Eve Zuckoff

 As CAI reported this week, algal blooms in local ponds can be dangerous to humans and animals. They are also a sign of a bigger problem; pollution from human sources like septic systems and more recently, the effects of climate change.  CAI's Kathryn Eident talked with Climate and Environment reporter Eve Zuckoff about some of the key things she learned in reporting about cyanobacteria blooms and how to tackle the problem.  

Part Three of a three-part series

Biologist Karen Malkus’s laboratory in the Barnstable Town Offices features a marble vanity with a mirror framed by light bulbs.

“It used to be …  the ladies’ room, which is now converted into the lab,” she said recently.  

Part Two of a three-part series

On a rainy Monday morning in Mashpee, ecologist Kevin Johnson balances on one foot while trying to pull on a pair of waders.

“I'll wade out … around knee- to waist-deep and take my sample there,” he said.

In early August, carpenter Michael Forgione told his mother that he was heading out to go crabbing in the brackish waters of Chilmark Pond on Martha’s Vineyard. Carol Forgione, a 72-year-old nurse practitioner, wished him a good catch.

Cape residents are pushing back against the Army National Guard’s proposal to build a machine gun range on Joint Base Cape Cod. 

“Devastating,” “absurd,” and “unambiguously awful” were among the reactions to the Massachusetts Army National Guard’s proposal to build a machine gun range on Joint Base Cape Cod, at a public hearing last night. 

The Army National Guard’s proposal to build a machine gun range on Joint Base Cape Cod relies in part on a promise: only copper ammunition would be used. 

A new report sets a timeline for Falmouth to make a historic retreat from its iconic Surf Drive coastal roadway in the face of sea level rise, flooding, and other impacts of climate change. Within thirty years, the picturesque road could be abandoned. 

The Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation has put Mashpee, Barnstable and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection on notice that it plans to file a lawsuit over pollution in Cape Cod bays and ponds from septic and wastewater systems. 

“Honestly, this lawsuit is long overdue,” said CLF senior attorney Christopher Kilian.

As town meetings get under way this fall across Cape Cod, voters are being asked to consider major decisions about climate change and the environment.

During the season’s first town meeting in Wellfleet, residents voted to declare a climate emergency, pushing the town to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero as soon as “technically and economically feasible,” but no later than 2050. On Monday, Falmouth declared a similar emergency at its town meeting.

Massachusetts just experienced its hottest summer on record, according to a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that looks at 126 years of historical data.

Cars, trucks, buses and other forms of transportation produced 55 percent of the Cape region’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in recent years, according to the Cape Cod Commission.  

Dozens of climate activists held a demonstration on the Bourne Bridge on Friday, as a parade of cars drove by in Labor Day weekend traffic. 

On a tree-lined street in south Sandwich, everything is quiet. Sprinklers, birds, and the occasional landscaping truck are all that make a noise. 

But when physician and retired Air Force colonel Jane Ward walks through the neighborhood, she hears the quiet before the storm.

Nine hundred dolphins, 60 sharks, and one Chilean Devil Ray. Those are among the marine animals scientists spotted during a single aerial survey of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument earlier this month. 

Woods Hole scientists will be live-streaming as they explore shipwrecks on the seafloor starting on Tuesday.

Using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) the scientists should be able to peek inside the iconic steamship Portland and an unidentified coal schooner within the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, off Gloucester. 

The comment period is open for a proposed project to bring a machine gun range to Joint Base Cape Cod. 

In an environmental assessment, the Massachusetts Army National Guard said it needs the eight-lane machine gun range to provide required small arms training for soldiers. 

On Thursday, Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration announced the developers will use the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal as the primary staging area for the construction and installation of their offshore wind projects in waters south of Martha’s Vineyard. 

A federal judge has ordered the National Marine Fisheries Service to issue new rules protecting critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. 

Teachers across the Cape and Islands say they want to get back into the classroom, but not yet. 

At 11 demonstrations across the region on Wednesday, scores of teachers called for "healthy and safe working and learning conditions in public schools." Remote learning, they said, is the only way to protect students, teachers, and families against the spread of COVID-19. 

Trees absorb 30 percent of the carbon humans pump into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, making forests key players in the fight against climate change.