New UNU Institute in Germany to Advise Governments on Mitigating “Human Security” Threats

The number of people worldwide vulnerable to a devastating flood is expected to mushroom to 2 billion by 2050 due to climate change, deforestation, rising sea levels and population growth in flood-prone lands, warn experts at the United Nations University.

One billion people – one sixth of the global population, the majority of them among the world’s poorest inhabitants – are estimated t

Under drought conditions, tropical forests can be as efficient at using water as desert ecosystems, researchers report When push comes to shove, all ecosystems have the same maximum rain-use efficiency, a measure of total plant growth per unit of precipitation. The finding indicates there’s an upper limit to ecosystems’ productivity, said Travis E. Huxman, a plant physiological ecologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He and a team of researchers calculated

Secrets of the Earth’s past climate locked in a three-kilometre long Antarctic ice core are revealed this week in the journal Nature. The core from Dome C, high on East Antarctica’s plateau, contains snowfall from the last 740,000 years and is by far the oldest continuous climate record obtained from ice cores so far.

The ice has been collected in an eight year project by scientists and engineers from 10 European countries. Analysis of ice cores shows how temperature changed in the past, b

This Friday, scientists from ICES will release a report giving more strong advice to the European Commission and governments to reduce fishing pressure. In particular, cod stocks in the Kattegat, eastern Baltic and Norwegian coastal cod are all depleted and being overfished and ICES will advise zero catch of cod in these areas for 2005. (The report does not include cod stocks in the North Sea, Irish Sea and West of Scotland which will be assessed in the autumn.)

ICES will also recommend redu

The UK is a tornado hotspot, according to University of Leeds researchers, who have found that more than 100 tornadoes a year hit the UK – more per acre than the rest of Europe and the US.

In a Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society paper, geographers Joseph Holden and Amy Wright argue that although there are 20-30 sightings each year, five times that number of tornadoes actually hit the UK.

Most tornadoes are not reported because they are not seen. But by modelling t

The University of Leicester has developed a new ‘air fingerprinting’ technique which can detect, in less than a minute, the ‘ingredients’ of air including that of an individual’s breath or perfume.

This technique revolutionises the speed and accuracy by which air composition can be tested and has potential applications in the environmental, industrial and medical worlds.

Scientists also believe the new development may have applications in the forensic field. For example, decomposing

Waste is a life and death issue in less-developed countries, where poor rubbish collection and sanitation affects life expectancy. Expertise from the University of Leeds’ civil engineering department is helping transform lives by transferring knowledge on low-cost public sanitation.

Every year 1.8 million people die from diarrhoea, 90% of them children under five, according to the World Health Organization. The WHO says improved sanitation could bring these cases down by 37.5%. Translate tha

Global collaboration between private sector, conservation groups and academia seek practical solutions to fight global warming while conserving biodiversity and alleviating poverty

The first ever set of standards certifying land use projects that reduce global warming while conserving the environment and alleviating poverty have been opened up for global peer review and comment by the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA).

This “multiple benefit” approach which incorpor

If a time machine could take us back 4.6 billion years to the Earth’s birth, we’d see our sun shining 20 to 25 percent less brightly than today. Without an earthly greenhouse to trap the sun’s energy and warm the atmosphere, our world would be a spinning ball of ice. Life may never have evolved.

But life did evolve, so greenhouse gases must have been around to warm the Earth. Evidence from the geologic record indicates an abundance of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Methan

Situated between the continental shelf of the eastern United States and the north wall of the Gulf Stream flowing eastward from Cape Hatteras, the Slope Sea is a transition region between the productively rich coastal waters and the productively static open ocean.

In the current SeaWiFS special issue of Deep Sea Research II, University of Rhode Island oceanographers Stephanie E. Schollaert, Thomas Rossby, and James Yoder describe their four-year, NASA-funded study of the Slope Sea along the

ESA PR 30-2004. ESA’s Earth Observation Programme Board has just decided which of the six Earth Explorer candidate missions, presented earlier in April at the User Consultation Meeting, will be developed and launched. Swarm, an Earth Explorer Opportunity Mission, is a constellation of satellites which will study the Earth’s magnetic field.

A further selection between the Earth Explorer Core Missions EarthCARE (Earth Clouds Aerosols and Radiation Explorer) and SPECTRA (Surface Processes and

Research published in Science demonstrates potential resilience of corals

Corals can develop new symbiotic relationships with algae from their environments after they’ve undergone bleaching, the process by which corals whiten as a result of environmental stress, University at Buffalo biologists report in the current issue of Science.

The research provides evidence that corals may have multiple mechanisms that facilitate recovery from bleaching induced by environmental s

A devastating meteorite collision caused part of the Earth’s crust to flip inside out billions of years ago and left a dusting of a rare metal scattered on the top of the crater, says new U of T research.

The study, published in the June 3 issue of Nature, examines the devastating effects of meteorite impacts on the Earth’s evolution. Researchers from the University of Toronto and the Geological Survey of Canada studied the remains of a 250-kilometre wide crater in Sudbury, Ontari

Fossils support idea of lingering bridges between landmasses

The fossil skull of a wrinkle-faced, meat-eating dinosaur whose cousins lived as far away as South America and India has emerged from the African Sahara, discovered by a team led by University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno. The find provides fresh information about how and when the ancient southern continents of Africa, South America and India separated.

The new species, which is 95 million years old, and a

The exposure of amphibians to damaging levels of ultraviolet-B radiation in sunlight is likely a significant part of global amphibian declines, researchers say, despite some recent suggestions to the contrary and a scientific controversy about what role UV-B actually plays in this crisis.

Scientists from the United States, Canada and Spain have outlined their understanding of UV-B’s biological effects on amphibians in an article in Ecology, a professional journal.

In it, they r

Creating synergy by coordinating Europe’s protected areas requires consistent and accurate information to guide decision makers and management authorities. Geographic Information Systems can meet this need but uniform data collection is difficult. Nature-GIS is helping to simplify its collection.

This IST programme-funded project is providing some of the answers to how data from so many different sources, and in so many different formats, can be made accessible to all the various interest