(GIST OF SCIENCE REPORTER) Environment & Earth Sciences

[January-2022]

Research published in the journal Water reported that in the Earth’s biggest freshwater lakes, climate change impacts carbon fixation patterns revealed by sixteen years of remote sensing information.
The research was funded by NASA and conducted on the 11 biggest freshwater lakes in the world. The study provided insights into how big water bodies fix carbon, also how a changing environment and lakes interact.

IIT Bombay researchers have reported in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering a new catalyst that speeds up the production of hydrogen from water and also reduces the energy needed for doing so. The researchers used a material containing cobalt and oxygen to fulfil their objective at a much lower cost and demonstrated how a magnetised catalyst can increase H2 production.
Since hydrogen as a fuel plays an important role in shifting towards a clean, green and sustainable economy, this innovative approach will increase production paving the way towards eco-friendly hydrogen fuel.

In a remote area of Yukon, Canada, an expedition led by Stanford has revealed a 120-million-year-long known continuous geological record of the Palaeozoic era, the era that encouraged fast evolution and diversification of multi-cellular, complex creatures on Earth.
The discovery reported in Science Advances uncovers the changes in oxygen level at the ocean floor across almost 120 million years of the early Palaeozoic era.

India’s Samudrayaan mission was launched on 29 October 2021 for deep ocean exploration for rare minerals. This unique manned ocean exploration mission is being undertaken by NIOT (National Institute of Ocean Technology) under the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
With the development of deep-sea technologies, the project will bring more development in exploring the oceans making use of their resources for clean energy, drinking water, and consequently blue economy. This project has projected India into the elite club of countries including US, Russia, France, Japan, and China.