Today's Image of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> features a severe dust storm in Iraq. Dust storms are most common in this region in the late spring and summer, triggered by seasonal winds such as the “shamal” that blows in from the northwest.&nbsp;



In the past two weeks in the Middle East, poor air quality from two major storms has sent thousands of people to the hospital for asthma and other respiratory diseases.



"The skies above Baghdad, Najaf, Sulaimaniyah, and other cities turned orange as visibility dropped to a few hundred meters. Several airports were closed during the dust events, and schools were closed nationwide. Government offices were shuttered in seven of the Iraq’s 18 provinces, and several governors declared states of emergency,' reports NASA.



According to news media reports, Iraq has endured at least eight dust storms in the past six weeks. Recent studies have shown that these events have become more frequent in Iraq.&nbsp;



"The country has been facing drought conditions in recent years, as well as land-use changes and overuse that mean there is more loose soil available to be lofted into the atmosphere," says NASA. "The World Bank cited Iraq as one of the countries most vulnerable to desertification and climate change."



The image was captured on May 16, 2022 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA’s Aqua satellite.&nbsp;



Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory&nbsp;



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Iraq faces an increasing number of severe dust storms

Today's Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features...

Today's Image of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> features an astronaut photograph of the San Luis Valley along the border of Colorado and New Mexico. At an altitude of 8,100 feet, the San Luis Valley is one of the largest high desert valleys in the world.&nbsp;



"Extinct volcanoes speckle the southern margin of the valley - an area known as the Taos Plateau Volcanic Field. Free-standing mountains in the volcanic field, such as San Antonio and Ute, are lava domes that were formed during eruptions almost 3 million years ago," reports NASA.



The Rio Grande flows from the San Juan Mountains through the center of the valley and continues south. According to NASA, the river has provided water and irrigation to people in the American Southwest for thousands of years, including the community of Native Americans that live in Taos.&nbsp;



The Taos Plateau has served as a primary field training area since the 1960s during the Apollo era.&nbsp;



"The San Luis Valley served as a planetary analog for the Apollo 15 lunar landing site at Hadley Rille," says NASA. "The southern area of the valley contains igneous rock structures similar to those on the lunar surface. Such field training prepares current and future astronauts for exploration of the Moon and Mars."



Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory&nbsp;



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

The San Luis Valley of Colorado

Today's Image of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> features Māʻalaea Bay on Maui’s southern shore, an area that is known for its large waves.&nbsp;



Two of Maui’s most iconic waves, known as “Freight Trains” and “Jaws,” are famous among surfers. While Freight Trains is considered one of the fastest surfable waves in the world, Jaws is known for big-wave surfing.



"The large waves, or swells, are typically generated in the southern hemisphere during winter, when large storms brew in the southern Pacific Ocean," reports NASA.



"The waves can travel thousands of miles, crossing the equator and eventually reaching Maui’s southern shore, where it is summer. But the waves can lose energy along the way as they encounter numerous island chains in the South Pacific."



"The foam produced by breaking waves shows up in satellite images as a white band close to the shore."&nbsp;



The image was captured on October 3, 2018 by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8. A small amount of foam is visible near the harbor. According to NASA, theses late season waves were likely produced by Hurricane Walaka, a category-4 storm centered about 750 miles west of Māʻalaea.



Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory&nbsp;



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

The iconic waves of Maui’s southern shore

Today's Image of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> features the Manitoba Great Lakes - Winnipeg, Winnipegosis, and Manitoba.



According to NASA, 43 percent of the land area of the province of Manitoba, Canada, is covered by bogs, fens, marshes, swamps, and open shallow water.



The wetlands and lakes appeared approximately 8,000 years ago just after the last ice age. The Manitoba Great Lakes are actual remnants of glacial Lake Agassiz, which formed about 14,500 years ago.&nbsp;



The image was captured on November 3, 2021 by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8.



Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/ Norman Kuring/NASA's Ocean Color Web



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

The Great Lakes of Manitoba, Canada

Today's Image of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> features the Calf Canyon-Hermits Peak fire in northern New Mexico. By May 13, 2022, the fire had entered into its second month and had become the second largest in the recorded history of the state of New Mexico.



"The burned area spanned more than 270,000 acres east of Santa Fe and stretched 50 miles (80 kilometers) from its northern to southern perimeter in the Sangre de Cristo mountains,' reports NASA.&nbsp;



"As of May 13, the fire was 29 percent contained, mostly on its southern perimeter, but continued to spread northeast. Hundreds of buildings and homes have been destroyed, and thousands of people were evacuated. Evacuation orders remained in effect in San Miguel, Moro, and Colfax counties, and have been expanded into the ski resort town of Angel Fire."



The fire has been fueled by low humidity and high winds across dry vegetation. These factors are a major challenge for the hundreds of firefighters who are working to get the blaze under control. According to NASA, periodic wind gusts of up to 65 miles per hour have prevented aerial firefighting efforts, such as water drops and the dispersal of flame retardant.



The Calf Canyon-Hermits Peak fire complex consists of two smaller fires that merged on April 23. The Hermits Peak fire started on April 6. It was a prescribed burn in the Santa Fe National Forest that became uncontrollable in erratic, gusty winds. The second blaze, the Calf Canyon fire, started on April 19. The cause still remains unknown.



Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory&nbsp;



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Calf Canyon-Hermits Peak fire in New Mexico

Forests have long been considered to act as <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/carbon-bomb-projects-must-be-halted-to-limit-global-warming/">carbon</a> sinks, locations where carbon from the atmosphere can be stored in the form of organic molecules and sequestered from circulation. Such sinks are predicted to become more and more important as the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increase due to human activities. However, the results of a study on tropical trees in Australia’s rainforests indicate that this may not be a role that forests will fulfil in future. 



A research team led by <a href="https://www.ox.ac.uk/">Oxford University</a> monitored more than 8,300 trees in 24 permanent moist tropical forest plots in rainforests across Australia. The unique data set stretches back over 50 years and is thus able to track demographic details of these typically long-lived trees.&nbsp;



“Many decades of data are needed to detect long-term changes in long-lived organisms, and the signal of a change can be overwhelmed by the noise of many processes," said study senior author Dr. Sean McMahon.&nbsp;



The results of the study, published today in the journal <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/952693">Nature</a>, show that trees in these forests are dying faster than they used to. In fact, the average tree death rates in these forests have doubled over the past four decades. The researchers found trees are living around half as long as they did previously, a pattern that is repeated across species and across sites in the region. 



“It was a shock to detect such a marked increase in tree mortality, let alone a trend consistent across the diversity of species and sites we studied," said study lead author Dr. David Bauman. "A sustained doubling of mortality risk would imply the carbon stored in trees returns twice as fast to the atmosphere.”&nbsp;



“One remarkable result from this study is that, not only do we detect an increase in mortality, but this increase seems to have started in the 1980s, indicating the Earth’s natural systems may have been responding to changing climate for decades," noted the researchers.&nbsp;



Healthy tropical forests have acted as significant carbon sinks in the past, removing carbon from the atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis, and storing it in the living tissues of the trees. As such, these forests were able to slow down the rate of climate change by absorbing around 12 percent of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions.



Study co-author Yadvinder Malhi pointed out that, in recent years, the effects of climate change on the corals of the Great Barrier Reef have become well known. But this is not where the impacts of climate change end.



“Our work shows if you look shoreward from the Reef, Australia’s famous rainforests are also changing rapidly. Moreover, the likely driving factor we identify, the increasing drying power of the atmosphere caused by global warming, suggests similar increases in tree death rates may be occurring across the world’s tropical forests. If that is the case, tropical forests may soon become carbon sources, and the challenge of limiting global warming well below 2 °C becomes both more urgent and more difficult.”



When forest trees die, they cease to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and can no longer act as carbon sinks. In fact, as their great trunks and branches slowly decompose, their carbon-based organic molecules are broken down and CO2 is released back into the atmosphere, making them additional sources of CO2 emissions.&nbsp;



Interestingly, recent studies in Amazonia have also suggested that the death rates of tropical trees are increasing, thus weakening the global carbon sink. The reason for these increased mortalities in Amazonia is, as yet, unclear.



In the Australian study, the researchers examined the climate ranges of the tree species that show the highest death rates, and concluded that the main climate driver of tree mortality is the increasing drying power of the atmosphere. As the atmosphere warms, evaporation rates increase and more moisture is drawn from plants, resulting in increased water stress in trees and ultimately increased risk of death.



When the researchers conducted further analysis, they found that the loss of biomass from the increased mortality of trees over the past decades has not been offset by biomass gains from the growth of living trees, or by the recruitment of new trees. This implies the mortality increase has translated into a net decrease in the potential of these forests to offset carbon emissions.



“Long-term datasets like this one are very rare and very important for studying forest changes in response to climate change," said study co-author Susan Laurance. "This is because rainforest trees can have such long lives and also because tree death is not always immediate.”



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By <a href="mailto:bosman@truewan.co.za">Alison Bosman</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Rainforest tree death rates have doubled since the 80s

Forests have long been considered to act as carbon sinks,...

A recent study led by <a href="https://oregonstate.edu/">Oregon State University</a> (OSU) has found that over 98 percent of U.S. waters outside the central Pacific Ocean are not part of a marine protected area (MPA), and even those that are tend to be only “lightly” or “minimally” protected from harmful <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/tropical-island-birds-are-changing-and-human-activities-are-to-blame/">human activities</a>.&nbsp;



According to the experts, urgent actions are needed to improve the level of protection offered by existing marine protected areas, and to expand the number of such areas in the Antarctic, Arctic, and northeast Pacific Oceans, as well as in the Caribbean Sea.



“These findings highlight an urgent need to improve the quality, quantity and representativeness of MPA protection across U.S. waters to bring benefits to human and marine communities,” said study lead author Jenna Sullivan-Stack, a postdoctoral fellow in Integrative Biology at OSU.



“The benefits from marine protected areas are key for our future,” added study senior author Kirsten Grorud-Colvert, a marine ecologist at OSU, who led the <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abf0861?adobe_mc=MCMID%3D49172270223902357213481499257602856343%7CMCORGID%3D242B6472541199F70A4C98A6%2540AdobeOrg%7CTS%3D1652865871&amp;_ga=2.200266542.1296602334.1652688862-2046344334.1629960599">MPA Guide project</a> in 2021, which proposed a set of comprehensive criteria to assess the distribution and effectiveness of MPAs.&nbsp;



“The MPA coverage in regions outside the central Pacific is surprisingly sparse, and the gaps in protection represent a challenge to meeting the goals laid out in the Biden administration’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.doi.gov/priorities/america-the-beautiful">America the Beautiful</a>&nbsp;initiative,” which promises to conserve at least 30 percent of the country’s lands and waters by 2030.



By using the MPA Guide to assess the 50 largest U.S. marine protected areas, the scientists found that most of them are located in the central Pacific Ocean, and that only 25.2 percent are “fully” or at least “highly” protected.&nbsp;



These findings highlight the need to establish new, networked MPAs with better representation of marine biodiversity, and to improve equity and other social and ecological conditions needed for the new and already existing areas to be effective. Moreover, in order for the MPAs to last and function as efficiently as possible, governance structures and long-term funding support for staffing, monitoring, and other activities should be established or strengthened.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“It is important to recognize that well-managed MPAs, designed with the local context in mind, can deliver benefits that extend beyond marine life to coastal communities that depend on sustainable marine resources for their livelihoods and cultural survival,” concluded study co-author Ana Spalding, an associate professor of Marine and Coastal Policy at OSU.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.849927">Frontiers in Marine Science</a>.



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By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Marine protected areas are "key for our future"

A recent study led by Oregon State University (OSU) has...

Compared to factors such as education or occupation, fertility has not yet received much scientific attention as a potential predictor of late-life cognition. However, a team of researchers led by the <a href="https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/">Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health</a> has now found that having three or more children has a marked negative effect on late-life cognition, by speeding-up parents’ age-related cognitive decline due to factors including financial difficulties and increased <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/stress-may-be-linked-to-female-fertility-issues/">stress</a>. The experts found that this effect was stronger in Northern Europe, where higher fertility rates significantly deplete financial, social, and psychological resources.



“Understanding the factors that contribute to optimal late-life cognition is essential for ensuring successful aging at the individual and societal levels - particularly in Europe, where family sizes have shrunk and populations are aging rapidly,” said study co-author Vegard Skirbekk, a professor of Population and Family Health at Columbia Mailman School.



&nbsp;“For individuals, late life cognitive health is essential for maintaining independence and being socially active and productive in late life. For societies, ensuring the cognitive health of the older population is essential for extending work lives and reducing health care costs and care needs,” added study lead author Eric Bonsang, a professor at the <a href="https://dauphine.psl.eu/">Paris Dauphine University</a>.&nbsp;



The scientists analyzed data from the <a href="http://www.share-project.org/">Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe</a> (SHARE) to compare the effects of having two versus three or more children in a cohort of participants aged 65 or older. By using advanced econometric methods able to disentangle causality from simple associations, the researchers found that having more than two children leads to significant cognitive decline in both men and women, having similar effects to an additional 6.2 years of aging.&nbsp;



Having a third child often leads to considerable financial costs, reduces family income, and increases the chance of families falling below the poverty line, thus decreasing the standard of living for all family members and promoting cognitive deterioration. Moreover, having more children can be highly stressful, which affects health risk behaviors and impairs adult cognitive development. Finally, an additional child is causally related to women’s lower labor market participation, fewer hours worked, and lower earnings.



“Given the magnitude of the effect, future studies on late-life cognition should also examine fertility as a prognosticator alongside more commonly researched predictors, such as education, occupational experiences, physical exercise, and mental and physical health,” said Professor Skirbekk.&nbsp;



“In addition, future studies should address the potential effects of childlessness or having one child on late-life cognition. We also need more information on the types of interactions, supports, and conflicts that occur between parents and children, which may influence cognitive outcomes,” he concluded.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/demography/article/doi/10.1215/00703370-9930490/299390/Does-Childbearing-Affect-Cognitive-Health-in-Later">Demography</a>.----



By <a href="mailto:andrei.ionescu5891@gmail.com">Andrei Ionescu</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;

Parents with more children risk faster cognitive decline

Compared to factors such as education or occupation, fertility has...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> describes a wearable sensor to help monitor the water levels of plants. 



When plants are in need of water, there are not always obvious signals. Plant leaves do not turn brown or shrivel until most of the water is gone.&nbsp;



The new system is designed to detect water loss earlier. According to ACS, the system can wirelessly transmit data to a smartphone app, allowing for remote management of drought stress in gardens and crops.



The experts have published their research in the ACS journal <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/journal/aamick">Applied Materials &amp; Interfaces</a>.



Video Credit: ACS



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Plant sensor can remotely track water levels