Topics Related to Environmentally Speaking

Viewing Climate Change through a Creative Lens

Keeping kids engaged. Educators and parents are often tasked with finding creative measures encourage students to be inspired. While climate change and art aren’t generally synonymous, a group of State educators and environmental professionals who formed the N.C. Climate Education Network (NCCEN) said – let’s give it a shot.

Climate change is a serious subject, with volumes of data and historical research. NCCEN decided to offer an art contest and invited K-12 students to use 30 years of data to express their visual interpretation of climate change.

Winter Air Quality

Have you noticed how fine particulate readings in the morning are often higher than the afternoon during the winter months? This is often due to something called a surface temperature inversion. Typically, the temperature of the air will cool with height as the sun heats the ground, warming the air at the surface.

Modernizing the Hazardous Waste Billing Process

Working with the state’s Department of Information Technology, the Division of Waste Management’s Hazardous Waste Section successfully modernized its outdated and inefficient paper billing and collection process with an online solution.

Learn about landslide threats in your county with new DEQ tool

N.C. Marine Patrol officers learn the ropes of swift water rescues

It requires a lot of training, but when they are finished, the N.C. Marine Patrol will have a certified swift water rescue team, yet another way they can help save lives during emergencies.

One Remarkable Fish: Tag return shows North Carolina striped bass was one of the oldest recorded on East Coast

Clark Purvis could not have known just how remarkable that striped bass he recently caught would turn out to be.

Sure, it was a big fish – 40 inches long – given that it was caught in the Roanoke River. Most striped bass caught in North Carolina’s sounds and rivers range between 16 and 24 inches. But that’s not what made the fish so special.

It was the information researchers with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries’ Tagging Program got from the tag on the fish that showed how extraordinary it was.

Earth Day 2020

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, we reflect on what we do everyday as an agency, and specifically air quality, to promote the values of this year’s Earth Day theme: climate action.  

Fresh Air, Earth Day and Robin Hood - Earth Day Today

Many know the story of Robin Hood, or the pop culture significance of Robin Hood the hero, a commoner who stole from the rich to give to the poor, in the myriad of stories about his life one thing is clear: he made the seemingly elusive very tangible, and improved lives with his efforts. 

History of Earth Day

Did you know that Earth Day was started right in the United States by a US Senator from Wisconsin named Gaylord Nelson?  Having witnessed oil spills and environmental degradation, he used the anti-war movement started by students to join social and environmental consciousness.  He enlisted the help of Pete McCloskey (Republican Congressman) and Denis Hayes (Harvard Professor), two very smart guys who were also very different.   

Division of Marine Fisheries Artificial Reef Program sinks tugboat off Dare County

The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries’ Artificial Reef Program, in partnership with the Oregon Inlet Artificial Reef Committee, sank the first of three tugboats off the coast of Pea Island on Monday.