Researchers report on the state of Iraq’s Mesopotamian marshes

While much of the world has focused on the war in Iraq, a group of wetland ecologists has been busy collecting data on the Mesopotamian marshes of southern Iraq. Formerly the largest wetland in Southwest Asia, the marshes are home to the native Ma’dan marsh dwellers, as well as numerous species of migrating waterfowl and game fish. Drainage of the wetlands as well as toxic contamination over the last twenty years d

Think of it as a kind of chemical clothes wringer.

University of Florida engineers have developed a compound that forces clothes in the washer to shed 20 percent more water during the spin cycle than in normal conditions. The result: A load of clothes dries faster in the dryer, saving energy — and reducing homeowners’ electricity bills and time spent in the laundry room.

“We feel it’s very cost-effective research and convenient for consumers,” said Dinesh Shah, a professor

Buffer zones immediately surrounding refuges at great risk

Six of the nation’s 545 National Wildlife Refuges are at severe risk, according to the 2005 State of the System Report, released earlier today.

The six most threatened National Wildlife Refuges in the United States are: Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), North Carolina; Horicon NWR, Wisconsin; Stone Lakes NWR, California; White River NWR, Arkansas; Alaska Maritime NWR, Alaska; and Desert NWR, Neva

Evolution of the Kulikovo Field lands illustrates how national stability and instability may change territories, including their landscape, utilization and land settlement. This conclusion has been made by O.V. Burova from the Tula State Teacher’s Training University named after L.N. Tolstoy, who has analyzed archaeological investigation materials for many years, archives data, results of comprehensive geographical and palaeogeographical investigations.

During the Bronze Age, fo

In the morning, a TV presenter assured the audience that the forecast definitely promised no rain. And in the afternoon, all credulous persons who had left umbrellas at home were caught by a heavy shower. Weather forecasting is a difficult and thankless task. Factors are multiple, it is practically impossible to take them all into account, therefore the forecast may be only probabilistic. However, people tend not to notice accurate forecasts, but discuss mistakes for a long time.

Neverthe

Meteor impacts are generally regarded as monstrous killers and one of the causes of mass extinctions throughout the history of life. But there is a chance the heavy bombardment of Earth by meteors during the planet’s youth actually spurred early life on our planet, say Canadian geologists.

A study of the Haughton Impact Crater on Devon Island, in the Canadian Arctic, has revealed some very life-friendly features at ground zero. These include hydrothermal systems, blasted rock

A number of hypotheses have been used to explain how free oxygen first accumulated in Earth’s atmosphere some 2.4 billion years ago, but a full understanding has proven elusive. Now a new model offers plausible scenarios for how oxygen came to dominate the atmosphere, and why it took at least 300 million years after bacterial photosynthesis started producing oxygen in large quantities.

The big reason for the long delay was that processes such as volcanic gas production acted a

Because grasslands and forests operate in complex feedback loops with both the atmosphere and soil, understanding how ecosystems respond to global changes in climate and element cycling is critical to predicting the range of global environmental changes–and attendant ecosystem responses–likely to occur. In a new study in the premier open access journal PLoS Biology Jeffrey Dukes, Christopher Field, and colleagues treated grassland plots to every possible combination of current or increased levels

Even grizzly bears should watch what they eat. It turns out that grizzlies that gorge themselves on salmon during the summer spawning season have much higher levels of contaminants in their bodies than their cousins who rely more on berries, plants and insects, according to Peter Ross of Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Reporting in an article to be published Sept. 15 in the American Chemical Society journal, Environmental Science & Technology, Canadian researchers say

Southern pines appear to grow and conserve water somewhat better in the carbon-dioxide-enriched atmosphere expected by mid-century, a Duke University study has found. However, any growth spurts appear to diminish over time, due at least in part to the kind of hot and dry weather that likely may become more common in the future. Thus, the researchers concluded, enhanced growth of pines may not constitute a long-term sink for human-produced carbon dioxide which might ameliorate global warming.

Record oil prices and incentives to find alternative fuel sources are lighting a fire under research to turn biomass materials such as manure into energy.

Texas Senate Bill 20, signed this week by Gov. Rick Perry, compliments research under way to determine how and where biomass can be used. The new law requires more renewable energy to be developed and used in the next 10 years.

Combining consumer energy needs and agriculture industry trends with the legislation wi

America’s national forests are beginning to resemble “islands” of green wilderness, increasingly trapped by an expanding sea of new houses, a forestry researcher will report today at the 90th annual Ecological Society of America (ESA) meeting in Montreal, Canada.

The widening circle of development around forests such as the Cleveland National Forest in Southern California is serving to block natural corridors, or wild “highways” that enable plants and wildlife to move easily be

Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory – Stennis Space Center (NRL-SSC) measured a record-size ocean wave when the eye of Hurricane Ivan passed over NRL moorings deployed last May in the Gulf of Mexico. The possibility of a super wave is often suggested by anecdotal evidence such as damage caused by Hurricane Ivan in September of 2004 to an offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was nearly 80 feet above the ocean surface. Hence, some of the destruction done by Ivan has been attributed to

LSU climatologists use historical records to put 2005 season in perspective

On Tuesday, Aug. 2, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration revised its previous hurricane forecast, predicting that there would be an additional 11-14 named storms in 2005. This brought the total projection for the year to 18-21 storms. Based on their research into hurricane season records dating back to 1851, two LSU climatologists believe that this new prediction is likely accurate and

This Proba image shows the region around Samoylov Island, located within the Lena River Delta on the Laptev Sea coast of Northern Siberia. The small pear-shaped island of Samoylov in the lower middle of the image is one of the Delta’s more than 1 500 individual islands.

The Lena Delta, covering an area of about 32 000 square kilometres, is a haven for Arctic wildlife that transforms for five months each summer from frozen tundra to fertile wetlands. The Delta is located at t

The latest issue of Conservation Biology examines the viability of the Sinai baton blue and the results of human population pressures. The study predicts that in the absence of global warming, grazing, and plant collection (three activities directly linked to humans) the world’s smallest butterfly would persist for at least 200 years. The population could withstand small increases in grazing intensity that would decrease their climate, but not increases in temperature. As the level of global warmin