Did someone ever really say that one person can’t make a difference? Consider the efforts of 61 talented educators involved in NOAA’s Climate Stewards Program, which aims to increase teachers’ and students’ understanding of essential climate concepts and give them ready access to reliable scientific information. Then, armed with that knowledge, NOAA Climate Stewards initiate environmentally friendly action plans to reduce the “carbon footprint” in their own communities.

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Marine turtles worldwide are vulnerable and endangered, but their long lives and broad distribution make it difficult for scientists to accurately determine the threat level to different populations and devise appropriate conservation strategies. To address this concern, researchers have developed a new method to evaluate spatially and biologically distinct groups of marine turtles to identify threats and data gaps at different scales....

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The National Ocean Service maintains a wide range of online tools to monitor hurricanes and deliver relevant data before, during, and after a storm. These tools are described below.

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Using highly skilled divers and high-tech equipment, BGU sent the team to study the springs they had previously detected. The study reveals complex springs hundreds of feet long and as deep as 90 feet (30 meters). The springs appear from the sea floor through craters as large as 45 feet (15 meters) in diameter and 60 feet (20 meters) deep -- with steep, finely laminated walls and alternating layers of sediment and minerals....

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Derelict fishing gear, sometimes referred to as "ghost gear," is any discarded, lost, or abandoned, fishing gear in the environment. This gear continues to fish and trap animals, entangle and potentially kill marine life, smother habitat, and act as a hazard to navigation. Derelict fishing gear, such as nets or traps and pots, is one of the main types of debris impacting the marine environment today....

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Scientists have studied populations of European green crab, Carcinus maenas. The species was introduced to the East Coast of North America twice, at both the upper and lower edges of its range. Their findings may help inform the control of invasive species and conservation of imperiled native species....

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In partnership with NOAA and the Monk Seal Research Program, the Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System (a partner in the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System) is now providing select tracks of information on monk seals in Hawaii. The new data set also includes information on sharks in addition to monk seals.

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NASA's decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) fell back to Earth between 11:23 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 23 and 1:09 a.m. Sept. 24, 20 years and nine days after its launch on a 14-year mission that produced some of the first long-term records of chemicals in the atmosphere. The precise re-entry time and location of debris impacts have not been determined. During the re-entry period, the satellite passed from the east coast of Africa over the Indian Ocean, then the Pacific Ocean, then across northern Canada, then across the northern Atlantic Ocean, to a point over West Africa. The vast majority of the orbital transit was over water, with some flight over northern Canada and West Africa....

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As the Manager of the Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program, I lead a team that helps states and communities protect their coastal lands. As more people want to live on and visit the coast, it’s important to protect some of the land from development so the public can enjoy its beauty, wildlife, and recreational possibilities for generations to come. Our program works with state and community partners to identify the most important coastal lands, then gives them money to help them protect that land forever.

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NASA's new Aquarius instrument has produced its first global map of the salinity of the ocean surface, providing an early glimpse of the mission's anticipated discoveries. Aquarius, which is aboard the Aquarius/SAC-D (Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas) observatory, is making NASA's first space observations of ocean surface salinity variations -- a key component of Earth's climate. Salinity changes are linked to the cycling of freshwater around the planet and influence ocean circulation....

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