Last September, Jace Tunnell discovered a layer of tiny, round plastic pellets covering a beach on Padre Island off the southern coast of Texas. There were "millions of them," he recalled, "and it went on for miles." Tunnell, a marine biologist, knew exactly what the pellets were, but says he had never actually seen them before. They're called nurdles, and they're the preproduction building blocks for nearly all plastic goods, from soft-drink bottles to oil pipelines.

We would like to refocus the State's approach to the Isle de Jean Charles Resettlement, and encourage state planners and policy-makers to honor our rights as they did throughout the design and NDRC proposal-building process prior to receiving federal funding. We are not merely "stakeholders" engaged in a project. We are rights-holders committed to future generations of our family, our knowledge, our ways of life, and our Island people. Our Tribe's cultural survival depends on it.

The future rate and extent of sea level rise are highly uncertain, and responses to higher water levels will need to reflect this uncertainty. Sea level rise was a major topic of the annual meeting of the National Academy of Engineering on October 9-10, 2016, and the second day featured a forum on adaptation to it. This summary of the forum, which also incorporates material from Robert J. Nicholls' plenary presentation, outlines a rich and challenging set of problems for engineers, scientists, and those who work with them.

Climate change threatens historic coastal communities, and reducing vulnerability through adaptation will not be easy - but it is necessary. Differing values of government agencies and local communities - contingent on attitudes to risk and cultural restrictions on action - may limit the options for adaptation.

Our oceans are polluted with a wide variety of marine debris, ranging from tiny cigarette butts and plastic bags to 4,000-pound derelict fishing nets and abandoned vessels. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defines marine debris as any "persistent solid material that is manufactured or processed and directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally, disposed of or abandoned into the marine environment or the Great Lakes. Trash and debris along the coasts of the United States mainly comes from littering or mass dumping.

Different types of macroinvertebrates have different requirements to survive. Some require cooler temperatures, relatively high dissolved oxygen levels or certain habitats. Other macroinvertebrates may be able to survive in less-than-ideal conditions - where there are low dissolved oxygen levels or more sediment - or where the water temperature is warmer. Again, there aren't any "bad" macroinvertebrates, but the population present may indicate that there are bad stream conditions in which only the "strong" can survive.

Louisiana is facing a land loss crisis - more than 2,000 square miles of land have been lost over the last 100 years, and an equal amount could potentially be lost over the next 50 years. This loss puts businesses, homes, infrastructure and whole communities at risk. The risk of continued land loss is concentrated in coastal Louisiana, but the economic implications will spread throughout the nation due to the state's importance in shipping, energy production, chemicals and other sectors.

Climate migrants have been invisible for many years on the migration and climate debates. Our work at IOM has been focused for over 10 years on bringing climatic and environmental factors to the light and on building a body of evidence proving that climate change affects - directly and indirectly - human mobility. Hence, it might seem paradoxical in this context not to encourage the establishment of a climate specific legal status, parallel to the existing refugees' status.

EPA's Trash Free Waters (TFW) program refers to the garbage polluting U.S. rivers, lakes, streams, and creeks as "aquatic trash." Most of the garbage that ends up in waterways comes from land-based activities. Garbage can easily become aquatic trash if it is not properly disposed of or securely contained. When garbage is littered on the ground rather than placed in a recycle, compost, or trash bin, rain and wind often carries it into storm drains, streams, canals, and rivers.

Isle de Jean Charles, home to the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw band of Native Americans, has lost 98 percent of its land since 1955. Its 99 remaining residents have been dubbed "America's first climate refugees." 'There's just a little strip of it left,' said resident Rita Falgout. 'There used to be a lot of trees; we didn't have so much salt water.' Like many of the houses on Isle de Jean Charles, her home is raised on 15-foot stilts to evade the increasingly omnipresent floodwaters. But the stilts can't protect her from the island's isolation.