Natural Resources

"Using satellite imagery and data on dozens of factors — including air and noise pollution, park space, open water and tree canopy — NatureQuant has distilled the elements of health-supporting nature into a single variable called NatureScore. Aggregated to the level of Census tracts — roughly the size of a neighborhood — the data provide a high-resolution image of where nature is abundant and where it is lacking across the United States."

"Federal fishery managers voted Wednesday to cancel all commercial and recreational salmon fishing off the coast of California for the second year in a row, and only the fourth time in state history, because of dwindling stocks."

"The House on Tuesday approved a package aimed at boosting the nation’s access to outdoor recreation. The bipartisan EXPLORE Act contains provisions that seek to open up more opportunities for spending time in national parks, forests and other public lands."

"The Biden administration straddled the line on a controversial Canadian oil pipeline in a court filing Wednesday, saying a lower court’s order to drain portions running through tribal land may violate a 1977 treaty but agreeing with a Native American tribe that the operator is trespassing on tribal land."

"Albania’s Vjosë River is known as Europe’s last wild river, and its pristine delta is a haven for migratory birds. As plans for luxury developments there — spearheaded by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — move ahead, conservationists are sounding the alarm."

"With fires growing in size and duration, federal officials in charge of juggling resources and dispatching crews are pivoting to a new business model they describe as the biggest shift in wildfire management in decades."

"In the Nevada valley that is one of the most significant domestic sources of a key element for the energy transition, one company controls the groundwater needed to mine it, another is fighting for a share of it and others are lining up at the tap."

"Worldwide over the past 35 years, dams and land reclamation activities have converted 250,000 acres of estuary — an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan — to urban land or agricultural fields, with most land conversion and estuary loss in rapidly developing countries, a new study finds."

"From Idaho to Alabama to Maine, adventure outdoors without taking a single car ride or plane trip".

"They look a little like cockroaches and have bulging orange eyes, and trillions of them are about to erupt from the earth in much of the midwestern and eastern United States. The emergence of two groups of cicadas will assemble a chorus of the insects not seen in several hundred years, experts say."