According to a team of ecologists from RUDN University, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) can be used as pollution indicators and help monitor the movement of pollutants in environmental components such as soils, plants, and water. To find this out, the team conducted a large-scale study of a variety of soil, water, and plant samples collected from a vast area from China to the Antarctic. The results of the study were published in the Applied Geochemistry journal. Geochemical barriers mark the…

Deep-seabed mining is considered a way to address the increasing need of rare metals. However, the environmental impacts are considered to be substantial but remain largely unknown and clear regulatory standards are lacking. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, together with colleagues from The Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Germany and the UK, now describe that mining-related disturbances have a long-term impact on carbon flow and the microbial loop at the deep seafloor. They present their…

Modern hydroelectric power plants do not always protect fish better than conventional ones. In addition to the technologies employed, the specific location of the plant and the fish species being present at that location also play a role in fish protection. A research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has systematically studied how different types of power plants affect various fish species and their habitats. Detailed findings can improve future planning as well as retrofitting of existing plants….

Smoke from the many wildfires burning in the West have made air quality hazardous for millions of people in the United States. And it is the very tiniest of the aerosol particles in that air that make it particularly harmful to human health. But for decades, we haven’t known how long these particles actually stay aloft. New research by Colorado State University scientists is giving us a much better understanding of this process, which can help not only in air…

Bayreuth research: Tropical nature reserves to be particularly affected. The Earth’s nature reserves are the basis for the preservation of global biodiversity. They are set to be affected by future climate change in very different ways. Detailed local knowledge of climate change impacts can therefore make a significant contribution to the management of protected areas and the preservation of their ecological function. A biogeographic study by the University of Bayreuth in the journal “Diversity and Distributions” draws attention to this…

Agricultural scientists and engineers at the University of Adelaide have identified a potential new tool for screening cereal crops for frost damage. Their research, published this week in the journal Optics Express, has shown they can successfully screen barley plants for frost damage non-destructively with imaging technology using terahertz waves (which lie between the microwave and infrared waves on the electromagnetic spectrum). “Frost is estimated to cost Australian grain growers $360 million in direct and indirect losses every year,” says…

DFKI technologies provide important insights for the fight against waste in South East Asia. Millions of tons of plastic are floating in the oceans, threatening the ecosystem and mankind on an increasing scale. Especially countries in South East Asia are battling with the vast amounts of waste making their journey from the land into rivers and the sea. To support national governments in their fight against plastic, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) is participating in several projects…

To tap into geothermal reservoirs, boreholes must be drilled deeply into the earth’s crust. Due to the extreme pressures and temperatures involved, this is expensive and time consuming. A research team from Fraunhofer IEG has now developed a test rig that simulates downhole conditions at several thousands of meters below the earth’s surface. Analyzing these experiments enables operators to optimize drilling during the planning and the operating stage and helps them develop and test new drilling tools, thus minimizing costs…

University of Southampton scientists investigating ways of removing carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases from our atmosphere believe volcanic ash could play an important role. A team from the University’s School of Ocean and Earth Science has modelled the impact of spreading volcanic ash from a ship to an area of ocean floor to help amplify natural processes which lock away CO2 in the seabed. They found the technique has the potential to be cheaper, technologically simpler and less…

Possible link to the Pleistocene epoch, the period of the Ice Ages? When the brightness of the star Betelgeuse dropped dramatically a few months ago, some observers suspected an impending supernova – a stellar explosion that could also cause damage on Earth. While Betelgeuse has returned to normal, physicists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have found evidence of a supernova that exploded near the Earth around 2.5 million years ago. The life of stars with a mass more…

This pest insect uses sugar from its food to prevent the activation of the mustard oil bomb in cruciferous plants. Worldwide dreaded crop pest of hundreds of plant species Whiteflies are a family of sap-sucking insects which feed on the sugar-containing phloem of plants. The silverleaf whitefly Bemisia tabaci is particularly widespread worldwide and is greatly feared as an agricultural pest. Strictly speaking, it is not a single species, but a complex of about two dozen barely distinguishable species. The…

Widespread wildfires in the far north aren’t just bigger; they’re different. “Zombie fires” and burning of fire-resistant vegetation are new features driving Arctic fires–with strong consequences for the global climate–warn international fire scientists in a commentary published in Nature Geoscience. The 2020 Arctic wildfire season began two months early and was unprecedented in scope. “It’s not just the amount of burned area that is alarming,” said Dr. Merritt Turetsky, a coauthor of the study who is a fire and permafrost…

A marine heatwave (ocean heatwave) is an extended period of time in which the water temperature in a particular ocean region is abnormally high. In recent years, heatwaves of this kind have caused considerable changes to the ecosystems in the open seas and at the coast. Their list of negative effects is long: Marine heatwaves can lead to increased mortality among birds, fish and marine mammals, they can trigger harmful algal blooms, and greatly reduce the supply of nutrients in…

Bayreuth geoscientist discovers causes of sudden eruptions Tiny crystals, ten thousand times thinner than a human hair, can cause explosive volcanic eruptions. This surprising connection has recently been discovered by a German-British research team led by Dr. Danilo Di Genova from the Bavarian Research Institute of Experimental Geochemistry & Geophysics (BGI) at the University of Bayreuth. The crystals increase the viscosity of the underground magma. As a result, a build-up of rising gases occurs. The continuously rising pressure finally discharges…

Globally, one fourth of carnivorous plants are threatened An international research team including botanist Andreas Fleischmann from SNSB-BSM has evaluated the Red List threat categories for all 860 known species of carnivorous plants in the light of the 21st Century – the Anthropocene, i.e. the geological time impacted by human ecological influences like habitat destruction, pollution and global climate change. The scientists now published their results in the international journal ‚Global Ecology and Conservation‘. In order to evaluate the global…

Researchers from six countries in the Americas explored bromeliad microcosms, showing how drought and flood affect the functioning of aquatic ecosystems, especially at the bottom of the food chain. To understand how climate change may affect different ecosystems, 27 researchers from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, French Guiana and Puerto Rico, among other countries, conducted experiments in seven different locations involving the aquatic environment in the tank (centrally-located water-holding cup) of bromeliads, a habitat for insect larvae and other small…