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.

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.

Ph.D. students Keqi He, Rafaella Lobo honored for their respective scholarship.

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

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

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

Maintaining a water level between 20 and 30 centimeters below the local water table will boost southern peatlands’ carbon storage and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they release back into the atmosphere during dry periods by up to 90%, a Duke University study finds.

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

Brian R. Silliman, Rachel Carson Distinguished Professor of Marine Conservation Biology at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, has been elected a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (ESA).

Duke leaders rise to face the challenges of climate change.

The National Science Foundation and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation have awarded a $1.2 million grant to support a new initiative aimed at boosting ecosystem restoration and climate resilience along North Carolina’s coast.

Rewetting and restoring 250,000 acres of southern pocosin peatlands that had been drained for farming but now lie fallow could prevent 4.3 million tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide, now stored in their soils, from oxidizing and escaping back into Earth’s atmosphere each year, a Duke University study shows. That amount equals 2.4% of the total annual reductions in CO2 emissions needed for the United States to be carbon neutral by 2050.

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.