A new study by researchers at Oregon State University suggests that the magnitude 6.7 earthquakes that struck California’s San Fernando Valley in 1971 and Northridge area in 1994 may have been about the most powerful quakes that this specific area can sustain. Results of the research were published this week in the journal Geology.

“The study points out the potential of using paleomagnetism to estimate maximum earthquake magnitudes in some regions,” said Shaul Levi, a paleom

Evolutionary biologists at the University of East Anglia have discovered a new link between biodiversity and the evolution of new species.

Studying plants and invertebrates on the Canary and Hawaiian Islands, Dr Brent Emerson and Dr Niclas Kolm found that the greater the diversity of species on an island, the higher the proportion of endemic species on that island.

The new research, published in Nature this week, underlines the importance of generating and maintaining spe

Forests provide humans with economically important and often irreplaceable products and services, and affect global climate by acting as sources and sinks of heat-trapping carbon dioxide. Yet the possible responses of forests to ongoing environmental changes are poorly understood. In the most recent issue of Ecology Letters, Stephenson and van Mantgem show that birth and death rates of trees vary in parallel with global patterns of forest productivity.

In less productive forests, such a

Oliver Chadwick is a doctor of dirt. The soil scientist –– or biogeochemist, as he is known in some circles –– is helping to shed light on the historical interactions between people and their soils in Hawaii.

Chadwick, a professor of geography and environmental science at UC Santa Barbara, has been sponsored in this research by a special National Science Foundation program, “biocomplexity in the environment,” linking the social sciences and the natural sciences. The results of h

Maps of Antarctica need to be amended. The long-awaited collision between the vast B-15A iceberg and the landfast Drygalski ice tongue has taken place. This Envisat radar image shows the ice tongue – large and permanent enough to feature in Antarctic atlases – has come off worst.

An image acquired by Envisat on 15 April 2005 shows that a five-kilometre-long section at the seaward end of Drygalski has broken off following a collision with the drifting B-15A. The iceberg itself appear

The northernmost part of the Baltic Sea, between Finland and Sweden, recently provided an ideal location for scientists to successfully address critical issues relating to sea ice validation before CryoSat is launched in September.

Unlike last year’s CryoSat Validation Experiments (CryoVEx 2004), which focussed on land ice and took place in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic, the recent validation activities in the Baltic scrutinised issues relating to sea ice. The experiment

Scientists drill into sediments of one of the world’s oldest, deepest lakes to improve understanding of global climate change

Four University of Rhode Island oceanographers and colleagues from four other universities recently probed the ancient sediments beneath Lake Malawi in East Africa and recovered sediment samples that provide up to 1.5 million years of information about how climate in Africa has changed – the longest continuous record of such data ever collected from that

Since the time billions of years ago when Mars was formed, it has never been a spherically symmetric planet, nor is it composed of similar materials throughout, say scientists who have studied the planet. Since its formation, it has changed its shape, for example, through the development of the Tharsis bulge, an eight kilometer [five mile] high feature that covers one-sixth of the Martian surface, and through volcanic activity. As a result of these and other factors, its polar axis has not been st

Climate change is widely attributed to the build-up of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, in the Earth’s atmosphere. However, scientists from the School of Engineering Sciences at the University of Southampton have shown that the impact of carbon dioxide is being felt in space too.

Dr Hugh Lewis from the School will present a paper to the Fourth European Conference on Space Debris at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Germany this week indicating that inc

Rare plant species are six times more likely than abundant species to be lost due to nitrogen fertilization of soil, UC Irvine biologist Katharine Suding and colleagues have found through experiments conducted across nine ecosystems in North America. While nitrogen increases the production of plants, an excess amount of it, the researchers conclude, creates a competition among plants for space that drives rare plants – plants that are uncommon and not abundant – out of existence, causing a loss

Reporters looking for fresh environmental research angles for Earth Day (April 22) – or for environmental coverage throughout the year – can find scores of newsworthy projects at UW-Madison related to water resources, from groundwater to the Great Lakes. The following tipsheet describes ten current water research projects that may be of interest to media, including:

– The Wisconsin Buffer Initiative

– ’Rain gardens’ as a way to restore urban ground water

Major changes need to be made to the way ski pistes are managed if delicate alpine plants are to be protected, ecologists have warned. According to new research published today in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology, machine grading and artificial snow production is causing significant changes in the number and type of plant species in the European Alps.

Sonja Wipf of the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF and colleagues

An ambitious plan is under way in the ecological community to agree a set of standards for ecologically successful river restoration. The plan is being led by the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology, which this month is publishing a special profile on river restoration. Opening the debate is a paper by 22 leading US river ecologists proposing five criteria for ecologically successful river restoration. Their aim is to arrive at an agreed set of standards which would e

Ocean warming has a negative impact on the condition of elephant seals, reveals a study published in the Open Access journal BMC Biology. High ocean temperatures observed from 1975 to the late 1990s are correlated with a 28% decrease in the weight of elephant seal pups. Elephant seals are shown to be sensitive to ocean temperature changes associated with both long-term 25-year cycles and short-term 3-4 year cycles such as those caused by El Niño. Sea lions and fur seals that feed

The rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis, is cultivated in many humid tropical countries for the latex it produces, from which is extracted natural rubber mainly used by the tyre industry. Asia alone provides almost 95 % of the world production, where the first producer is Thailand whose rubber industry earns a regular income for 10 % of the population. However, a disease is attacking rubber trees that causes irreversible drying-up of latex flow, and can affect up to 30% of trees in African, Asian

Parasitic nematodes of plants are microscopic soil-inhabiting organisms. Although they are present in all crop-growing areas, whether in the tropics or under temperate climes, it is predominantly in the tropical regions that these parasites perpetrate extensive damage and crop-yield losses. Market-garden produce, banana, sugar cane and rice are particularly prone to attack.

Chemical control strategies based on regular use of nematicides are to date still the usual recommended