College of Science News

For fifth-year Julia Renner and fourth-year Minerva Teli, interests in environmental sustainability just scratch the surface of their career-driven passions. Renner and Teli are the 2018 recipients of the Dr. Carl F. Muckenhoupt Scholarship, an award for students who plan to use their scientific background to "benefit the environment of the earth and the life upon it."

In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, Munoz and his colleagues write that the probability of a 100-year flood occurring in the Mississippi River system has increased by 20 percent over the past 500 years, three-quarters of which is due to river engineering and other human activities.

What happens far upstream can affect marine life at the end of the line in unanticipated ways, as evidenced by recent research on a Florida oyster reef.

Northeastern’s Marine Science Center kicked off its outreach field season on Tuesday by hosting teenagers from a school in Lynn, Massachusetts, who spent the morning exploring marine life along the center’s rocky shores, learning about biodiversity at the center’s touch tanks, and engaging with researchers studying everything from salt marshes to the physiology and health of corals.

The 2011 tsunami dislodged docks and piers from along the coast of Japan, and a lot of woody debris has floated across the Pacific. Wood-boring shipworms made the journey as well, and now threaten wooden structures along the coasts of Hawaii and the western USA.

It's not simply that blue crabs thrive in warmer waters and green crabs in colder waters. Blue crabs also eat the green crabs within their range, further limiting their abundance in areas where species range overlaps.

Research suggests that clam aquaculture can promote nitrogen recycling, but nitrogen removal depends on environment.

Research shows that clams were on the rise at several living shoreline restoration sites on Chesapeake Bay.

An MSC graduate student found some unusual marine organisms on a Nahant beach during post-storm cleanup. A natural history guide published tin 1907 helped her confirm their identity.

A new appointee in Northeastern’s Marine and Environmental Sciences (MES) department, Aron Stubbins studies how the carbon cycle plays out in natural aquatic environments – from rivers to lakes to oceans.