Economic assessment of ecological services reveals reliance on nature’s bounty

Although the economic importance of insects in providing honey and silk is well known, many other valuable services provided by insects are commonly overlooked. In the April 2006 issue of BioScience, the monthly journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, John E. Losey of Cornell University and Mace Vaughan of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation estimate the value (as i

The Chemical Industries Association (CIA) today gave a cautious welcome to the Government’s allocation plan for Phase 2 of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) but highlighted concerns over increasing indirect cost impacts and long term prospects for direct costs.

The Association is relieved to note that the plan proposes to allocate emissions allowances to manufacturing industry according to projected need after accounting for existing reduction requirements under other poli

“Plant diversity seems to increase when tropical forests cover large areas. Shrinking ecosystems may experience biodiversity loss lasting for millions of years.” Carlos Jaramillo, at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), and colleagues seek explanations for the longest Central and South America pollen record, published in the March 31, 2006 issue of the journal Science.

“Jaramillo’s intriguing findings provide an evolutionary perspective on a modern crisis,” William

30 year weather balloon record

A new analysis of weather balloon observations from the last 30 years reveals that the Antarctic has the same ’global warming’ signature as that seen across the whole Earth, but is three times larger than that observed globally. The results by scientists from British Antarctic Survey are reported this week in Science.

Although the rapid surface warming in the Antarctic Peninsula region has been known for some time, this study has pr

Let us suppose that a new fruit fly species is observed on an island in the southwestern Indian Ocean. As soon as the information is confirmed, it is released on the Internet. This type of alert can now be issued from five Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) islands – Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Réunion, Seychelles – involved in the regional crop protection programme (PRPV). This is thanks to a website, www.prpv.org, to which crop protection professionals now have access.

The programm

A new study of melted rock ejected far from the Yucatan’s Chicxulub impact crater bolsters the idea that the famed impact was too early to have caused the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

A careful geochemical fingerprinting of glass spherules found in multiple layers of sediments from northeast Mexico, Texas, Guatemala, Belize and Haiti all point back to Chicxulub as their source. But the analysis places the impact at about 300,000 years

As ministers meet at the Eighth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP-8), the United Nations University (UNU) urges governments to incorporate the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) findings in national planning processes and poverty reduction strategies to promote ecosystem services that may help reduce the extreme effects of natural disasters.

In a special address delivered at the high level ministerial meeting this week,

Oxygen depletion in the world’s oceans, primarily caused by agricultural run-off and pollution, could spark the development of far more male fish than female, thereby threatening some species with extinction, according to a study published today on the Web site of the American Chemical Society journal, Environmental Science & Technology. The study is scheduled to appear in the May 1 print issue of the journal.

The finding, by Rudolf Wu, Ph.D., and colleagues at the City University of Ho

A single nutrient found in soy products elicits changes in gene behavior that permanently reduce an embryo’s risk of becoming obese later in life, according to an animal study at Duke University Medical Center.

The findings, yet to be confirmed in humans, could explain why Asians have lower rates of obesity and cancer, said the Duke researchers. Asians consume large amounts of soy, which has been linked to lower rates of breast, endometrial and prostate cancer, among other

The risks of Sumatra-style mega-quakes around the world have been sorely misjudged, say earth scientists who are re-examining some of the pre-December 2004 assumptions scientists made about such rare events.

For more than two decades geologists had thought that the largest quakes, of magnitude 9 and greater, happen when a young tectonic plate is subducted, or shoved quickly, under another plate. But the Great Sumatra-Andaman earthquake of 26 December 2004 didn’t match that

North America isn’t the only continent that’s experienced super-colossal volcanic eruptions in the recent geologic past. The massive explosion of the almost unknown Vilama Caldera in Argentina appears to have matched Yellowstone’s last continent-blanketing blast. It may, in fact, be just one of several unappreciated supervolcanoes hidden in a veritable mega-volcano nursery called the Eduardo Avaroa Caldera Complex, located in the inhospitable Puna-Altiplano region near the tri-sec

Researchers in Switzerland report that extreme rains in Europe may grow stronger and more frequent in the near future and have significant effects on the region’s infrastructure and natural systems. They aggregated a number of regional European climate models to produce more refined estimates of increases in precipitation extremes over most of the continent by the late 21st century than were previously available. Their research was published on 24 March in the Journal of Geophysical Research-A

Proposals by environmentalists to declare small areas of the North Sea as ’no-fishing’ zones would not save our flagging fish stocks, suggests a new report by Newcastle University for the British Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. (DEFRA).

Marine protected areas (MPAs) would need to be tens of thousands of square miles in size – at least as big as the size of Wales – and would need to be established for decades to restore levels of c

The sun will still cross the equator on March 20th marking the vernal equinox and the official start of spring, but Mother Nature is increasingly getting a jumpstart on the celestial movements. Over the last 150 years, scientific measurements show that events signifying the beginning of spring have all shifted.

These events now happen about a week earlier on average in the northeast United States, according to a new report, Evidence of Early Spring, from the group Clean Air-C

Around the world, seagrass beds – shallow-water ecosystems that are important habitats, food sources, and sediment stabilizers – are in decline, says Frederick Short, research professor of natural resources and marine science at the University of New Hampshire. And as these underwater meadows disappear, so do commercially valuable shellfish and fish, waterfowl and other wildlife, water quality, and erosion prevention.

Short, who founded the global monitoring program SeagrassNet in 2001

The EUREKA E! 2587 VI-TIS project has developed new instrumentation and devised modelling software to boost the quality of European wine while reducing overall production costs.

Close co-operation between French and Spanish equipment, wine-making and agricultural research partners has resulted in the development of highly automated precision farming technology aimed at helping wine growers around the world to improve the quality of their output and better control their prod