Environmental Blog

 Mining in Alaska is a huge factor to the economy one of the six top industries, along with Oil, Tourism, Fishing, Timber and Agriculture (Alaskas) Mining is a huge source of employment for the state with most mines only operating for a few months a year in the summertime. These mines are only able to operate in the summer due to Alaska's long, harsh winters. The metal in the dirt is also inaccessible when the ground is frozen and unable to be dug up  Gold is found in the ground  near where streams and rivers used to flow, this dirt is referred to as pay, pay is gold rich dirt that is often found right above bedrock, this is often rich with gold flakes and small nuggets. These gold flakes are then separated from the ground using a wash plant or a trommel, washing the pay dirt and separating the gold out of the rest of the dirt and rocks. The gold is then moved into the sluice box with other small rocks and dirt, via a conveyor on the wash plant.  After the gold goes ...

     I recently saw a map of about 70 or 80 dots all skewed along the East Coast of North America, all the way up from Newfoundland to the middle of Florida, some of these dots went thousands of miles into the middle of the ocean and some stayed right along the shore. This led me to click on the image solely out of curiosity to find the reasoning behind the dots, come to find out these dots were pings off where two different sharks had come up to the surface for air. These two sharks had traveled thousands of miles in a matter of months, yet there is no visible pattern between the two animals yet they seemed to enjoy hanging around the continental shelf with one shark staying much closer to the coast and one shark staying further out in the ocean and being more mobile.       Greg Skomal a shark expert was included in a Wired article by Peter Brannen about the complexity and importance of tagging and researching Great White Sharks, in the article he is ...

  I recently watched a TED Talk about dead zones in coral reefs, specifically the dead zone in the gulf of Mexico, and this TED talk, although interesting, caught my attention for a different reason. Nancy Rabalais, the speaker of this TED Talk, significantly stressed Phosphate and Nitrogen run off into the Mississippi river causing this massive dead zone, and openly blamed this on Midwest farmers, who apply these minerals to the soil on their corn and soybean ground. These minerals are often top dressed which means the minerals are sprayed onto the crop and soil at a premature age so these crops can grow as efficiently as possible and spraying you're not limited to a specific crop age, as you are with side dressing . Side dressing is injecting these minerals into the soil between every row of crop, and while this causes less runoff, there is a much smaller time frame to spray, as the corn must be short enough to run the equipment over.  Rabalais’ speech seemed quite biase...