This Friday, scientists from ICES will release a report calling for a complete overhaul of deep-sea fisheries. Scientists will recommend that all existing deep-sea fisheries should be cutback to low levels until they can demonstrate that they are sustainable. They will advise zero catch of depleted deep-sea sharks, and they will recommend that no new fisheries for deep-sea fish should be allowed until it can be demonstrated that they are capable of being sustainable.

David Gri

One of the world’s rarest grass species, the ‘Brome of the Ardennes’ (Bromus bromoideus) was until recently considered extinct. However, fresh, green shoots emerging from recently discovered seeds at the National Botanic Garden of Belgium, are causing quite a stir among European botanists in Belgium’s 175th anniversary of independence.

This species holds a particular interest to Belgians, since its world distribution was almost exclusively restricted to the calcareous meadows

The most comprehensive climate model to date of the continental United States predicts more extreme temperatures throughout the country and more extreme precipitation along the Gulf Coast, in the Pacific Northwest and east of the Mississippi.

The climate model, run on supercomputers at Purdue University, takes into account a large number of factors that have been incompletely incorporated in past studies, such as the effects of snow reflecting solar energy back into space and of

The ice ages made massive changes to the Earth’s landscape. But what was happening below the ice in the oceans?

Research by marine scientists reveals that it was a time of mass destruction as whole communities of animals were wiped out by ice sheets scouring the sea floor.

In the past it has been thought that these ecosystems somehow dodged extinction by recolonising from nearby habitats that escaped obliteration. But researchers at the National Oceanography Centre,

The retreat of coastlines due to rising sea levels may be accelerated by wildfires, a Duke University researcher has discovered. In the absence of such fires, forests can slow the encroachment, he found. At such fire scenes, though, finger-like patches of marshlands can extend into former forest by as much as several hundred yards. The result is a “punctuated” near-shoreline landscape, the scientist said. Such punctuated advance of the sea is in sharp contrast to the widespread belief that coastal

A long time ago, people inhabiting settlements at the boarder of Dykoye Pole (Wild Field) used to bury empty jugs into the ground: if they started buzzing this meant that a cavalry detachment was galloping across the steppe and it was time to escape to the outpost from the foray. Specialists of the Institute of Physics of the Earth, Russian Academy of Sciences, suggest a similar way for tracking oncoming natural disasters like earthquakes or catastrophic landslides.

“The main task of the

The San Francisco Bay region has a 25 percent chance of a magnitude 7 or greater earthquake in the next 20 years, and a roughly 1 percent chance of such an earthquake each year, according to the “Virtual California” computer simulation.

The Virtual California approach to earthquake forecasting is similar to the computer models used for weather forecasting, said John Rundle, director of the UC Davis Computational Science and Engineering Center, who has developed the model with

’Popping rocks’ found in deep sea give researchers clues about rare gases from ’young’ seafloor volcano

Scientists aboard the Scripps research vessel Roger Revelle this week solved a 45-year-old geological mystery.

In 1960, Scripps oceanographer Dale Krause reported the discovery of extraordinary deep-sea volcanic rocks in waters off Mexico, near Guadalupe Island, approximately 200 miles south of San Diego. When brought to the surface, the rocks spontaneously explo

EarthScope, an enormous, nationwide earth science project, is poised to revolutionize understanding of earthquakes, fault systems, volcanoes and the North American continent’s structure.

But geologists can mine even more information from the project and engage nonscientists of all ages if they take a radically different approach to deciding where to focus attention and funding, said Ben van der Pluijm, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Michigan.

The Biscay Dolphin Research Programme (BDRP) has recorded an increasing number of whale & dolphin calves and juveniles in the Bay of Biscay and English Channel during the spring and summer months confirming the importance of the area as a calving ground and an area probably used by many species during the post-natal period.

Clive Martin, BDRP Director and Senior Wildlife Officer said: “In May we started to record calves amongst the Common Dolphin (Delphinus delphis) pods which are

On repeated occasions we have read that volatile organic compounds are danaging for the atmosphere and to our health. This is why a group of researchers at the Leioa campus of the University of the Basque Country have put forward a process for “cleaning” these compounds before they are emitted into the atmosphere. Industry was chosen, amongst all the sources of these compounds, as the object for study.

To eliminate these compounds, they used catalytic oxidation, i.e. using oxyge

Storms will dump heavier rain and snow around the world as Earth’s climate warms over the coming century, according to several leading computer models. Now a study by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) explains how and where warmer oceans and atmosphere will produce more intense precipitation. The findings recently appeared in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

The greatest increases will occur over la

Mass kills of fish, insects and plants could have saved Earth from greenhouse sterilization

Prehistoric global warming episodes from massive atmospheric pollution involving carbon dioxide and methane could have created and preserved “mass kills” of wildlife, according to a University of Oregon study presented at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting.

The work, done by Gregory Retallack, professor of geologic sciences at Oregon, involved a worldwide compi

By storing carbon in their fields through no-till farming practice, farmers can help countries meet targeted reductions in atmospheric carbon dioxide and reduce the harmful effects of global warming.

Growing plants take carbon dioxide from the air and store it as carbon in their tissues. Most of this carbon is returned to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide when crops are harvested and consumed. Some carbon, however, can be permanently stored, or sequestered, in the soil as organi

A few years ago the study of the effects of atmospheric deposition on forest ecosystems reached beyond the scientific sphere and the term “acid rain” was coined. This problem, which ignores frontiers, happens because, due to the burning of fossil fuels, the amount of sulphur and nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere is greater than that derived from natural processes.

Oxides, in the presence of water vapour and under the oxido-reduction conditions present in the atmosphere, produce

New research from the University of Sheffield has shown that major oil spills and a changing climate have had a far greater impact on populations of British sea birds than was previously thought.

A team led by Professor Tim Birkhead from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, shows for the first time that major oil spills double the mortality rate of adult guillemots in Britain, even though the pollution occurs hundreds of miles from the bir