Trees, particularly those with deep roots, contribute to the Earth’s climate much more than scientists thought, according to a new study by biologists and climatologists from the University of California, Berkeley.

While scientists studying global climate change recognize the importance of vegetation in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and in local cooling through transpiration, they have assumed a simple model of plants sucking water out of the soil and spewi

Almost half of the Paraguay River Basin that includes vast Pantanal wetlands already transformed into grazing and crop lands

Deforestation from increased grazing and agriculture has destroyed 17 percent of the native vegetation in Brazil’s Pantanal, considered the world’s largest wetland.

A new study published by Conservation International sounds an alarm for the Paraguay River Basin, which includes the Pantanal. Continued deforestation at the current rate would cause

Researchers have discovered that your level of exposure to pollution can vary according to what method of transport you use, with travelling by taxis resulting in the highest levels of exposure and walking the least.

Research published in the journal Atmospheric Environment, describes how the team from Imperial College London and the Health and Safety Laboratory, Buxton, measured and visualised exposure to pollution levels, while using a variety of different transport methods

New research shows that global climate processes are affecting southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) in the South Atlantic. A thirty-year study by an international team of scientists found a strong relationship between breeding success of whales in the South Atlantic and El Nino in the western Pacific. The results are published this week in the On-line journal Biology Letters.

Southern right whales migrate from the South Atlantic to the Southern Ocean to feed. Scientists

Although the story on glacier fluctuations in northwestern North America over the last 10,000 years has remained largely unchanged for decades, new evidence discovered by a University of Alberta researcher will rewrite that glacial history and offer clues about our climate history during the last several thousand years.

Glacier fluctuations are sensitive indicators of past climate change, yet little is known about glacier activity in Pacific North America during the first millenniu

Climate modelers at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) have succeeded in reproducing the climate changes caused by a massive freshwater pulse into the North Atlantic that occurred at the beginning of the current warm period 8,000 years ago. Their work is the first to consistently model the event and the first time that the model results have been validated by comparison to the record of climate proxies that scientists regularly use to study the Earth’s past.

“We only

The United Nations General Assembly, meeting in New York, has proclaimed the year 2008 to be the United Nations International Year of Planet Earth (Note 1). The Year’s activities will span the three years 2007-2009.

The Year’s purpose, encapsulated in it strapline “Earth sciences for society”, is to: Reduce risks for society caused by natural and human-induced hazards Reduce health problems by improving understanding of the medical aspects of Earth science Discove

Scientists at the University of Liverpool are working with leading oil companies to further understanding of the nature of oil and gas reservoirs within deeply buried submarine channels.

Professor Stephen Flint and Dr David Hodgson, from the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, have been awarded £1 million by a global consortium of 11 of the world’s leading oil companies to study how sand is transported through and deposited in deep-sea submarine channels. Scientists will study a

Scientists at the University of Manchester have invented a new device which remotely monitors bad odours and methane gases at waste landfill and water treatment sites.

The device, which works like an electronic nose, could be the solution many communities and waste management companies, who regularly encounter problems with bad odours and air pollution, are searching for.

20.9m tonnes (72%) of household of waste produced in Britain is disposed of in landfill sites. There

Sediment cores collected from the seafloor off Southern California reveal that plankton populations in the Northeastern Pacific changed significantly in response to a general warming trend that started in the early 1900s. As ocean temperatures increased, subtropical and tropical species of small marine organisms called foraminifera (forams) became more abundant. Forams that live in cooler waters decreased, especially after the mid-1970s. These changes are unlike anything seen during the previous 1,4

It may be no surprise that marine reserves protect the fish that live in them, but now scientists from the University of Exeter have shown for the first time that they could also help improve the health of coral reefs.

In a paper in the prestigious journal Science, Dr Peter Mumby and colleagues looked at how a marine park in the Bahamas was affected by the return of the reef’s top predator, the Nassau Grouper. Researchers were concerned that an increase in groupers could

Even in the largest American cities, a historically maligned beast is thriving, despite scientists’ belief that these mammals intently avoid urban human populations.

This animal’s amazing ability to thrive in metropolitan areas has greatly surprised scientists, says Stanley Gehrt, an assistant professor of environmental and natural resources at Ohio State University. Gehrt is in the sixth year of a multi-year study of coyote behavior in urban Chicago.

Since the study be

Scientists use deep ocean historical records to find an abrupt ocean circulation reversal caused by greenhouse gas warming

New research produced by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, helps illustrate how global warming caused by greenhouse gases can quickly disrupt ocean processes and lead to drastic climatological, biological and other important changes around the world. Although the events described in the research unfol

The use of composite materials in the aeronautic industry has been increasing since (in the 70s in the North American market and the 80s in Europe) they started to be used in commercial aviation as a substitute for classic materials such as metals. The reason for their use was largely because of their capacity to reinforce in preferential directions, their high rigidity, specific resistance and their enhanced fatigue and corrosion behaviour. Currently, the main reasons to justify their use in this

International engineering firm AMEC is working with ESA to improve monitoring of ground subsidence linked to mining activity. Radar satellites in orbit 800 kilometres away can reveal millimetre-scale elevation shifts across wide areas of land.

The largest man-made hole in Africa is located 360 kilometres north-east of South African capital, Pretoria. The Palabora copper mine was excavated open-cast for 38 years: the end-result is easily visible from space: a yawning pit approac

Researchers have developed a new tool to help them study endangered whales – autonomous hydrophones that can be deployed in the ocean to record the unique clicks, pulses and calls of different whale species.

Those efforts are leading to some surprising findings, including the discovery by a team of researchers of rare right whales swimming in the Gulf of Alaska.

“There has been only one confirmed sighting of a right whale in the Gulf of Alaska since 1980, so discovering