July 2026

Forever chemicals earn their nickname for a reason: once PFAS gets into drinking water, it is notoriously difficult to remove and has been linked to birth defects and certain cancers. Chemical engineers at the University of Florida reckon they have found a smarter way to deal with it, developing a gel nicknamed 'molecular Velcro' that captures PFOA (a type of forever chemical) more effectively than any product currently on the commercial market.

The clever part is what happens next. Unlike most filtration solutions, the gel contains no PFAS itself, and once it is saturated, an ordinary solvent washes the chemicals out so the gel can be used again. If the team can widen it to capture a broader range of forever chemicals, it could end up playing a genuinely useful role in filtering Florida's drinking water.

We have written before about the threats facing Florida's coral reefs, most often rising sea temperatures. This month it is a different culprit: stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD), which has been quietly devastating Florida's Coral Reef and the wider Caribbean for more than a decade, causing living coral tissue to die off colony by colony.

After four years of research, scientists at Mote's Coral Health and Disease Research Program have identified a coral with natural resistance to the disease: mountainous star coral. The plan now is to study it in depth while planting more of it along the Florida coast, in the hope of building reefs that grow healthier and more resilient over time. As one of the researchers put it, coral reefs "support a ton of living animals, creatures and bacteria... it also supports fisheries and tourism."

July was Smart Irrigation Month in Florida, and a timely piece from UF/IFAS Extension shows what that looks like on the ground. Researchers are working directly with growers of citrus, blueberries, peanuts and vegetables across the state, treating water and fertiliser not as insurance to be applied liberally, but as inputs to be measured precisely.

That means soil moisture sensors tracking exactly how much water sits in the root zone, weather-based scheduling and smart systems that respond to real field conditions rather than a fixed timer, all cutting back on wasted water and the energy cost of pumping it. Extension agents run field days and on-farm trials to put the research into growers' hands directly, while UF/IFAS scientists look ahead to AI, drone imagery and satellite data to sharpen recommendations further. Conserving water and growing a good crop, it turns out, are not in competition with each other.

Variable Frequency Drives, or VFDs, sit at the heart of every well-designed irrigation pump station, and Hoover's latest Hoover Hub article explains why they matter so much. Without one, a pump motor jumps from zero to full throttle the instant it starts, sending a burst of high-pressure water through the mainline that stresses pipes, joints and fittings over time. It is called water hammer, and in a system cycling twice a night, every night, the cumulative damage adds up fast.

A VFD solves this with a soft start, ramping the motor up gradually, and with variable speed operation that matches pump output to actual demand rather than running flat out regardless. The result is less mechanical wear, lower energy costs and - since over-watering and under-watering are both easier to avoid - a healthier landscape. It is the kind of behind-the-scenes engineering that keeps a system reliable for decades rather than years.

If this story has a moral, it is 'never give up on a lost cause'. The Miami palmetto palm was believed extinct in the wild for 40 years, until Daniel Tucker, a PhD candidate at Florida International University (FIU), decided to trust his instincts and go looking anyway.

Working with palm biologist Larry Noblick and preserve manager Tim Joyner, Tucker tracked the plant down to a small preserve in Miami-Dade, hemmed in on all sides by development: 40 plants at first, then 60 more a year later. He is now building a reference genome and identifying optimal breeding pairs, with around 50 plants earmarked for reintroduction into the wild early next year. A species written off by urbanisation is coming home.

That last story was not a one-off. FIU has just ranked in the top five nationally in the 2026 Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, a table judging more than 1,600 institutions from 116 countries on real-world impact. The university topped five individual US categories: Life Below Water, Life on Land (tie), Clean Water and Sanitation, No Poverty and Quality Education, and ranked third nationally for Sustainable Cities and Communities.

It is the kind of work the Zone flags up often: protecting ocean health, restoring endangered species, delivering clean water to remote communities. FIU's research teams work closely with government bodies, industry and non-profits to solve real problems in the here and now, covering everything from sustainable fisheries to tropical botany. The ranking is less a one-off achievement than a reflection of how the university operates.

Having given one Florida university a glowing write-up, it is time for a less flattering one. Florida Gulf Coast University, which brands itself 'the environmental university', has been replacing natural lawns around campus with plastic turf, a decision that has not gone down well with everyone on staff.

James Douglass, a professor in FGCU's Department of Marine and Earth Sciences, calls the swap a "graveyard", pointing out that it strips away habitat for plants, birds, insects and frogs. Cost is the likely driver: a natural 5,000 sq ft lawn runs $1,200 to $6,000 a year to maintain plus $800 to $1,000 in irrigation, while artificial turf, once installed, needs no mowing, feeding or watering. Cheaper, certainly. Whether it is a good trade for 'the environmental university' is another question.

With just over half of Florida still sitting in some level of drought as of late July, and water districts across the state enforcing restrictions, it seemed a good moment to point Zone readers toward a resource that's easy to forget exists. The USGS runs a free National Water Dashboard, drawing on close to 1,000 real-time monitoring stations across Florida to track everything from streamflow and lake levels to groundwater and rainfall - the same data hydrologists and water managers rely on, but fully open to the public.

Type in a location and see exactly what's happening with your nearest river, lake or aquifer right now, rather than relying on general statewide headlines. For anyone keeping half an eye on well levels or just curious how the local watershed is holding up, it's worth a bookmark.