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The Department today entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands on how our two countries jointly manage and research our shipwrecks, sunken relics and other underwater cultural heritage.

Redmires, Sheffield Scored by wind and rain there is something square-jawed about the stone known as Stump John

The Head Stone stands, like a muted version of Easter Island’s moai, on grouse moors west of Sheffield, looking down on traffic hurrying along the A57. A fractured block of gritstone seamed and scored by wind and rain, there is something square-jawed about it, although it has other names: Stump John, for John Priestley of Overstones Farm, a place literally “over stones”, on the far side of Stanage; and Cock Crowing Stone, possibly for the male grouse that advertise their wares from its summit.

Related: Farewell to an ancient landmark

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Bacteria cultured from a sample of air in a public building. Khamkhlai Thanet/Shutterstock.com

Humans are transporting trillions of bacteria around the world via tourism, food and shipping, without stopping to think about the potential damage being caused to bacterial ecosystems.

When we think about endangered species, we typically think of charismatic mammals such as whales, tigers or pandas. But the roughly 5,500 mammal species on Earth is a relatively paltry number – and it pales in comparison with bacteria, of which there are at least a million different species.

Despite their vast numbers, little research has been done to understand the impact that modern human practices have on these tiny organisms, which have an important influence on many facets of our lives.

Read more: Microbes: the tiny sentinels that can help us diagnose sick oceans.

In an article published today in Science, my colleagues and I explore how humans move bacteria around the globe, and what this might mean for our own welfare.

Human effects on our planet are so profound that we have entered a new geological age, called the Anthropocene. One of the key features of this new world is the way we affect other organisms. We have altered the distribution of animals and plants, creating problems with feral animals, weeds and other invasive species. We have caused many species to decline so much that they have gone extinct.

There are also grounds for concern over the way humans are affecting bacterial species, and in many cases we are causing the same type of problems that affect larger organisms.

Bacterial population structures are definitely changing, and bacterial species are being transported to new locations, becoming the microbial equivalent of weeds or feral animals. Perhaps some bacteria are even on their way to extinction, although we don’t really have enough information to be certain yet.

How do they get around?

Let’s start by talking about sewage and manure. Animal and human faeces release gut microorganisms back into the environment, and these organisms are vastly different from the organisms that would have been released 100 years ago. This is because humans and our domesticated animals – cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens – now comprise 35 times more biomass than all the wild mammals on land.

Human sewage and livestock manure contain very specific subsets of microbes, meaning those populations are enriched and replenished in the environment, at the expense of the native microbes. Sewage and manure also distribute enormous quantities of genes that confer resistance to antibiotics and disinfectants.

Waste water, sewage sludge and manure are used extensively in agriculture. So gut organisms from humans and agricultural animals go on to contaminate foodstuffs. These food products, along with their bacteria, are then shipped around the world.

Then there are the 1.2 billion international tourist movements per year, which also unintentionally transport gut microorganisms to exotic locations. For instance, tourism can rapidly spread antibiotic resistant pathogens between continents.

It’s not just humans and their food that cause concern – there are also vast quantities of microbe-laden materials that move along with us. Each year, roughly 100 million tonnes of ballast water are discharged from ships in US ports alone. This movement of microorganisms via shipping is changing the distribution of bacteria in the oceans. It also transports pathogens such as cholera.

Humans also move vast quantities of sand, soil and rock. It may seem hard to believe, but it is estimated that human activities are now responsible for moving more soil than all natural processes combined. As every gram of soil contains roughly a billion bacteria,this amounts to huge numbers of microorganisms being moved around the planet.

The fallout

Why should we care if bacteria are being spread to new places? Besides the obvious potential for spreading diseases to humans, animals and crops, there are also hidden dangers.

Microorganisms are invisible to the naked eye, so we tend to ignore them and don’t necessarily appreciate their role in how the planet operates. Bacteria are crucial to biogeochemistry – the cycling of nutrients and other chemicals through ecosystems.

Read more: Your microbiome is shared with your family… including your pets.

For instance, before humans invented a way to make fertiliser industrially, every single nitrogen atom in our proteins and DNA had to be chemically captured by a bacterial cell before it could be taken up by plants and then enter the human food chain. The oxygen we breathe is largely made by photosynthetic microorganisms in the oceans (and not mainly by rainforests, as is commonly believed).

Our effects on bacteria have the potential to alter these fundamental bacterial functions. It is vital to gain a better understanding of how humans are affecting microbes’ distribution, their abundance, and their life-sustaining processes. Although bacteria are invisible, we overlook them at our peril.

Michael Gillings receives funding from the Australian Research Council

AEMO, like Finkel, provided Turnbull with a launch pad to push for a cleaner, smarter, cheaper and more reliable grid. Instead, the Coalition pined for traditional and outdated technologies. It's time to bust a few myths about baseload and blackouts.

Centennial Coal, whose licence was ruled invalid after its Springvale mine was found to be polluting Sydney’s water, wants matter resolved in two weeks

The miner that supplies Energy Australia’s Mount Piper coal power station with coal has sought an urgently expedited court hearing to establish how it can continue to operate without a valid licence.

But Centennial Coal did so without making a formal application for an early hearing and without evidence supporting the need for it, leaving the judge appearing sceptical of the claim.

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Extreme weather presents many threats to electricity systems – particularly on centralised grids, where outages can ripple down the line. But can we do better?

The end is near for US-led space mission as it flies towards a fiery impact with the ringed planet.

Despite federal government inertia, there is the potential for industry and community to influence the direction of energy policy. Here's how it might be done.

British generator Drax to build 200MW battery storage project – at one of Europe’s largest coal-fired power plants.

The Australian Petroleum Statistics provide statistics on petroleum production, refinery inputs and outputs, sales and stocks of petroleum products, and prices.

Cassini's about to crash into Saturn, but here's what it's achieved over the last two decades.

Exclusive: EU’s food safety watchdog recommended that glyphosate was safe but pages of report were identical to application from pesticide maker

The European food safety authority (Efsa) based a recommendation that a chemical linked to cancer was safe for public use on an EU report that copied and pasted analyses from a Monsanto study, the Guardian can reveal.

Glyphosate is the core ingredient in Monsanto’s $4.75bn (£3.5bn) a year RoundUp weedkiller brand and a battle over its relicensing has split EU countries, with a final decision on its authorisation expected in early November.

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Over the past 60 years land clearing has seen the loss of more than 90 per cent of the Brigalow forests between Townsville and northern NSW.

Clouds over Australia's Davis Research Station, containing ice particles that activate ozone-depleting chemicals, triggering the annual ozone hole. Barry Becker/BOM/AAD, Author provided

This weekend marks the 30th birthday of the Montreal Protocol, often dubbed the world’s most successful environmental agreement. The treaty, signed on September 16, 1987, is slowly but surely reversing the damage caused to the ozone layer by industrial gases such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

Each year, during the southern spring, a hole appears in the ozone layer above Antarctica. This is due to the extremely cold temperatures in the winter stratosphere (above 10km altitude) that allow byproducts of CFCs and related gases to be converted into forms that destroy ozone when the sunlight returns in spring.

As ozone-destroying gases are phased out, the annual ozone hole is generally getting smaller – a rare success story for international environmentalism.

Back in 2012, our Saving the Ozone series marked the Montreal Protocol’s silver jubilee and reflected on its success. But how has the ozone hole fared in the five years since?

Read more: What is the Antarctic ozone hole and how is it made?.

The Antarctic ozone hole has continued to appear each spring, as it has since the late 1970s. This is expected, as levels of the ozone-destroying halocarbon gases controlled by the Montreal Protocol are still relatively high. The figure below shows that concentrations of these human-made substances over Antarctica have fallen by 14% since their peak in about 2000.

Past and predicted levels of controlled gases in the Antarctic atmosphere, quoted as equivalent effective stratospheric chlorine (EESC) levels, a measure of their contribution to stratospheric ozone depletion. Paul Krummel/CSIRO, Author provided

It typically takes a few decades for these gases to cycle between the lower atmosphere and the stratosphere, and then ultimately to disappear. The most recent official assessment, released in 2014, predicted that it will take 30-40 years for the Antarctic ozone hole to shrink to the size it was in 1980.

Signs of recovery

Monitoring the ozone hole’s gradual recovery is made more complicated by variations in atmospheric temperatures and winds, and the amount of microscopic particles called aerosols in the stratosphere. In any given year these can make the ozone hole bigger or smaller than we might expect purely on the basis of halocarbon concentrations.

Launching an ozone-measuring balloon from Australia’s Davis Research Station in Antarctica. Barry Becker/BOM/AAD, Author provided

The 2014 assessment indicated that the size of the ozone hole varied more during the 2000s than during the 1990s. While this might suggest it has become harder to detect the healing effects of the Montreal Protocol, we can nevertheless tease out recent ozone trends with the help of sophisticated atmospheric chemistry models.

Reassuringly, a recent study showed that the size of the ozone hole each September has shrunk overall since the turn of the century, and that more than half of this shrinking trend is consistent with reductions in ozone-depleting substances. However, another study warns that careful analysis is needed to account for a variety of natural factors that could confound our detection of ozone recovery.

The 2015 volcano

One such factor is the presence of ozone-destroying volcanic dust in the stratosphere. Chile’s Calbuco volcano seems to have played a role in enhancing the size of the ozone hole in 2015.

At its maximum size, the 2015 hole was the fourth-largest ever observed. It was in the top 15% in terms of the total amount of ozone destroyed. Only 2006, 1998, 2001 and 1999 had more ozone destruction, whereas other recent years (2013, 2014 and 2016) ranked near the middle of the observed range.

Average ozone concentrations over the southern hemisphere during October 1-15, 2015, when the Antarctic ozone hole for that year was near its maximum extent. The red line shows the boundary of the ozone hole. Paul Krummel/CSIRO/EOS, Author provided

Another notable feature of the 2015 ozone hole was that it was at its biggest observed extent for much of the period from mid-October to mid-December. This coincided with a period during which the jet of westerly winds in the Antarctic stratosphere was particularly unaffected by the warmer, more ozone-rich air at lower latitudes. In a typical year, the influx of air from lower latitudes helps to limit the size of the ozone hole in spring and early summer.

The 2017 hole

As noted above, the ozone holes of 2013, 2014 and 2016 were relatively unremarkable compared with that of 2015, being close to the long-term average for overall ozone loss.

In general respects, these ozone holes were similar to those seen in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before the peak of ozone depletion. This is consistent with a gradual recovery of the ozone layer as levels of ozone-depleting substances gradually decline.

This year’s hole began to form in early August, and the timing was similar to the long-term average. Stratospheric temperatures during the Antarctic winter were slightly cooler than in 2016, which would favour enhancement of the chemical changes that lead to ozone destruction in spring. However, temperatures climbed above average in mid-August during a disturbance to the polar winds, delaying the hole’s expansion. As of the second week of September, the warmer-than-average temperatures have continued but the ozone hole has grown slightly larger than the long-term average since 1979.

Read more: Saving the ozone layer: why the Montreal Protocol worked.

While annual monitoring continues, which includes measurements under the Australian Antarctic Program, a more comprehensive assessment of the ozone layer’s prospects is set to arrive late next year. Scientists across the globe, coordinated by the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organisation, are busy preparing the next report required under the Montreal Protocol, called the Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2018.

This peer-reviewed report will examine the recent state of the ozone layer and the atmospheric concentration of ozone-depleting chemicals, how the ozone layer is projected to change, and links between ozone change and climate.

In the meantime we’ll watch the 2017 hole as it peaks then shrinks over the remainder of the year, as well as the ozone holes of future years, which will tend to grow less and less large as the ozone layer heals.

Andrew Klekociuk is employed by the Australian Antarctic Division and is funded by the Department of the Environment and Energy of the Australian government.

Paul Krummel is employed by CSIRO and receives funding from MIT, NASA, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Department of the Environment and Energy, and Refrigerant Reclaim Australia.

New federal government-funded study finds exposure to a key air pollutant is significantly influenced by race, far more than by income, age or education

People of color are still far more likely to suffer from harmful air pollution than white people across the US and this disparity has barely improved in recent years, despite overall improvements in air quality, a new federal government-funded study has found.

Related: London’s black communities disproportionately exposed to air pollution – study

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The case for new nuclear power stations is fatuous now offshore wind power has come down in cost so much, says Ian Hill. Yes, writes Will Taylor, but don’t forget the potential of tidal energy. Hold on a minute before rejecting nuclear, argue Tim Chittenden and Jim Waterton

Your excellent editorial on the reducing cost of offshore wind power (13 September) is timely in identifying the increasingly futile case for new nuclear build. It does, however, repeat the fallacy that nuclear power “is a zero-carbon technology”. The carbon emissions involved in building such immense structures, in mining and transporting uranium, and in the transport, reprocessing and storage of waste, contribute to a considerable carbon burden. Estimates vary considerably, but studies suggest that the emissions from nuclear generation could be one-10th of those of fossil fuels, but twice those of wind power.

Furthermore, the need for a continuous supply is of only limited use when consumption patterns become distorted by, for example, the increased need to charge electric vehicles overnight, as your leader identifies. What is needed now, alongside continued investment in the latest generation of renewable production, is increased investment into a wide range of storage technologies, and further research and investment into the production of renewable heat.

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Scientists explain how they discovered a water ocean beneath the ice shell of Saturn's moon Enceladus.

New inquiry will look into the viability of deposit schemes and taxes as ways to reduce impact of plastic waste on the environment

MPs are to mount a new inquiry into plastic bottles amid growing calls for a deposit scheme to reduce the impact of plastic waste in the ocean.

The investigation will also examine whether charges or taxes should be put on single-use plastic bottles and takeaway coffee cups to reduce their contribution to litter.

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Scary-looking fish found on a Texas beach after Hurricane Harvey is identified as a fangtooth snake-eel with the help of social media

The mystery of an eyeless fanged sea monster washed ashore by Hurricane Harvey has been solved by social media.

Preeti Desai, a science communicator, found the sinister-looking fish on a beach in Texas City after the storm, and asked Twitter users to help identify it.

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The conservation status of the elusive snow leopard is downgraded from "endangered" to "vulnerable".