An explosion of research is painting a clearer picture of how climate change is affecting mental health across the globe. Also, a citizen science project aims to find species that have gone unnoticed by sampling the waters of hundreds of lakes worldwide for environmental DNA.<h2>Assessing The Global Mental Health Toll Of Climate Change</h2>As the effects of climate change become more visible and widespread, people around the globe are dealing with the <a href="https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/the-rise-of-eco-anxiety-scientists-wake-up-to-the-mental-health-toll-of-climate-change-mk-host/?utm_source=wnyc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=scifri" target="_blank">mental health impacts.</a> But what are those impacts exactly, and how do they differ between people in different parts of the world? That’s been the focus of a rapidly growing area of research, which is seeking to understand the psychological impacts of climate change, sometimes referred to as <a href="https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/the-rise-of-eco-anxiety-scientists-wake-up-to-the-mental-health-toll-of-climate-change-mk-host/?utm_source=wnyc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=scifri" target="_blank">“eco-anxiety.”</a>Guest host Maggie Koerth is joined by Dr. Alison Hwong, a psychiatry fellow at University of California San Francisco, to talk about what scientists have learned about global eco-anxiety and what strategies they’ve found to reduce its more harmful effects.<h2>Citizen Scientists Will Capture DNA From 800 Lakes In One Day</h2>Taking an accurate census of the organisms in an ecosystem is a challenging task—an observer’s eyes and ears can’t be everywhere. But a new project aims to harness the growing field of environmental DNA (eDNA) to detect species that might escape even the most intrepid ecologists. In the project, volunteers plan to <a href="https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/citizen-science-edna-global-lakes/?utm_source=wnyc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=scifri" target="_blank">take samples from some 800 lakes</a> around the world on or around May 22, the International Day for Biological Diversity. Those samples will then be sent back to a lab in Zurich, Switzerland, where they’ll be analyzed for the <a href="https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/citizen-science-edna-global-lakes/?utm_source=wnyc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=scifri" target="_blank">tiny traces of DNA that organisms leave behind</a> in the environment.Dr. Kristy Deiner, organizer of the effort, hopes that just as lakes collect water from many streams across an area, they’ll also collect those eDNA traces—allowing researchers to paint a picture of the species living across a large area. She talks with SciFri’s John Dankosky about the project, and how <a href="https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/citizen-science-edna-global-lakes/?utm_source=wnyc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=scifri" target="_blank">this type of citizen science</a> can aid the research community.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on <a href="https://www.sciencefriday.com/episodes/april-19-2024/?utm_source=wnyc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=scifri" target="_blank">sciencefriday.com</a>.
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The Global Mental Health Toll Of Climate Change | Capturing DNA From 800 Lakes In One Day

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