Remote Florida Archipelago Closes After Hundreds of Migrants Arrive

Dry Tortugas National Park will close for “several days” so that authorities and medical workers can evaluate, care for and transport some 300 - 500 migrants, park officials said.

Dry Tortugas National Park closed on Monday after 300 migrants arrived over the past couple of days.

Credit...Rolando Diaz for The New York Times



By Livia Albeck-Ripka

The New York Times
Jan. 2, 2023

A remote archipelago and national park off the coast of Key West, Fla., was closed Monday after a group of around 300 migrants arrived by boat on the islands’ shores, park officials said.

The cluster of mostly uninhabited islands, known as the Dry Tortugas National Park, is about 100 miles north of Havana and is known for its crystalline waters and coral reefs. But over the past few days, the islands have become a different kind of refuge.

In addition to the 300 migrants who arrived on the archipelago, more than 160 other migrants have arrived in other parts of the Florida Keys over the past several days, according to the local and federal authorities. The officials did not specify countries of origin but said in a statement that the park and region had recently “seen an increase in people arriving by boat from Cuba.”

The influx of migrants began around New Year’s Eve, the authorities said, and come amid a surge in seaborne migration. In the one-year period ending in September, the United States Coast Guard apprehended more than 6,000 Cubans, compared with close to 840 migrants the previous year, the authority said in a recent statement.

The archipelago temporarily closed starting at 8 a.m. on Monday, so that the authorities and medical workers could evaluate, care for and transport the migrants to Key West, Fla., park officials said. The park’s own responders would provide food, water and basic medical attention to the migrants until the arrival of the Department of Homeland Security, they added.

“The effort now is to try to get them transferred off the island via boat to mainland Key West and the Florida Keys, so they can then be transferred to federal law enforcement agents,” Lt. Cmdr. John Beal, a spokesman for the Coast Guard’s Seventh District, said of the migrants.

“They’re uninhabited remote islands that don’t have the infrastructure to support them,” he said, adding that local, state and federal authorities were coordinating to get food and water to the archipelago, which is usually staffed by just a few rangers.

Federal authorities said that the migrants would be removed from the islands and processed to determine their legal status to remain in the United States or to be repatriated to their country of origin.

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, which oversees the Florida Keys and its islands, described the influx of migrants over the weekend as a “mass migration crisis.” The office accused federal authorities, who in some cases were expected to arrive only the next day, of a sluggish response. “This federal failure is creating a humanitarian crisis,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement posted to Facebook on Monday.

The park was expected to be closed for several days, officials said, an action that they said was “necessary for the safety of visitors and staff because of the resources and space needed to attend to the migrants.”

Park officials said that all closures would “remain in place until further notice” and that during that time all ferries and seaplanes would be suspended.

FOREVER CHEMICALS

Despite 3M's phase-out, problem of cleaning up PFAS remains

by Chloe Johnson, Star Tribune

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

3M announced in mid-December that it's phasing out a family of harmful chemicals, but they're not going away.

The "forever chemicals," known collectively as per- and polyfluorinated substances or PFAS, are used in everything from carpeting to nonstick pans to dental floss. The chains of carbon-fluorine bonds are excellent at repelling stains, grease and water, and even snuffing out dangerous fuel fires. But they also don't break down in the environment, and they linger in people's bodies for years.

Research has linked the chemicals to developmental and immune problems, fertility issues and some cancers.

Maplewood-based 3M, which is facing a cascade of lawsuits over the PFAS it helped pioneer in the last century, said it would stop making and using them by 2025, including at its plant in Cottage Grove.

In the view of Rainer Lohmann, director of the University of Rhode Island's STEEP lab and an authority on PFAS contamination: "The nightmare hasn't really stopped."

Researchers and environmental advocates said the persistence and global scope of the pollution from the chemicals will pose a cleanup challenge for years to come. They also worried new manufacturers could step in to fill a gap left by 3M, and they said the company should contribute to environmental cleanup.

"While it is great that they are moving away from these chemicals finally, after pressure, after liability, after pressure from government regulators … they certainly should not be left off the hook for accountability," said Melanie Benesh, vice president for government affairs with the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization.

3M has already been engaged in cleanup efforts in connection with legal cases and environmental enforcement. It paid the state of Minnesota $850 million to settle a lawsuit over natural resource damages in 2018, and before that it had to excavate contaminated material from several dumps used by its chemical plant in the east metro. The company also entered into a consent agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency this November to test and treat drinking water in a 10-mile area around its chemical plant in Cordova, Illinois.

It also faces continuing scrutiny around its Cottage Grove plant, where there's an open investigation into its water discharges by the EPA and Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. 3M first revealed the investigation to investors in 2020.

MPCA spokeswoman Andrea Cournoyer declined to comment on the inquiry.

In an email, she wrote that the agency "welcomes" 3M's plan to stop production and that it "will continue to hold 3M and other entities accountable for their PFAS pollution, as appropriate."

Sean Lynch, a spokesman for 3M, also declined to comment on the investigation.

He wrote in an email that the company "will continue to fulfill its commitments to water stewardship, as well as remediation of PFOA and PFOS at certain locations where we manufactured or disposed of these materials."

New technologies are being tested to clean up PFAS—including a machine designed to concentrate the chemicals in foam on top of water, which the MPCA is using in the east metro.

But there are still few known ways to destroy the chemicals, and they're so routinely found that researchers often refer to a "background level" that's present in the blood of most people.

"Any place we do find it, we basically know it was put there by someone or some process we created," said Matt Simcik, a professor of environmental chemistry at the University of Minnesota who has studied PFAS contamination for decades.

3M is still coping with the legacy of two of the oldest and best-studied formulations of the chemicals, PFOS and PFOA. The company announced in 2000 that it would phase them out. But other companies, such as DuPont, didn't until much later. The chemicals are routinely found around the planet today. One recent study revealed such high levels in rainwater that they exceeded limits set for drinking water by the EPA.

"PFOS was very much a 3M product, and we're still worrying about it 20 years after they phased it out," Lohmann said.

The contamination problem is a more complex one than other prominent contaminants, such as PCBs, Simcik said. The hazardous organic chemicals were used widely in electronics, finishes and plastics until their manufacture was banned in the United States in 1979. They tend to stick to particles, so over time some of the PCBs left in the environment in places like the Great Lakes have settled into soils and been covered, Simcik said.

"That big chunk is still down there and buried, so it's not a problem," he said.

That's not the case with PFAS, which move readily through water and keep coming into contact with people and animals.

And then there's the question of what could replace the chemicals. Simcik and Lohmann both worried about what the properties of new chemicals could be.

3M has not divulged how it will replace the chemicals that provide $1.3 billion in annual sales.

Asked whether the company would do health or safety testing on PFAS replacements, Lynch wrote that "3M is committing to innovate toward a world less dependent upon PFAS. 3M's products are safe for their intended uses."

The other main manufacturer in the United States is Chemours, a spin-off of DuPont, which has used several formulations of PFAS in its line of Teflon products.

Asked whether the company was considering stepping away from PFAS, spokeswoman Cassie Olszewski wrote in an email, "Chemours is committed to fluorine chemistry and its power to enable world-changing technologies that help solve some of the world's most challenging problems."

2022 StarTribune.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Minnesota tries new technologies to remove 'forever chemicals' from water

Swiss January heat record broken for north side of Alps

This photograph taken on December 27, 2022 shows a stopped chairlift at Le Semnoz ski resort, near Annecy, as the resort had to close temporarily due to the lack of snow.— AFP pic

Monday, 02 Jan 2023 7:35 AM MYT

GENEVA, Jan 2 — Switzerland recorded its highest-ever January temperatures north of the Alps Sunday, thermometers hitting 20.2 degrees Celsius (68.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in the town of Delemont.

MeteoSwiss, Switzerland’s national weather and climate service, said January heat records fell at several monitoring stations on the north side of the Alps mountain range, due to warm winds from the southwest.

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“For the first time, 20 C in January on the north side of the Alps!” it tweeted.

The 20.2 C temperature recorded in Delemont was due to mild southwesterly winds combining with the Foehn effect — a dry, warm, downslope wind on the downwind side of a mountain range — coming off the Jura mountains, said the agency.

Temperatures in Delemont were hovering more than 16 degrees above the 1991-2020 average for the turn of the year, giving weather “worthy of June”, it added.

Delemont is the capital of the northwestern Jura region, which borders France.

In Vevey on Lake Geneva, people queued for ice creams, while in Geneva itself, swimmers took part in the traditional New Year’s Day dip in the lake.

They toasted the arrival of 2023 with fancy dress and champagne — and in unseasonally warm air well above the 8.5 C water temperature.

Switzerland’s previous January temperature record for north of the Alps stood at 19.4 C, recorded on January 12, 1993 at Lucerne.

The highest January temperature ever recorded anywhere in Switzerland was 24.0 C, registered on the south side of the Alps in the Ticino region, in 1944 at Lugano and in 2007 at Locarno-Monti.

In the tiny principality of Liechtenstein neighbouring Switzerland — also covered by MeteoSwiss — temperatures reached 20.0 C in the capital Vaduz on Sunday.

That set a new January heat record at the station, beating the 19.0 C recorded on January 22, 1997.

 — AFP

Skiing in the Alps faces a bleak future thanks to climate change

by Klaus Dodds, The Conversation

A ‘snow cannon’ pumps out water that will fall as artificial snow.

 Credit: Natalia Mikhaylina / shutterstock

Skiing was introduced into the Alps comparatively late in the 1880s, with the first ski-lift being developed in the Swiss resort of Davos in the winter of 1934. The industrial revolution was two centuries old by that point, but the world climate was still largely pre-industrial.

With no reason to worry about the weather, tourism took off. Thomas Cook had begun offering opportunities for the British to ski in the first decade of the 20th century and Alpine skiing became further popularized with its introduction into the 1936 Winter Olympics leading to a big growth in skiing infrastructure. All of which depended on a regular and predictable winter season with fresh snow replenishing those ski runs. Ski resorts were able to promise their visitors smooth surfaces, safe upward transport and machines on duty to reposition snow as and when required.

But finding cold and snow has proved harder in recent years. The small French village of Saint-Firmin recently removed its ski-lift (which dated back to 1964) because there has simply been a lack of snow for over a decade. This year, seven of eight early-season World Cup skiing events have been canceled due to another very warm summer in the Alps, when record-breaking temperatures reminded us that high-altitude environments are not immune to excessive heat.

The omens are not good. Average temperatures have already risen by 2°C since pre-industrial times, roughly double the global average. Since ice and snow is more reflective than the underlying rock and soil, with less of it on the ground more heat is absorbed and not radiated away from land. Warmer ground in turn makes it harder for snow to gather and remain frozen, and so on.

2022 was a particularly terrible year for Swiss glaciers with excessive melting and entire glaciers disappearing. Windblown Saharan sand even shrouded alpine snow in mid-March, turning it an eerie Mars-like orange and therefore causing it to absorb even more heat.

Long-term forecasting suggests that the Alps overall could be glacier-free every summer by 2100, with only high-altitude patches of snow and ice remaining. To avoid that scenario, the world would have to reduce emissions markedly in the intervening period. Without snow, skiing and other winter activities simply can't happen.

Experiment and innovate

Bearing all that in mind, Alpine countries have been forced to experiment and innovate. In Switzerland, glaciers such as the Rhone glacier have been blanketed with permeable fabrics to slow melting. But these carry their own consequences in terms of material degradation and local pollution.

Ski resorts are not resting on their seasonal laurels. In resort villages across the Alps, there is increasing interest in how to develop a carbon-neutral tourist industry that places far less emphasis on plane and car travel. With a shorter skiing season, some resorts are looking to promote alternatives such as winter walking holidays while others warn that skiing and snowboarding will become increasingly the preserve of the rich and privileged as resorts are forced to invest in more artificial snow production and snow-preservation methods.

Winter activities are crucial to Europe's mountainous countries and the Alpine Convention (which entered into force in 1995) was an attempt by signatories including Austria, France, Germany, and tiny Monaco to co-ordinate approaches to resources, transport, and tourism. But record-breaking temperatures and glacial retreat does create tensions, as water shortages affect capacity to generate hydroelectric power and disrupts water supply for downstream users across the region. Retreating snow and ice could in the future become the object of discord as Alpine neighbors come to terms with the idea that there is no longer a bountiful seasonal cycle of fresh and frozen water.

The outlook is bleak for skiing and winter sports in the European Alps. According to Swiss reports, 50% of the country's ski slopes were covered in artificial snow for the 2020-21 season, which is formed by blasting tiny droplets of water into the air. This is very water- and energy-intensive. While there are now more energy efficient approaches to making snow, the process will always require lots of water and temperatures low enough for the mist to freeze and turn to snow.

Saving the winter economy in alpine resorts will prove very challenging. Skiing won't disappear overnight but it will find itself operating in a Europe where winter as we know it appears to be disappearing.

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Skiing over Christmas holidays no longer guaranteed—even with snow guns

Researchers propose guidelines to communicate climate change

by Interactive Technologies Institute

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Researchers from the Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI) found that climate change communication has followed trends. They propose design guidelines to engage communities successfully in this field. Their results have been published by the 9th Congress of the International Association of Societies of Design Research in [ ] With Design: Reinventing Design Modes.

Marta Ferreira, Ph.D. student and first author, is working on better communicating climate change through data visualizations. Her literature review study has demonstrated that communication about climate change has followed different trends. "The earliest projects, up until 2016, were much more focused on energy-related topics such as eco-feedback technologies, but since then, there was a shift towards sustainable lifestyles and biodiversity," she says.

Supervised by Nuno Nunes and Valentina Nisi, researchers at ITI and Professors at Instituto Superior Técnico, she found that most climate change communication projects have a neutral tone. Most of the analyzed projects presented neutral framing visualizations that lacked suggestions for actionable steps for application afterwards. "We considered 'negative framing' messages those that focused on what we lost or will lose as negative consequences of climate change; 'neutral framing' those that just communicate the facts in a neutral exposition of the issue; and 'positive framing' the interactions that focused on what can be achieved with change," explains Marta.

Based on the analysis of 74 projects, the team has proposed a set of implications for design that take advantage of diverse communication strategies. The authors believe these proposals could help better engage audiences, leading them to act. "Our findings support that choosing the topic based on impact and the target audience is best. For example, Project Drawdown points to impactful solutions that normally receive comparably little attention, such as high-quality, inclusive education, or topics related to the food system and land management," says the researcher.

Marta and her supervisors also claim that interactive engagement is key to successful engagement, mainly in daily routine places like bus stations, shops, or the street. Another suggestion is to convey the topic in a positive frame, using a narrative adapted to the audience, and providing ideas for actionable steps. "One of the big issues people face is not knowing what to do. Climate change is such a complex issue that sometimes even concerned individuals don't know how to act beyond the more discussed actions, such as recycling. Adding actionable proposals linked to the communicated topic can help people better connect with the issue and feel empowered instead of depressed with the daunting task ahead," she adds.

Some of these suggestions are already being adopted by the Interactive Technologies Institute in projects such as "Finding Arcadia," an interactive data story related to the ocean ecosystems and whales, aiming to test these implications for design. The research community agrees that it is critical to reconnect audiences with this complex and highly charged issue to overcome this global challenge.

More information: Marta Ferreira et al, Interaction for Crisis: A Review of HCI and Design Projects on Climate Change and How They Engage with the General Public, [ ] With Design: Reinventing Design Modes (2022). DOI: 10.1007/978-981-19-4472-7_56

Provided by Interactive Technologies Institute

Report: Climate change for food projects

 

Spain confirms first death from 2021 volcano eruption

The volcano rumbled for 85 days between September and December 2021.

The first death from a months-long volcanic eruption on Spain's La Palma island in 2021 has been confirmed after a court ruled Monday that a man died from inhaling toxic gases from the volcano.

The body of a 72-year-old man was found in November 2021 in the municipality of El Paso in an exclusion zone, an area that was off limits to the public without express permission due to the eruption.

Initial reports said the man likely climbed on the roof of his home to clear volcanic ash when the roof collapsed but officials said the cause of death could only be determined when autopsy results were in.

A court in the Canary Islands said Monday the autopsy confirmed the man "died after inhaling toxic gases, which certifies that the disaster did claim a human life".

The volcano rumbled for 85 days between September and December 2021, ejecting ash and rivers of lava that swallowed up more than 1,000 homes in La Palma, part of the Canary Islands located off western Africa.

It also destroyed schools, churches and highways and suffocated the lush banana plantations that drive the island's economy, but until now no fatality was directly tied to the eruption.

Over 7,000 of the tiny island's roughly 83,000 inhabitants were evacuated, with many given just a few minutes to pack a handful of belongings as the red-hot lava neared.

The volcano did not have a name before it erupted although it was popularly known as Cumbre Vieja after the name of the surrounding national park.

Last year residents of the island voted to call it Tajogaite—the name of the area in the ancient Guanche language.

© 2023 AFP

Scientists cautious as erupting Spanish volcano falls quiet

CHILE

Waste not want not: Santiago's poorest district plants recycling seed

by Axl HERNANDEZ

Municipal staff collect organic material to be sent for a vermiculture recycling process in the

 commune of La Pintana in Santiago, Chile.

Every morning, trucks collect potato and avocado skins, orange peels and other food scraps that residents of Santiago's poorest neighborhood leave hanging in bags on their front doors or in tree branches or place in special bins.

For nearly two decades, the residents of La Pintana have been pioneers of recycling in Chile—South America's largest garbage generator.

Under a project started in 2005, the commune of 190,000 people enthusiastically gather their plant-based food waste, which is then turned into compost to help green their community.

In La Pintana, where 15 percent of people live in poverty, 50 percent of the community's organic waste is collected for recycling—a figure that puts to shame the 0.8 percent achieved by Chile as a whole, according to environment ministry data.

"They do a lot with it (the waste): they produce compost and it is used for the community itself, for the squares and gardens," La Pintana resident Jose Vera told AFP as he left two large cardboard boxes filled with scraps on the sidewalk, proud of his contribution.

"It is also a saving (for the municipality) because they no longer have to buy" fertilizer or pay landfill fees, he said.

Chile generates some 1.13 kilograms (about 2.5 pounds) of waste per person per day—the highest output in South America, according to World Bank data.

The trailblazing recycling project in the La Pintana commune in Santiago, Chile, has 

received several international awards.

And in terms of recycling, it is far from achieving even Latin America's low average of four percent of solid municipal waste processed.

But La Pintana, one of the first neighborhoods of Chile's deeply socially unequal capital to adopt such a project, now collects some 20 tons of organic waste every day.

It is delivered to a local plant that turns the scraps into natural fertilizer for the town's own municipal nursery, and others.

'A change in people'

The municipality estimates to be saving some $100,000 per year—money that can go to other community projects.

"There has been a change in people," since the project started, resident Vera said.

"They are now concerned about recycling and no longer put the vegetables with the garbage."

La Pintana's nursery, built on what used to be an unsightly landfill, yields some 100,000 plants of 400 different species every year.

Residents of La Pintana leave out fruit and vegetable scraps to be collected by municipal 

workers for the community's recycling project.

These are planted back in La Pintana, one of the areas of Santiago with the fewest green spaces per inhabitant.

The nursery uses about a ton of humus—a dark organic matter created when plant material decomposes—every year, according to project member Cintia Ortiz.

All of it is obtained from La Pintana's plant waste.

"This humus, the benefit it gives us, is that it is organic... thanks to the community and the workers," Ortiz told AFP.

In addition, "as we can keep the plants well-nourished, we do not have to use chemicals."

Planting flowers outside a municipal sports center, municipal worker Jeanette Gonzalez told AFP the project "brings us... joy. The town is improving."

"When we took over... it was a town where every 200 meters there was a landfill," Claudia Pizarro, mayor of La Pintana since 2016, said of the trailblazing project, which has received several international awards.

La Pintana's nursery, built on what used to be an unsightly landfill, yields some 100,000 

plants of 400 different species every year.

"It is a virtuous circle: people see that where there used to be a landfill there is now greenery and everything is flourishing, and they stop throwing garbage there," she added.

There have been spillover benefits too: more than half of the municipal nursery's 15 staff are former inmates doing community work in lieu of serving prison time.

Chile's Environment Minister Maisa Rojas recently proposed a bill to reproduce the project in the rest of Chile.

© 2023 AFP

Burying or burning garbage boosts airborne bacteria, antibiotic resistance genes

How do tidal marshes store carbon?

by American Society of Agronomy

Roots and rhizomes in tidal marshes add to the organic matter of the soil. Recent research

 found that tidal marsh soils are able to store 3 to 5 times the amount of carbon than forest 

soils. Credit: Mark Stolt

Tidal marshes are wetlands that are covered with incoming tidal water twice a day. These marshes may be as small as narrow fringe along a tidal creek or miles across in estuaries with adjacent flat landscapes. There are nearly 40 million acres of tidal marshes along the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific shores of the U.S. The Soil Science Society of America's (SSSA) January 1st "Soils Matter" blog explores how tidal marshes store carbon and why they are an important part of surrounding landscapes

Tidal marshes are also common in many estuaries such as the Chesapeake Bay and along rivers that enter these coastal estuaries. Tidal marshes are some of the most productive ecosystems on the planet. They are an important part of the landscapes because they provide flood protection, erosion control, wildlife food and habitat, water quality support, and many other benefits.

Comparative to forest soils (that hold about 65% of the carbon held in a forest, with the rest of the carbon stored in plant life), tidal marshes store three to five times that amount in the soil.

Researchers collected soil samples in a tidal marsh area that was affected by Hurricane

 Sandy in 2012. They were measuring the amount of organic matter added to the tidal 

marsh after 8 years. Tidal marshes are productive ecosystems and can help store carbon, 

mitigating climate change. Credit: Mark Stolt

But why do tidal marshes store so much more carbon? According to Dr. Mark Stolt of University of Rhode Island, there are two major factors—the plant life and the soil conditions. His study was published earlier this year in the Soil Science Society of America Journal.

Marsh grasses and shrubs are drenched with full sunlight and the soils are rich in nutrients. This results in prolific plant growth above the ground. There is also growth below the ground in the form of roots and rhizomes. Marsh plants thrive in saturated conditions.

A soil sample taken by researchers from University of Rhode Island who were studying 

carbon storage in tidal marshes. In the upper inch, you can see plant roots from marsh

 plants. At about two inches, you can start to see a sandier soil—sand and sediments 

brought in from tides rising and falling. Starting at about 8 inches, you can see a denser

 organic layer full of decayed plant litter. Tidal marsh soils can store about 3–5 times the 

amount of carbon than forest soils. Credit: Mark Stolt

Tidal waters that flood marshes bring in organic matter via sediment that is suspended in the flooding waters. That carbon-rich sediment is trapped by the marsh grasses. It settles to the bottom becoming part of the marsh peat.

With twice-daily flooding, the soils are constantly under water, or saturated. Because the soil is under water, soil microbial activity is inhibited by the limited amount of oxygen. Without oxygen, soil microbes can't decompose organic matter as well as oxygen-rich environments. This is the big reason why tidal marshes can accumulate much more carbon than forest soils.

To read the entire blog please visit: https://soilsmatter.wordpress.com/2023/01/01/how-do-tidal-marshes-store-carbon/

More information: Mark Stolt et al, Carbon sequestration in back‐barrier tidal marsh soils, Soil Science Society of America Journal (2022). DOI: 10.1002/saj2.20437

Journal information: Soil Science Society of America Journal 

Provided by American Society of Agronomy Half of U.S. tidal marsh areas vulnerable to rising seas

Satellite imagery could improve fossil-hunting at remote sites

by Laurel Hamers, University of Oregon

Visitors hike past fossilized tree trunks in Petrified Forest Nationial Park in Arizona, where

 research was conducted on using satellite imagery to identify fossil sites. 

Credit: University of Oregon

Satellite imagery could help paleontologists spot promising fossil sites before trekking into remote places.

New research from the lab of UO paleontologist Edward Davis in the Department of Earth Sciences shows that satellite data can reveal large individual fossils from the air, allowing field researchers to embark on more targeted searches on the ground.

Their findings were published Nov. 28 in the journal Geological Magazine.

"Organizing field work is very expensive, and there are lots of safety and security risks," said Elena Ghezzo, who led the work as a postdoctoral researcher in Davis' lab. "So any additional information you can have from the field before you go is useful. My method seems be really good at ruling out regions that don't have fossils."

The team analyzed multispectrum satellite imagery, which includes not just visible light, but also other wavelengths like ultraviolet and infrared. By looking at how all these different types of light are absorbed or reflected by the landscape, researchers can pick out specific features, like fossils, from the background.

This kind of satellite data is often used to do aerial surveys of cities and track patterns of land use. But it hasn't been used before to search for single fossils, Ghezzo said.

The researchers tested their idea with data from Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

More than 200 million years ago, this landscape was a lush coniferous forest. Today, it's a colorful desert, dotted with fossilized logs. Based on a reference map they created by hand, the researchers could identify the signatures in the satellite data that distinguished a fossil from the background or from other landscape features.

To be picked out via satellite, a fossil must be bigger than a single pixel in the image. And its mineral composition must respond differently to light than the surrounding material. It's easier when the landscape is flat and open, with relatively few obstructions, as the Petrified Forest is. But other data about the geology and topography of the region can also be factored in, to help researchers distinguish a fossil from, say, a tree or a big rock.

Ghezzo collaborated with Davis' lab via a Marie Skłodowska-Curie global fellowship, an award that funds early-career researchers at European institutions to pursue independent research projects abroad. She's now testing the technique on a variety of fossil sites around the world, from Peru to Egypt to Mongolia.

And closer to home, Davis is particularly interested in applying the approach to some of his team's field sites in Eastern Oregon.

In much of Eastern Oregon, fossils are scattered across vast remote expanses. Parts of the land, like the John Day Fossil Beds, are designated wilderness. Motorized vehicles are prohibited, so fossils must be found on foot.

"There's a lot of places in the interior of Oregon that are very difficult to access even today," Davis said. "Having the ability to use aerial photography to find fossils could help us allocate our resources."

Bigger picture, a technique of this kind could be part of a shift within the field of paleontology. The practices of the past, which included blowing up hillsides with dynamite, have, in some cases, irreparably damaged the landscape. A new generation of paleontologists is working to make the field more sustainable and preserve the context in which fossils are found.

"We don't do a lot of digging anymore," Davis said. Instead, researchers often wait for fossils to be exposed by erosion, and then excavate in a more targeted manner. And satellite data can help them out.

More information: Elena Ghezzo et al, Multispectral satellite imaging improves detection of large individual fossils, Geological Magazine (2022). DOI: 10.1017/S001675682200108X

Provided by University of Oregon Using monkey teeth to hone dates of human fossils