Ecology, The Environment and Conservation
This complex theme deals primarily with interactions between organisms and the environmental factors that impact them, but to a greater extent between individual inanimate environmental factors.
innovations-report offers informative reports and articles on topics such as climate protection, landscape conservation, ecological systems, wildlife and nature parks and ecosystem efficiency and balance.
Systems tool new resource to aid groundwater cleanup
After almost 50 years of nuclear materials production at the 586-square-mile Hanford Site in southeastern Washington, there are more than 700 waste sites with the potential to release contaminants to the soil and groundwater. These sites vary significantly in their inventories of radioactive and chemical contaminants and potential for contaminants to migrate through the soil to the groundwater and the Columbia River. Understanding which waste sites have the most significant impact and the cumulative
Cleaning up contaminated soil, groundwater
In the same way dishwashing detergents clean greasy dishes, scientists are using detergent-like surfactants to clean contaminated regions underground.
Cleaning up contaminated soil and groundwater is estimated to cost trillions of dollars in North America. The problem requires many different approaches because there are hundreds of different types of contaminants and the soils and geology differ from place to place. One approach that has shown promise for some situations can be viewed
Top 25 turtles on death row
New list spotlights most endangered turtles and action plan to save them
The Turtle Conservation Fund (TCF) today released its first-ever list of the World’s Top 25 Most Endangered Turtles to highlight the survival crisis facing the world’s tortoises and freshwater turtles and to unveil a Global Action Plan to prevent further extinctions. Fully 200 of the 300 living species of tortoises and freshwater turtles are threatened and require conservation action.
The TCF
Nature cover story – Only 10% of all large fish are left in global ocean
90 % of all large fish including tuna, marlin, swordfish, sharks, cod and halibut are gone – leading scientists say need to attempt restoration on a global scale is urgent
The cover story of the May 15th issue of the international journal Nature reveals that we have only 10% of all large fish– both open ocean species including tuna, swordfish, marlin and the large groundfish such as cod, halibut, skates and flounder– left in the sea. Most strikingly, the study shows that industrial
Enzyme could overcome industrial bleaching waste problems
Taken from a microbe that thrives in the depths of a Yellowstone National Park hot springs pool, a newly discovered enzyme may be the key to transforming industrial bleaching from environmentally problematic to environmentally green.
Chemical engineer Vicki Thompson and biologists William Apel and Kastli Schaller from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory discovered that the catalase enzyme from a Thermus brockianus microbe flourishes i
WWF Italia tags urban ’hot spots’ with ESA’s UrbEx
WWF Italia is monitoring the urbanization of the Italian coast to catch overdeveloped “hot spots”, courtesy of an ESA programme to develop new applications-driven services with space data.
WWF Italia has been working with ESA as part of the Agency’s Urban Expansion (UrbEx) project to provide a novel information service that monitors the loss of natural areas from urban development. The project’s objective was to demonstrate the capability to monitor urban growth using Earth observa