A cargo ship is set to provide oceanographers with vital data on the oceans’ ability to slow the build up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Scientists from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton will be working with the Swire group using one of its cargo vessels, the MV Indotrans Celebes, to gain access to remote areas of the globe where the oceans’ interaction with the atmosphere is largely unknown. Instruments installed on the MV Indotrans Celebes will record chang

According to the UN, safe drinking water remains inaccessible for about 1.1 billion people in the world. To address this global dilemma, the UN Millennium Development pledged at the World Summit in Johannesburg in 2002 to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015.

Meeting this goal will demand reliable, current data and information about how much water is stored in large lakes, rivers and reservoirs around the world – which radar altimetry can

New evidence from open sea experiments shows there’s a constant shuffling of genetic endowments going on among tiny plankton, and the “coinage” they use seems to be a flood of viruses, MIT scientists report. The research, led by MIT Professor Sally W. Chisholm, is uncovering a challenging new facet of evolution, helping scientists see how photosynthesizing microbes manage to exploit changing conditions such as altered light, temperature and nutrients. The work will b

Economic and political forces are rapidly transforming the forests of the Amazon basin, precipitating one of the world’s greatest environmental crises. Through an inter-discplinary modeling project known as Amazon Scenarios, scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center, the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil), and the Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (Brazil), with colleagues at several other institutions, are simulating future trends in deforestation, forest fire, rive

If the near-starving grasshopper from the childhood fable, the Ant and the Grasshopper, had been given a piece of corn by one of the well-prepared ants, the grasshopper probably would have developed a preference for corn that would have persisted even when he was well-fed.

Based on a joint study between Dr. Spencer Behmer, a Texas A&M University assistant professor of entomology, and researchers at the University of Oxford, the United Kingdom, the grasshopper would likely have dev

On 21 and 22 March 2006, the Strategic Implementation Team (SIT) of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) will be holding its 18th meeting at ESA’s ESRIN in Frascati.

Members of CEOS-SIT include the some of the most important space agencies in the world – NASA, NOAA, ESA, JAXA of Japan, ISRO of India and CONAE of Argentina. CEOS was set up in 1984 under the auspices of the G-7 group to coordinate space agency programmes in the field of Earth Observation. ESA chairs

2:00 p.m. Eastern, March 20, 2006 — Move over, Superman, with your X-ray vision. Marine scientists have now figured out a way to “see through” the ocean’s surface and detect what’s below, with the help of satellites in space.

Using sensor data from several U.S. and European satellites, researchers from the University of Delaware, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Ocean University of China have developed a method to detect super-salty, submerged eddies cal

An international team of scientists and engineers has taken a major step toward completion of what will be the world’s preeminent cosmic neutrino observatory, harnessing a sophisticated hot-water drill to build an observatory under the South Pole that eventually will encompass a cubic kilometer of ice.

Scientists leading a consortium building the massive neutrino telescope known as IceCube say that this year they have nearly doubled the size of the detector now under const

New World Wildlife Fund study links protecting wildlife and improving human welfare

Saving endangered species like pandas, gorillas and tigers helps reduce poverty and improve the lives of local communities, according to a new World Wildlife Fund report. Now as the eighth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity opens today in Curitiba, Brazil, WWF urges the CBD and member governments to integrate species conservation work into efforts to alleviate pov

A satellite-based rapid mapping service developed to support civil defence activities in eastern France is ready and on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The pioneering service has been designed to manage flood events – the world’s most widespread category of natural disaster.

As well as being applied to risk assessment and prevention efforts, the ESA-backed Flood Plain Monitoring Service aims to deliver map products to end users within six hours during times of crisis, gi

The Amazon rainforest puts on its biggest growth spurt during the dry season, according to new research. The finding surprised the researchers. “Most of the vegetation around the world follows a general pattern in which plants get green and lush during the rainy season, and then during the dry season, leaves fall because there’s not enough water in the soil to support plant growth,” said lead researcher Alfredo R. Huete of The University of Arizona in Tucson. “What we

“The platform provided by the European Commission’s recently launched Strategy on the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources1 creates a welcome opportunity for business to contribute directly to the goals of EU environment policy”, says Dr. Kevin Bradley, Director-General of the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment (ACE).

Commenting ahead of an important EU conference on natural resources2 Dr. Bradley says: “ACE supports in particular the Strategy’s emphasis on the ro

A new Finnish innovation efficiently removes cigarette smoke and provides clean air directly to a workstation. The personal clean air system has been developed in Tekes Fine Technology Programme.

Oy Lifa Air Ltd. product development seeks to innovate effective ventilation and air purifying solutions for smoking areas. For example, in Sweden, where smoking in restaurants is prohibited by law, the new Lifa air conditioning systems have been installed in approximately 30 restaurants

Project E! 2408 on Arctic Tourism had the ambitious target of mapping the effects tourism has already had on Arctic areas and pointing the way to tourism development without threatening the delicate ecosystem. Four widely differing locations within the Nordic Arctic region showed traditional reliance on just a few economic activities, making them vulnerable to unemployment. Project results demonstrate that tourism can offer a new source of local jobs in the Arctic region, provided it is develope

By joining forces under the Cottonstress project, CIRAD and Evogene set out to improve cotton tree resistance to abiotic stress, ie drought and salinity. This is a major challenge that CIRAD is keen to take up in order to stimulate economic development in tropical zones with low rainfall. Breeding resistant cotton varieties would discourage African farmers from abandoning their land in the event of drought.

For ten years, now, CIRAD had been studying cotton growing in the arid land

The Mediterranean looks better in the dark – at least in the view of an ESA-led effort to use satellites to take the daily temperature of Europe’s seas. A switch to data acquired at night is one of several improvements undertaken to enhance reliability and reach of Medspiration project outputs.

With sea surface temperature (SST) an important variable for weather and ocean forecasting – and increasingly seen as a key indicator of climate change – the concept behind Medspiration