Matthew Charette
A Change Has Come in the Arctic
On a long voyage across the Arctic Ocean, an MIT-WHOI graduate students finds chemical clues that climate change has already had impacts on the region.
Up in the Sky!
Nope, it’s not a bird or a plane. It’s a drone on a scientific mission to restore a river long impaired by dams and to help bring back populations of prized fish that once flourished…
Can Clams and Oysters Help Clean Up Waterways?
Towns in Cape Cod are looking to shellfish not only as culinary treats, but as a way to help clean up waters suffering from excess nitrogen. Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for plants and animals,…
Back to Bikini
WHOI scientists returned to the Pacific islands of Bikini and Enewetak in 2015 to study radioactive contamination nearly 70 years after the U.S. used the islands for nuclear weapons testing. What they learned could also be applied to a more recent nuclear disaster: the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdown in Japan.
Radioactivity Under the Beach?
Scientists have found a previously unsuspected place where radioactive material from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster has accumulated—in sands and brackish groundwater beneath beaches up to 60 miles away.
Underneath and Overlooked: Groundwater
Matt Charette has been pulling off the sheetrock in Earth’s basement to reveal a hidden plumbing system that pumps water into the ocean. Rivers carry most of the rain that falls on land back to…
Water Flowing Underground
Groundwater discharge appears to be an important factor for determining the chemistry of the coastal ocean. As fresh groundwater flows toward the sea, it rises up over denser, salty water. The fresh and salty water mix along the interface, and the resulting fluid discharges at the shoreline. This interface between underground water masses has recently been described as a “subterranean estuary,” a mixing zone between fresh and salty water analogous to the region where a river meets the ocean.