In time for the 22 May 2006, which is the International Day for Biological Diversity, GreenFacts has published a popularised version of the Millennium Assessment Report on Biodiversity. It is available at www.greenfacts.org/biodiversity/ in English, and soon also in French, Dutch and Spanish. The summary was produced in partnership with IUCN (the World Conservation Union), Countdown 2010 and UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre.
This year’s International Day for Biological Divers
Seventeen years after the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, compelling new evidence suggests that remnants of the worst oil spill in U.S. history extend farther into tidal waters than previously thought, increasing the probability that the oil is causing unanticipated long-term harm to wildlife. The finding appears today on the Web site of the American Chemical Society’s journal, Environmental Science & Technology.
The study, by research chemist Jeffrey Short a
Close examination of coral reef reveals that when the rest of the world was experiencing warm weather, the Pacific was cold. And during a period of cold weather elsewhere in the world, the Pacific was warm and stormy
For more than five decades, archaeologists, geographers, and other researchers studying the Pacific Islands have used a model of late Holocene climate change based largely on other regions of the world. However, in a new study from the June issue of Current Anthropology, Mel
Top European marine biodiversity experts in Lecce, Italy.
Marine biodiversity was ‘exposed’ on a number of different levels in Lecce, Italy 8th-11th May 2006, where MarBEF (Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning) a European Network of Excellence held its third general assembly in a ‘conference style’ meeting. On the agenda were talks by members on their research varying from ‘The paradox of the plankton’ and ‘The role of native and/or invasive ecosystem engineers in expla
Global warming has had a more devastating effect on some of the world’s finest coral reefs than previously assumed, suggests the first report to show the long-term impact of sea temperature rise on reef coral and fish communities.
Large sections of coral reefs and much of the marine life they support may be wiped out for good, say the international team of researchers, who surveyed 21 sites and over 50,000 square metres of coral reefs in the inner islands of the Seychelles in 19
In a groundbreaking new study in the June issue of American Naturalist, Erika J. Edwards (Yale University and University of California, Santa Barbara) and Michael J. Donoghue (Yale University) explore how leafy, “normal” plants evolved into the leafless succulent cactus.
“The cactus form is often heralded as a striking example of the tight relationship between form and function in plants,” write the authors. “A succulent, long-lived photosynthetic system allows cacti to survive periods
BIODIVERSITY of our planet is being increasingly degraded by human activity – but to what extent and at what speed?
Scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Open University are taking part in the widest study yet of the impacts of nitrogen emissions from transport, industry and agriculture on plant species loss in Western Europe.
Over the next three years, research teams will set out to determine the time factor of species loss and its relationship to
Specialists of the Institute of Maritime Biology, Far-Easernt Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, and Primorsky (Maritime) Production and Acclimatization Station of the Federal State Administration Primorrybvod suggest that maritime scallop should be acclimatized in low-populated waters of the Barents and White Seas. The new region suits in all respects for the Far-Eastern shellfish, which is able to feed both people and maritime inhabitants.
Northern waters of the Atlantic and P
Pollution clouds in region appear to ’mask’ aspects of South Asian climate, leading to drought and other impacts
A new analysis by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, has produced surprising results showing how air pollution, global warming-producing greenhouse gases and natural fluctuations in the climate may have a range of significant consequences on the world’s most populous region.
In a study
In the past decade, the oyster population in New Hampshire’s Great Bay estuary has plummeted by 90 percent, due to the 1995 arrival of the oyster disease MSX. The previous century saw a slower but equally devastating demise of oysters from exuberant overharvesting. “We have seen local extinction on some reefs,” says Ray Grizzle, research associate professor at the University of New Hampshire’s Jackson Estuarine Laboratory.
Now Grizzle is working to bring oysters back to Grea
A Kansas State University research team is prototyping a small, inexpensive remote-control plane as a sensing tool, also known as an unmanned aerial vehicle, to collect environmental data. The team plans to test it over the Konza Prairie Biological Station near Manhattan this summer.
If the sensing tool performs as the team hopes, it will be made available to climate scientists, who would then be able to reconstruct it to obtain high-resolution images and reliable data.
University of Utah study reveals another contributor to polar warming
Arctic climate already is known to be particularly prone to global warming caused by industrial and automotive emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Now, a University of Utah study finds a surprising new way society’s pollutants warm the far north: the Arctic’s well-known haze – made of particulate pollution from mid-latitude cities – mixes with thin clouds, making them better able to tra
Ecologists are getting ready to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the world’s oldest ecological experiment. The Park Grass Experiment was set up at Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire in 1856 – three years before Darwin published Origin of Species – to answer crucial agricultural questions of the day but has since proved an invaluable resource for studying natural selection and biodiversity.
To mark the occasion, a major review of Park Grass is published today in the British Eco
A team of Los Alamos scientists recently returned from a month-long data-gathering trip to Mexico City as part of an international, multi-agency environmental science collaboration. The March campaign was designed to examine the chemical and physical transformations of gases and aerosols in the polluted outflow from the Mexico City metropolitan area. With a population of 25 million, Mexico City is North America’s largest city, what scientists are calling a megacity. As such, it provides an
Technique Could be Applied to All Nitrogen-Poor Ecosystems
A new method to calculate the transfer of nitrogen from Arctic mushrooms to plants is shedding light on how fungi living symbiotically on plant roots transfer vital nutrients to their hosts. The analytical technique, developed by John E. Hobbie, MBL Distinguished Scientist and co-director of the laboratory’s Ecosystems Center and his son, Erik A. Hobbie of the University of New Hampshire, may be applied to nearly all con
Ecologists are getting ready to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the world’s oldest ecological experiment. The Park Grass Experiment was set up at Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire in 1856 – three years before Darwin published Origin of Species – to answer crucial agricultural questions of the day but has since proved an invaluable resource for studying natural selection and biodiversity.
To mark the occasion, a major review of Park Grass is published today in the British Ecologi
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