News
February 16, 2023
Mining at key hydrothermal vents could endanger species at distant sites.
February 7, 2023
Are tropical forests threatened by democracy? Democracy may lead to more deforestation in the tropics. So write environmental scientist Joeri Morpurgo and his colleagues in Biological Conservation. They found that competitive elections are associated with more loss of tropical rainforest than elections without competition. "We must prevent politicians from exploiting the remaining rainforest for political power."
February 2, 2023
Today is the World Wetlands Day. Wetlands are ecosystems where water is the primary factor controlling the environment and the associated plant and animal life. A broad definition of wetlands includes both freshwater and marine and coastal ecosystems such as all lakes and rivers, underground aquifers, swamps and marshes, wet grasslands, peatlands, oases, estuaries, deltas and tidal flats, mangroves and other coastal areas, coral reefs, and all human-made sites such as fishponds, rice paddies, reservoirs and saltpans.
January 13, 2023
The ozone layer is on track to recover within four decades, with the global phaseout of ozone-depleting chemicals already benefitting efforts to mitigate climate change. This is the conclusion of a UN-backed panel of experts, presented 2023/01/09 at the American Meteorological Society’s 103rd annual meeting. Examining novel technologies such as geoengineering for the first time, the panel warns of unintended impacts on the ozone layer.
January 12, 2023
Trigger mechanisms of gas hydrate decomposition, methane emissions and glacier breakup in polar regions as the result of deformation tectonic waves. New paper presents a new revolutionary theory of Academician Leopold Isaevich Lobkovsky on the impact of strong subduction earthquakes on the Earth’s climate and the catastrophic collapse of ice shelves as a trigger effect.
December 13, 2022
Microbial miners could help humans colonize the moon and Mars. The biochemical process by which cyanobacteria acquire nutrients from rocks in Chile's Atacama Desert has inspired engineers at the University of California, Irvine to think of new ways microbes might help humans build colonies on the moon and Mars.
December 7, 2022
Kazan (Republic of Tatarstan, Russian Federation) is hosting the International Forum for the 50th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.
December 6, 2022
Should we build a nature reserve on Mars? There are 8 billion of us now. The UN says when the population peaks around the year 2100, there'll be 11 billion human souls. Our population growth is colliding with the natural world on a greater scale than ever, and we're losing between 200 and 2,000 species each year, according to the World Wildlife Federation.
November 21, 2022
Rock coasts, which make up over half the world's coastlines, could retreat more rapidly in the future due to accelerating sea level rise. This is according to new Imperial College London research that modelled likely future cliff retreat rates of two rock coasts in the UK. The forecasts are based on predictions of sea level rise for various greenhouse gas emissions and climate change scenarios.
November 14, 2022
Carbon dioxide emissions rising globally, but drop in China. The world's burning of coal, oil and natural gas this year is putting 1% more heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air than last year, bad news for the fight against climate change but with an odd twist, according to scientists who track emissions.