Layers of salty ocean water mix with layers of fresher water, creating a salty staircase or layering driven by small-scale convection known as salt fingers. Although scientists have known about salt fingers since 1960, when they were discovered at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, they have not understood their role in ocean mixing and the ability of the ocean to absorb heat, carbon dioxide and pollutants from the atmosphere. Results of a new experiment, sponsored by the National Sci

The final stretch of the Scott Dunn Polar Challenge is approaching: 44 competitors on 16 teams from all over Britain and Ireland are racing on skis, pulling sledges to the 500-kilometre-distant Magnetic North Pole. In this extreme environment, radar ice images from ESA’s Envisat help ensure competitors keep safe.

After a year in training, participants set up from Resolute Bay in Canada on Saturday 23 April – the start having been delayed a day by a blizzard. Expected to tak

Using satellites, data from buoys and computer models to study the Earth’s oceans, scientists have concluded that more energy is being absorbed from the Sun than is emitted back to space, throwing the Earth’s energy “out of balance” and warming the planet.

Scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (Washington, D.C.), The Earth Institute at Columbia University (New York), and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (California) have confi

A group of international researchers plans to use studies by land and by sea to determine the size and shape of an underground magma chamber beneath an active volcano, which will help improve the ability to assess hazards and forecast volcanic events.

“We can look at changes on the surface and infer what is happening at depth, but we don’t know the physical dimensions,” said Glen Mattioli, professor of geosciences at the University of Arkansas.

Mattioli and colleagues fr

Researchers from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) have drilled into sections of the Earth’s crust for the first time ever, and their findings could provide new insights about how Earth was formed.

Scientists aboard the research vessel JOIDES Resolution, of which Texas A&M University serves as the chief contractor, took almost three months to drill the hole, which penetrates more than 4,600 feet below the ocean floor. It is in an area called the Atlantis Massif

Science article details trends in river restoration

A group of leading river scientists published a paper in the journal Science today, presenting first-of-its-kind research on the state of river restoration in the United States. Following on the heels of a related article published in the Journal of Applied Ecology that describes the five fundamental standards for ecologically sustainable river restoration, the papers document the maturing effort to reverse rising pollution level

Ecological engineering professor Marty Matlock has given his students an unusual assignment: He wants them to re-design a river.

This project requires research that co-leaders Matlock and Mike Hanley of the Nature Conservancy believe can be applied to other stream ecosystems nationwide.

“It’s about taking these ecosystems and trying to restore them to meet human needs and desires,” Matlock said. These desires include having clean water, preserving animal habitat, restori

The production of more advanced sensors to improve the detection of pesticides in water and other environmental samples has been helped by a grant of almost 1.23 million euro from the EU’s Framework Programme.

With seven partners from four EU member states, the SAFEGUARD project was designed to systematically evaluate specifically tailored enzymes as the basis for the production of sensors that are able to detect significantly lower levels of pesticides than has previously be

Emissions from cars have to be reduced further in order to meet today’s environmental demands. A new and robust exhaust sensor developed by researchers at Linköping University in Sweden has proven to meter the consistency of exhaust gases extremely well and is now on its way to the market.

It’s a tiny electronic component, no larger than the head of a pin. It has been tested both at LiU and in cars at its collaborating auto-makers, Volvo Cars in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Ford Motor

A team of marine scientists has mapped the undersea journeys of Atlantic bluefin tuna and concluded that tighter restrictions should be placed on commercial fishing to protect the feeding and breeding grounds of this top migratory predator–one of the most commercially valuable fish in the sea.

Researchers from Stanford University and the Monterey Bay Aquarium say that their new study, published in the April 28 edition of the journal Nature, offers substantial evidence that signi

The University of Washington Alaska Salmon Program, the world’s longest-running effort to monitor salmon and their ecosystems, has received nearly $2.4 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to expand its sampling scope and sophistication.

The Alaska-based program has applications for Pacific salmon all along the West Coast, providing insights into the fluctuating fortunes of salmon runs and their management.

The grant boosts research into climate and other

Carrying out measurements on carcasses – such as the thickness of the dorsal fat mass or the veining in the meat by means of ultrasonic technology – enables a determination to be made of the amount of fat or the flavour of the veal, essential parameters for establishing its quality. This is the conclusion of Gregorio Indurain Báñez in presenting his PhD at the Public University of Navarra. He proposes that it would be advisable to include these two variables in the current classification of car

Organic gardeners can control pesky weeds with the help of some common soil microbes, according to an article in the May 2005 issue of Microbiology Today, the quarterly magazine of the Society for General Microbiology.

As Robert J. Kremer of the University of Missouri explains, soil that suppresses the growth of weeds isn’t science fiction and doesn’t involve chemical fertilisers and herbicides. “Weeds have been a nuisance for gardeners since ancient times,” says Professor Kremer

Trees in the world¹s most productive forests — forests that add the most new growth each year — also tend to die young, according to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study published in a recent issue of the journal Ecology Letters. This discovery could help scientists predict how forests will respond to ongoing and future environmental changes.

“One implication of this fast turnover rate is that the world¹s most productive forests may be those likely to respond most quickly to su

The tsunami that devastated south Asia coastlines and killed more than 200,000 people last December is a powerful reminder of just how dangerous those waves can be to humans.

Such reminders have been delivered periodically, sometimes several decades apart, during the last half-century. But the lessons have been largely ignored or forgotten by most people who didn’t suffer direct consequences, said Jody Bourgeois, a University of Washington Earth and space sciences professor w

Late last January, while most people were battling winter’s cold and snow, University of Illinois structural geologist

Stephen Hurst left for a monthlong cruise in the South Pacific. It was no vacation, though. Hurst joined a team of scientists, engineers and technicians who set sail from Easter Island to explore the Pito Deep, a rift in Earth’s crust nearly 6,000 meters deep.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the expedition had as its goal to probe the ocean