9.11.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Radio wise Diary of Science and Nature. Your
reader's Kelly Taylor. I'll have some articles related to science
and nature, but first a reminder that radioi is a
reading service intended for people who are blind or have
other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Today,
we'll start with an article from the Washington Post dated

(00:23):
September ninth, and the headline reads, quote prolific alien invaders
quote threaten waters in the West. Water is a driving
force in the American West, and today it's at risk
more than ever, not just from overuse, not just from
mega drought, but from minuscule invaders that pose a nearly

(00:45):
unstoppable threat to the region's rivers, lakes, dams, and reservoirs.
Typically smaller than a nickel, Zebra and quagga muscles have
spread across Europe and the eastern United States, doing billions
of time dollars in damage by clogging infrastructure, wreaking havoc
on ecosystems, and eating food on which native fish and

(01:08):
other animals rely. The mollusk's westward sweep recently crossed a
feared rubicon when Colorado discovered zebra muscles in its portion.
Of the Colorado River system, an imperiled lifeline to forty
million people. Quote this news is devastating end quote, says

(01:29):
a water manager on the state's arid western side. Quote.
From irrigation to drinking water, the ramifications cannot be underestimated
or overstated. Quote. Almost nothing can keep the muscles from
proliferating once they gain a foothold, but scientists and government
agencies are desperate to try. Fifteen miles from the Utah border,

(01:52):
three men in orange vests scan the eastbound traffic of
Interstate seventy the hot late summer afternoon, and boats are
their target. Ski boats, fishing boats, pontoon boats. If drivers
are towing sailboats or watercraft with a motor attached, signs
here on the Colorado side of the state line tell

(02:14):
them they must pull over. The checkpoint, staffed daily, is
Colorado's first line of defense against the Quagga muscles that
already infest Lake Powell, a massive reservoir on the Utah
Arizona border. Recreational boats are the main vectors for spread,
and inspections have become a right of summer at many

(02:37):
US sites. Inspectors scrutinize ropes and motors for signs of
the interlopers. They search standing water and plants that might
hold larvae. Colorado first found adult zebra mussels in twenty
twenty two in high Line Lake, a sun baked high
desert reservoir fed by a canal connected to the Colorado River.

(02:59):
The state tree the water with a copper based mollusc killer.
The zebras survived, then the state drained the lake, killing
thousands of fish in the process. When Highline was refilled
this spring, water samples again came up mussel positive. Meanwhile,
zebra villagers baby mussels were detected in that canal and

(03:24):
in spots of the river itself. They showed up again
this summer, leading the state to declare about half of
the waterway within its borders contaminated with irrigation and native
fish at risk. Colorado has doubled down. A squadron of
seasonal workers operates seventy seven boat checkpoints and exhorts even

(03:45):
paddle borders and kayakers to clean, drain, and dry their vessels.
Water samples get drawn weakly from the Colorado's headwaters in
the Rocky Mountains to the Utah border. They're tested by
a government lab that has swelled in size. State specialists
have played detective too, determined to locate adult muscles that

(04:07):
could have spawned the villagers that made their way to
the river, They tracked down private bodies of water in
the vicinity. They got a hit a zebra infested pond
that connected to the river. The connection was cut. The
owner agreed to chemical treatment, but that pond may not
have been the only source, and other threats abound. In

(04:28):
late August, an inspector intercepted a quagga covered boat after
its owner sought to launch at McPhee Reservoir in southwest Colorado.
The state impounded the vessel, airlifting it by crane from
its trailer to scrape a clean At the I seventy checkpoint,
the team watches a truck towing a large ski boat
whiz by, ignoring the signs. Soon a camper pulling a

(04:52):
smaller boat stops. The occupants, their skepticism only partly obscured
by sunglasses, say they have been fishing at Lake Powell.
You guys don't have any live bait on board, asks
Inspector Everett. Preston. Bait can carry muscle larvae. No, they reply,
as one of Preston's colleagues flushes the vessel's enters with

(05:13):
water scalding enough to kill muscles. The other jumps into
the boat, opening seats and running his hand along the sides,
feeling for a sandy texture that might betray villagers. The
owner declines a seal that serves as a record of
the inspection. He boats only at Powell, he says, and
Powell does not do entrance checks, one of many interstate

(05:36):
quirks that complicates the counter attack. OK Gents Inspector Brian
Potts says, patting the boat, which heads east, its destination unknown.
Both zebra and quagga muscles, close relatives, are native to
the Caspian Sea and its surrounding region. Accounts of Zebra's

(05:58):
presence there day eight to seventeen sixty nine. Trade via
canals first transported them west, though researchers say factors including
the closed economies of communist Eastern Europe and polluted waterways
inconducive to muscle growth, limited their advance. Eventually, leisure boats

(06:20):
became the carriers, and now even high alpine lakes have
been colonized. The species made their way to North America
in the late nineteen eighties. Scientists believe freighters from the
Soviet Union, arriving to pick up grain at Midwestern ports
via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, dumped mussel infested ballast water
into the Great Lakes. They then spread rapidly throughout the

(06:43):
Great Lakes basin, later moving on to other Eastern US
waters and the Mississippi River basin. In the Great Lakes,
says Alexander Karatayev, the muscles have quote changed the ecosystem.
He is director of the Great Lakes Center at Buffalo
State University, and with wife and fellow researcher Lubov Eve

(07:04):
bar Berlakhova, has spent a career studying muscles. The bottom
of Lake Michigan quote used to be a moon landscape
with nothing, he notes, now it's completely paved with mussels.
The muscles are filter feeders, sucking in water and extracting
plankton and other material for food. This clarifies the water,

(07:25):
which scuba divers appreciate. So do real estate agents because
crystalline lakes help sell waterfront properties. But the downside of
these prolific alien invaders, as a two thousand and one
Federal plan call them, is enormous muscles not only attached
to boats and docks, they also clog pipes, screens, and

(07:47):
gates at water treatment plants and power plants. Congressional researchers
estimated that infestations cost the power industry in the Great
Lakes region three point one billion dollars from nineteen ninety
three to nineteen ninety nine. The mollusk's voracious appetite for
plankton has also led to the dramatic decline of native

(08:09):
whitefish and other fish in the Great Lakes. On the
other hand, native sturgeon have learned to feast on them.
It's a huge change to that system. Berlakhova says, But
you know, there is nothing black and white in nature
except one thing, she adds. Humans drove this change. For

(08:29):
a time, scientists doubted the muscles could survive in the
warmer waters of the Southwest and West. They were wrong.
Zebra mussels took hold in several Texas lakes starting in
two thousand and nine, astonishing Robert McMahon, an emeritus professor
of biology at the University of Texas at Arlington. His
research suggested they had evolved to withstand higher temperatures. Quote

(08:53):
they can produce literally billions in an infested lake of
new larvae, and when you have that, manys evolution can
occur very quickly. McMahon says it's possible that through time
they may even get more temperature tolerant. I hope not.
Quaggas have been multiplying in Lake Meads since at least

(09:14):
two thousand seven. Five years later, an estimated one point
five trillion adult muscles lived within the Orange Canyon walls
of Mead, where drought and dizzying development have led to
record low water levels. Inside the massive Hoover Dam, which
uses Colorado River to generate electricity across three states, they

(09:36):
regularly clog pipes that pull river water to cool generators.
It's a huge problem, facility manager Brad Cochrane says, pointing
amid the drone of machinery to the nine cylindrical generators
Inside the cavernous Arizona wing of the dam. Four steel
tunnels thirty feet in diameter carry water to turbines, and

(09:57):
every two years each is drained so its interior can
be recoated with a gray epoxy. Though the water rushes
through with incredible force. Staff always find what Cochrane describes
as dunes of mussels attached inside. It takes ten workers
forty five days to pressure, wash, shovel, and wheelbarrow them away.

(10:21):
The two thousand and one government report warned of calamitus
environmental and economic costs if zebras joined them in the West.
Two decades later, the Army Corps of Engineers estimated that
protecting hydroelectric projects, salmon fisheries, and private boats from an
infestation in the Columbia River basin could cost one hundred

(10:42):
eighty five million dollars annually. The mussel menace has triggered
extreme measures. California's San Eusto Reservoir, a popular fishing and
recreation spot east of Monterey Bay, has been closed since
zebras were found there in two thousand and eight. Some
jurisdictions have temporarily banned imports of marimao moss balls sold

(11:06):
as aquarium decor since shipments from Ukraine were found to
be infested in twenty twenty one, agencies have deployed dogs
trained to sniff out microscopic larvae. Some experts doubt zebra
muscles could find much to hold onto in the Colorado
with its agitating currents, Yet David Wong, an environmental biologists

(11:27):
who for years studied muscles in the West, sees the
calcium rich river as sustenance for shell formation and its
flow as a larvae commuter train. Quote. It's very difficult
for villagers to swim upstream, he says, but now they
can be going anywhere, all the way from Colorado down
to Arizona, Utah. A muscle gripped future terrifies Tino burg Goonzini.

(11:53):
She oversees the distribution of Colorado River water to irrigators
across Colorado's parched Grand Valley. The region's ranch lands and
peaches depend on it, and she says many farmers who
used micro drip irrigation with small tubes that could be
jammed by mussels are stressed. Last year, the Grand Valley

(12:13):
Water Users Association spent more than eighty thousand dollars to
treat a major canal with a copper solution toxic to mussels,
boosting user fees. The group may do it again this year,
she says, But Bergonzini worries about environmental costs after authorities
doused the Snake River in Idaho two years ago with

(12:35):
copper to kill Quaggas. Government researchers found the effort also
killed native species, and still the mussels returned. On a
serene August morning, she peers over the railings of the
canal's fish screen, a large metal structure that filters endangered
fish out of the greenish water and shoots them back

(12:55):
into the Colorado. The water was languid, the screens and
beams immer furst and replete with muscle friendly crevices. Quote.
The life here which we have become accustomed to is
because the Colorado River, she says, So changing the river
in such a catastrophic way really kind of changes what
it means to be a Coloradon quote. Some seventy five

(13:18):
miles to the northeast, in the resort town of Glenwood Springs,
an aquatic nuisance species specialist named Morgan Hoffmann returns to
the river to do sampling. She tosses a net attached
to a rope into the current, then toes it back
in with her catch of plankton and other matter. Those
who study the Zebras and Quaggas insist it is worth

(13:39):
the money and effort to keep the species at bay,
or at least try Quote, you can slow it down.
And you hope, given enough time where places have become infested,
that the numbers and problems will have dropped off. But
you're talking about years, maybe, concedes McMahon, the Texas professor
or never end quote. And now we'll turn to National Geographic.

(14:04):
We have an article that's headlined this is the best
evidence yet for ancient life on Mars, published September tenth.
Geologist Michael Tice had never lost sleep over a Mars
rock before that changed as he dug into data from
the red planet's Bright Angel rock formation, located in an

(14:24):
area river valley. I'm sorry, an ancient river valley called
Neretva Vallis. N ere Tva Neretva vallis. The al s
this rock formation contains the most compelling evidence to date
for possibility of ancient life on Mars, citing a new

(14:46):
analysis of samples collected by NASA's Perseverance Rover, published September
tenth in the journal Nature. The result quote is the
closest we've actually come to discovering ancient life on Mars,
says Nicola Fox, Ancient Associate Administrator for Science at NASA.

(15:08):
Further research is needed to confirm that life indeed existed there,
But for scientists like Tye and his collaborator Joel Herowitz,
the rocks of Bright Angel raised the possibility that microbes
thrived in the mud under water some three and a
half billion years ago. It's pretty mind blowing, says Tye,

(15:28):
a research scientist at Texas A and M University. When
Joel and I started seriously considering the possibility that life
could have been involved in forming these things, I had
trouble sleeping that night. Bright Angel's rocks, on the western
edge of Jaesaro Crater were likely deposited at the bottom
of a lake or river when water flowed freely on

(15:51):
a planet that is now dry. Chemical clues suggest that
a specific type of reaction occurred in these rocks, and
on Earth, such reactions typically involve microbial life. Quote. This
is the first time that chemical process is consistent with,
though not definitive proof of a biological origin have been

(16:13):
observed on Mars, says Christian Schroeder, physicist at the Max
Planck Institute for Solar System Research. Throughout Bright Angel, Perseverance
found greenish specks scientists like to call poppy seeds or
nodules embedded in reddish mudstone. Prominent in those specks is

(16:35):
the mineral vivianite containing iron phosphate. The rover also drilled
a thin rock core sample called Sapphire Canyon, barely as
long as an adult pinky finger. Sapphire Canyon showed tiny
ring like features called leopard spots, with rims made of
dark minerals that are also iron phosphate, and lighter interior

(16:57):
areas with an iron sulfide mineral called gridgite. What's more
exciting for the research for life would have occurred? I'm sorry,
what's most exciting for the search for life would have
occurred at a scale even smaller than molecules. In an
oxidation reaction or redox reaction, organic material gave over electrons

(17:21):
to iron in the mud and left these other minerals
vivianite and gridgite behind. On Earth, microorganisms spark reactions like
this by consuming the organic matter and capturing the energy
released in the redox process with minerals formed as byproducts.
It's like kind of how humans eat food to gain

(17:45):
energy and generate waste too. Quote the places where we
see that happening on Earth in ambient temperature sedimentary settings,
Those reactions are typically driven by microbes, said Herowitz, a
geologist at Stony University. If the bright Angel formation results
ultimately do lead to the proof of ancient life on Mars,

(18:07):
Tye notes that means two different planets hosted microbes getting
their energy through the same means at about the same
time in the distant past. That could suggest that early
life learns how to survive in this way, regardless of
where it originated. Quote. I think that could be telling
us something really profound about how life evolves, he says.

(18:32):
Proving that a sign of life, or what scientists call
a biosignature, has been found definitively is an enormous scientific undertaking.
It requires multiple lines of evidence from different scientific instruments
and a thorough investigation of the geological context in which
the biological signal could have been produced. Enormous amounts of

(18:54):
scrutiny and debate would ensue before such a ground breaking conclusion.
The obvious first question is can a non biological source
produce the same result. The same redox reactions described in
the Mars rock paper with the same byproducts can occur
without the presence of life, but only under hot conditions.

(19:16):
A volcanic eruption could theoretically explain something like this no
life required, but the study authors believe conditions weren't hot
enough in this particular location when the rocks seem to
have been underwater. Quote, if you were able to take
the mud and the organic matter and cook them, you
could come up with that same set of minerals, Heroitz says,

(19:40):
But so far, using all the tools available to us,
we don't see any evidence that these rocks were heated
up to the kinds of temperatures that would be needed
to make that reaction happen. What's more, Tice noted that
if a massive lava flow event had created the leopard spots,
they would only appear in a single layer rather than

(20:01):
multiple layers of the core sample. Scientists stress that to
know for sure whether ancient microbial life was responsible for
the poppy seeds and leopard spots, samples of Mars rocks
would need to be returned to Earth so that scientists
can use more sophisticated laboratory equipment to more thoroughly investigate.
The fate of NASA's own sample return program remains up

(20:23):
in the air, however, and now will turn to ACU weather,
and the article headline is survey reveals which natural disasters
scare Americans the most. Dated September the ninth, a new
nationwide survey highlights America's deepest weather fears, and the results

(20:46):
show striking gaps between the threats people worry about and
how prepared they actually feel to face them. The poll
of twenty five hundred adults conducted by Talker Research on
behalf of Masterlocke, found tornadoes ranked as the scariest natural
disaster forty six percent, narrowly edging out tsunamis forty three percent,

(21:07):
followed by earthquakes thirty five percent and hurricanes thirty three percent,
wildfires thirty percent, flash floods twenty six percent, heat waves
and droughts six percent, blizzards four percent, and mudslides four
percent trailed behind. The study revealed major regional differences in

(21:29):
how Americans think about disasters. In the Northeast, residents reported
high confidence in handling more familiar threats like heat waves
or droughts and blizzards, but earthquakes a newer concern for
the region. Does this mean an earthquake is new on
the survey list, or is it implying that earthquakes in
general are a new thing in the Northeast, left only

(21:51):
forty two percent feeling prepared. Fewer still said they would
be ready for a tornado thirty eight percent. In the Midwest,
two thirds. Sixty two percent of Midwesterners said they don't
flinch when tornado warnings are issued, which is unsurprising given
the region's history with severe storms. However, their confidence waned

(22:12):
when asked about wildfires thirty three percent and mudslides twenty
seven percent, hazards less familiar to the area. In the Southeast,
respondents here were more likely to identify as disaster veterans
nineteen percent compared to fourteen percent nationwide, citing repeated experience

(22:33):
with hurricanes and tropical storms. One Florida resident explained, quote,
we are always prepared in the season with a stock
of extra food and emergency needs. Quote. In the West,
earthquakes and wildfires topped the list of fears, with residents
more confident about what to do in an earthquake than
in a fast moving wildfire. Despite frequent exposure to severe weather,

(22:57):
many Americans admit they are under prepared. Only twenty eight
percent have a tornado plant, twenty two percent have one
for heat waves, twenty one percent for hurricanes, in nineteen
percent for flash floods. Nearly a third have no disaster
plan at all. Even basic weather literacy is uneven. Fewer
than half could correctly explain the difference between a weather

(23:19):
watch and a warning. When severe weather alerts are issued,
twenty one percent of respondents said they immediately gather their
families and pets and evacuate, fourteen percent head to a
safe area or start securing their home, while eleven percent
grab important items on the way out. The study also
underscored how disasters catch people off guard. Nearly half said

(23:44):
they were unprepared for prolonged power outages, thirty nine percent
for the sheer destruction, and thirty six percent for the
length of time it takes to recover. While preparedness lags,
awareness is rising. Or in five Americans say they are
more aware of severe weather than they were a decade ago.

(24:06):
More than half believe extreme weather is becoming more common,
and thirty seven percent believe storms are growing stronger. Still,
sixty one percent agreed it's harder than ever to be
prepared now. An article from BBC's Science Focus magazine, new
method could finally destroy forever chemicals and forever chemicals is

(24:29):
in quotes. For more than seventy years, so called forever
chemicals have been used to make all sorts of products,
from nonstick cookware to fabrics, but they've also been linked
to environmental problems and serious health consequences, including several types
of cancer, and they're notoriously hard to get rid of. Now,
scientists have discovered how to break down and recycle these chemicals,

(24:53):
also known as per and polyfluoroalkal substances or PFA pfas.
What's more, the method developed by researchers at the University
of Oxford worked working with Colorado State University in the US,
not only destroys pfas but also recovers useful elements from them.

(25:17):
The destruction of pfas with phosphate salts is an exciting innovation,
offering a simple yet powerful solution to a long standing
environmental challenge, said doctor Long Yang, chemist at the University
of Oxford and one of the authors of the study
that was published in Nature. This involved firstly reacting PFAS

(25:39):
samples with potassium phosphate salts. Then the researcher's ground the
pfas and salts together using ball bearings. Small metal balls
used in machinery. Pfas are chemicals with multiple very strong
carbon fluorine bonds, but the scientists were able to use
this method to break those bonds and extract the fluorine content,

(26:04):
a chemical used in many industries, including making statins and herbicides. Currently,
we rely on a mineral called fluorospar as the primary
source of our fluorine. Now we'll go to science Alert
and the headline for this one is Abandoned shopping carts

(26:25):
do more damage than you think. This is September eleventh.
Abandoned shopping carts, pushed into hedges, dumped in rivers, or
stranded on city streets have become symbols of pollution and waste,
and a new study shows just how bad for our
planet they actually are. The research was carried out in
the UK, where these grocery carriers are known as trolleys,

(26:49):
and around five hundred and twenty thousand of them are
deserted annually. Recovering, repairing, or replacing derelict carts comes with
a sizeable environmental costs of shopping trolleys are reported as
abandoned in the UK every year says materials engineer Neil
Wrath from the University of Warwick, quote, when you multiply

(27:09):
the carbon impact of retrieving each one, it becomes both
significant and concerning. Wrath and his colleague, University of Warwick
materials engineer Darren Hughes, calculated that the diesel required to
retrieve all of those trolleys and vans adds up to
three hundred and forty three metric tons of carbon dioxide,
similar to the emissions involved in driving eighty cars for

(27:32):
a year. If just ten percent of those half a
million trolleys also required refurbishing with zinc coating, the carbon
emissions would almost double. And yet recovery and refurbishment can
massively reduce the cost to the planet of having to
replace a shopping cart by as much as ninety two
to ninety nine percent. The researchers focus their attention on

(27:56):
the suburban area and the city of Coventry, figuring out
the environmental price of each trolley through its entire life cycle.
Round thirty trolleys a week are recovered in the area,
and roughly one hundred a year need refurbishing. Well, that's
it for this week's Diary of Science. And nature. Your
reader was Kelly Taylor. Now stay tuned for further programming

(28:19):
on RADIOI