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What that might mean for human and ecological health.
The most intense fires, the ones that burn the hottest and release the most energy, can create their own weather systems and send smoke all the way into the stratosphere, which extends about 50 kilometers above Earth’s surface. Once there, smoke can travel around the world just as ash from explosive volcanoes does.
In experiments, the researchers have found living bacteria and fungi, many of which were not found in any of the air samples taken before the fires. In Utah smoke samples, for example, the U.S. Forest Service Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE) team found more than 100 different fungi that were not in the air before the fire.
Researchers have already tracked many different chemicals released by fires into the stratosphere from the Arctic to the South Pacific and everywhere in between, using the DC-8 for NASA’s Atmospheric Tomography Mission, says Christine Wiedinmyer, a fire emissions modeler at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences in Boulder, Colo. Finding traceable signatures of fires everywhere in the atmosphere suggests that fires could also be sending bacteria and fungi around the world, she says ...
Thousands of birds are afflicted by a mysterious illness along the East Coast
Photograph © National Audubon Society
Thousands of young birds, including blue jays, common grackles, American robins, and European starlings, have suddenly gone blind, oozing from their eyes, shaking, and dying. Lab tests have ruled out some possible causes such as West Nile virus and avian influenza, leaving scientists struggling to come up with new hypotheses.
Determining the cause of any disease outbreak is often a slow process because it involves ruling out possibilities. This case is proving particularly challenging, because “neurologic and eye symptoms are an unusual combination.” It could be a completely new pathogen, or it could be multiple factors working in tandem.
The Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, launched the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables on the 15th of December 2020, with an appeal to improve healthy and sustainable food production through innovation and technology and to reduce food loss and waste.
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