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.
Tropical deforestation and global warming
Smithsonian scientist challenges results of recent study
Late last year, Frédéric Achard and colleagues published a controversial article in which they contended that earlier estimates of worldwide tropical deforestation and atmospheric carbon emissions were too high. In the February 14 issue of Science, Philip Fearnside from the National Institute for Amazonian Research in Brazil, and William Laurance from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama argue that the Achard st
Michigan researcher helps resolve the conflict between exotic birds and eco-tourists
Brazil’s Pantanal, a vast wetland situated in the center of South America, has become the next frontier for leading-edge eco-tourists in search of ever more exotic flora and fauna. “It’s where people go after they’ve been to Africa,” says Shannon Bouton, a Ph.D. student in the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) at the University of Michigan.
This month, Bouton is publishing the results of her unique study of a wading bird colony in the Pantanal in the February
First genetic response in animal species to global warming
For the first time ever, a University of Alberta researcher has discovered that an animal species has changed its genetic make-up to cope with global warming. In the past, organisms have shown the flexibility–or plasticity–to adapt to their surroundings, but this is the first time it has been proven a species has responded genetically to cope with environmental forces.
Dr. Stan Boutin, from the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, has been studying a
Action on Chemicals Pollution and Support for Africa Agreed at End of Global Environment Ministers Meeting
Action on Chemicals Pollution and Support for Africa Agreed at End of Global Environment Ministers Meeting
UNEP’s 22nd Governing Council Starts Making Johannesburg Plan of Implementation Operational
A global crackdown on mercury pollution, an agreement to help rescue the environment of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and assistance for small island states to reduce their vulnerability to climate change, were among the key agreements made at the end of an international en
Risk of future Exxon Valdez declines 92% since risk assessment, safety measures, says O.R. study
The danger of a future Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska’s Prince William Sound has declined substantially since the State of Alaska, environmentalists, oil companies, and the fishing industry brought together a risk management team, according to a study in a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).
Measures taken before the formation of the risk management team had brought down the risk by 75%. Actions taken based on the late 1990’s r
URI Chemical Oceanographer Analyzes the Effects of pH on Coastal Marine Phytoplankton
A largely overlooked but significant factor in marine ecology concerns the effects of variable pH on the growth rate and abundance of coastal marine phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain in productive coastal waters. The pH of the open ocean varies very little. This has led to the common, but faulty, assumption that the pH of coastal waters also varies little and is unimportant.
In an article in a recent issue of the scientific journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, URI Graduate