What happens to ibuprofen after it eases your throbbing headache? Like many pharmaceuticals, it can remain in an active form when our bodies flush it out. That’s a problem, because although wastewater treatment plants are good at reducing nutrient pollutants in water, they aren’t designed to remove pharmaceuticals and personal care products.
Maybe you’ve seen the meme. Classic film characters up to their necks in muck, with text reading, “As a kid, I thought quicksand was going to be a much bigger problem in my life.” Quicksand was an uncannily common plot point in the 70s and 80s, but murky wetland depictions in film haven’t gone away.
Livestock production is an important component of U.S. agriculture, with global demand for meat and dairy expected to double in the coming decades. This increase will lead to intensified grazing on U.S. grasslands, potentially exacerbating water quality degradation from livestock waste runoff into waterways.
When Danika Ford learned about the environmental impacts of fast fashion in high school, she started looking for college programs combining traditional environmental science with social science to understand how human motivations, behaviors, and policies affect environmental problems and solutions.
One of the most beautiful things about college is all of the different paths that people have taken to get here. No matter how you ended up at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, there is a common goal among most people here: to graduate with a degree in something they are passionate about. Olivia Messerges, who transferred to Illinois as a Junior after completing a year of community college in her hometown, did exactly that.
In the agricultural and food industry, determining the chemical composition of raw materials is important for production efficiency, application, and price. Traditional laboratory testing is time-consuming, complicated, and expensive.
Researchers analyzed meteorological data from nine Upper Midwest states from 1979-2021, tracking trends in extreme heat and cold over every 4-kilometer square of that territory. They found striking regional differences in the extremes. Many parts of the Upper Midwest experienced significant upticks in the number of extreme heat days over the 40 years — an increasing trend — while others saw a rise in extreme cold events. Some communities experienced more of both extremes. Others appeared to be more resistant to changes in extreme heat or cold.
As the world faces the challenges of mitigating climate change and providing resources for a growing population, there is increasing focus on developing circular economies for sustainable production. But to evaluate strategies and impacts, it is necessary to have reliable metrics.
Elephant conservation is a major priority in southern Africa, but habitat loss and urbanization mean the far-ranging pachyderms are increasingly restricted to protected areas like game reserves. The risk? Contained populations could become genetically isolated over time, making elephants more vulnerable to disease and environmental change.