By the year 2000, the states of Connecticut and New York, informed by the Long Island Sound Study, had invested heavily in reducing wastewater treatment into the Sound. Through new regulations and investment in better monitoring, they set a goal of reducing nitrogentotal maximum daily loads (TMDLs) into the Sound by 50 percent of 2000 levels by 2020.<\/p>\n Vlahos and colleague Michael Whitney, associate professor of marine sciences, compared data collected from 1994 to the present and their own sampling data. In their paper published in January in Environmental Science and Technology<\/em>, they showed the states have met this goal. Water quality has improved, ecosystem health has improved, and there are far fewer beach closures.<\/p>\n But, says Vlahos, the elephant in the room remains: climate change. Warming waters will reduce the amount of oxygen the waters can hold and reverse some of the gains accomplished. These changes can lead to more hypoxia, harmful algal blooms, and to an increased need for environmental protection measures.<\/p>\n \u201cThese positive changes will not last,\u201d Vlahos says. \u201cBy the year 2100, the Sound will be warmer, and we will have to incrementally reduce nitrogen TMDLs by much more just to maintain this level of health.\u201d<\/p>\n Recently, Vlahos also took part in second United Nations World Ocean Assessment<\/a>, an evaluation project of the state of the world\u2019s oceans that takes place every five years and includes hundreds of scientists globally. Vlahos served on committees examining contaminants including microplastics, an emerging health threat as degraded plastic matter accumulates in the oceans.<\/p>\n \u201cMicroplastics are a poorly characterized but emerging concern because they are in so many products,\u201d says Vlahos \u2013 shampoo, for example \u2013 with no requirement to disclose their presence on the product label. The committee created a call to action to limit how microplastics are used<\/a> and get into the oceans.<\/p>\n \u201cCurrent levels in the environment are relatively low but this issue needs better method development and international collaboration to understand and keep an eye on it before it gets bad,\u201d Vlahos concludes.<\/p>\n \u2018A Thousand Cuts\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n While Vlahos works to find ways to recuperate the oceans, David Wagner, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, is one of many ecologists raising an alarm for the insect world, which Wagner has famously labeled as undergoing \u201cdeath by a thousand cuts<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cInsects are without a doubt the most important animal biomass in the planet\u2019s terrestrial ecosystems,\u201d he says. \u201cThey pollinate, make soil, clean water, feed other animals \u2026 They are the fabric of life on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n Whispers and anecdotes have been circulating among bug lovers, of both the amateur and scientist variety, for about a decade. People just weren\u2019t seeing bugs around in the numbers they\u2019d seen 20 or 30 years ago.<\/p>\n Then, a 2017 German study showed a 75 percent decline in flying insects over the previous 27 years. But the scientists could not figure out why.<\/p>\n \u201cIt echoed the persistent feeling that many naturalists had for many years: The insects are dying,\u201d says Wagner.<\/p>\n Wagner has long studied the Lepidoptera, an insect group that includes butterflies and moths, and was called upon to organize a program symposium at the Entomological Society of America\u2019s annual meeting in 2019. The symposium resulted in a special issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em> \u2013 one of the preeminent scientific journals \u2013 devoted to the problem. The special issue is already one of the most highly cited issues in the journal\u2019s history.<\/p>\n Wagner points out that, although controlled experiments to determine the specific causes of insect decline are impossible on a global scale, it likely comes down to a handful of different stressors. The issue detailed the 12 largest global threats to insects, underlined the urgency of slowing climate change and lessening the impacts of global agriculture, and offered tangible steps that everyday people could take to help save insects, from growing native plants to decreasing lawn pesticide use and exterior lighting.<\/p>\n Changing perspectives is an especially important step, especially in the U.S., where many people think \u201cthe only good bug is a dead bug,\u201d says Wagner.<\/p>\n Wagner has been asked to organize another symposium, this time an international one, at the upcoming International Congress of Entomology in Helsinki, Finland. There, he hopes to begin in earnest the process of recommending tangible steps to change the fate of insects.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can’t have these kinds of losses and expect to have a future, rife in nature\u2019s riches, to pass along to our children,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Environment and Justice<\/strong><\/p>\n Environmental issues aren\u2019t limited to animals and plants, notes Prakash Kashwan, associate professor of political science. In fact, he says, his recent popular press statements<\/a> about the effects of environmentalism seem to have caused some anxiety.<\/p>\n \u201cSaying environmentalism can be racist is a big statement to make,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s what his research shows. As a political economist who works at the intersection between environmental science and societal processes, Kashwan has shown that, when they are not thought through, environmental programs can produce serious inequalities.<\/p>\n \u201cSomebody’s got to bring both the scientific data and the impacts on societies into the policy process,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n For example, preserving large uninterrupted areas of land for conservation might, on the surface, seem like a good idea. But some lands are more susceptible to wildfires when not managed by humans, and Kashwan says small-scale farming can have benefits to both the environment and societies<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThese sweeping programs often end up with bad side effects,\u201d says Kashwan. \u201cYou can talk to climate scientists about the effects that certain climate interventions, say, solar radiation management, may have on the monsoons in large parts of Asia and East Africa, and they may speak about how to model these effects. But an estimated two billion people depend on those monsoons, so you need to be careful.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Associate](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/100920b002-300x200.jpg\")
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