Natural Resources

"The state is a major importer of fracking wastewater, which gets pumped underground but doesn’t always stay there. The city of Marietta is fighting back."

"The Trump administration is repurposing large chunks of federal land to host enormous data centers and the power plants needed to run them as officials seek to accelerate the development of artificial intelligence and overcome growing local opposition to the facilities."

"A record wave of brown, smelly seaweed is washing up on beaches along ‌Mexico's Caribbean coast, forcing closures in top tourist destinations and inflicting mounting economic damage on hotels, restaurants and shops."

"Pediatric asthma is common in Calipatria, where young athletes compete despite extreme heat and air pollution. Some worry a lithium boom could make things worse."

"The Okefenokee Swamp is regarded as one of the world’s largest freshwater ecosystems, encompassing a vast network of wetlands that supports exceptional biodiversity and serves as the source of two major rivers. Its largely undisturbed peat beds preserve a 5,000-year record of environmental change, making the swamp both a globally significant natural habitat and a valuable source of information on long-term environmental change, according to a UNESCO description."

"In San Francisco Bay, new AI-powered technology aims to help ships dodge whales whose long-haul migration is being disrupted by climate change."

"The Trump administration is moving closer to opening up U.S. waters for deep-sea mining—a contentious and largely untested industry focused on extracting mineral-rich deposits from the ocean floor containing cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese." "If the sale moves forward, mining activities could begin in federal waters near American Samoa. The proposed site is directly adjacent to a national wildlife refuge."

"Recent studies show that microplastics are already present in a variety of Amazonian environments: Major rivers such as the Amazon, urban streams, floodplain areas and mangroves in the Amazon’s Mouth."

"A federal court temporarily blocked the sale of more than 2,000 acres of public land in and around a polluted former copper mine to a multi-national petroleum company on Thursday while a lawsuit against the sale is decided in court."

"The U.S. Bureau of Land Management scheduled a September 2026 lease sale for 2,800 acres of Wayne National Forest, a preserve long sought by the oil and gas industry. This could mean fracking Ohio’s only national forest for the first time."