A trove of lithium-rich brine exists underground in Bolivia. Researchers conducted the first comprehensive chemical analysis of wastewater associated with mining the resource.

Satellite records show spectacular vegetation growth coinciding with the first year of the pandemic. Researchers investigated whether lockdowns played a role.

Meet the PlanetLab, learn more about its research focus, lab members' experiences in the lab and the opportunities the lab offers Duke students.

Duke study reveals low levels of common contaminants but high levels of other elements in waters associated with an abandoned lithium mine.

Xavier Basurto, Truman and Nellie Semans/Alex Brown & Sons Associate Professor of sustainability science, studies community-based marine conservation. Basurto discusses how fishers can help us understand the effects of climate change by listening to their experiences.

An international team of scientists has revealed high levels of toxic metals in global phosphate fertilizers using a variant of the element strontium to uncover such metals in soil, groundwater and possibly the food chain.

This year’s global Earth Day theme is “planet vs plastics”, and calls for the rapid phase out all single-use plastics.

Meet the Patino-Echeverri Lab, learn more about its research focus, lab member's experiences in the lab and the opportunities the lab offers Duke students.

Meet the Vengosh Lab, learn more about its research focus, PhD students' experience in the lab and the opportunities the lab offers Duke students.

Xavier Basurto is broadly interested in how people in small communities successfully organize themselves for collective action. His recent talk described his work in advancing the understanding of non-colonialist sustainability science: the prospects and limitations of self-organization, or self-governance, for social-ecological sustainability, particularly in the Global South.

As the world endeavors to extricate itself from a carbon economy in favor of clean energy, Lee Ferguson is working to shed light on the potential environmental risks posed by bis-perfluoroalkyl sulfonimides, a primary electrolyte in lithium-ion batteries.

As the world undergoes the great energy transition — from fossil fuels to alternative energy and batteries — rare earth metals are becoming more precious.

A new Duke University study finds that municipal waste incinerators' legacy of contamination could live on in urban soils.

Fossil-fueled electrical grid’s enormous water use is often overlooked.

Mixing toxic coal ash into acid mine drainage may sound like an odd recipe for an environmental solution, but a new Duke University-led study finds that it can neutralize the drainage’s dangerously low pH and help reduce harmful impacts on downstream ecosystems—if you use the right type of ash. Using the wrong type of ash can create new contamination and not tame the drainage’s extreme acidity.