvertebrates, researchers were able to show that shifts in macroinvertebrate communities corresponded to improvements in water quality from 1991 to 2011. The improvements in water quality have created a “credit” that could have offset the climate debt created by rising temperatures. Local improvements can potentially offset global climate impacts, but for how long can this trend continue?

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