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.
Increasing nitrogen in Earth’s soils may signal global changes, say U. of Colorado researchers
The rapid increase of nitrogen falling from the sky as a result of fossil-fuel combustion and crop fertilization, combined with carbon stored in Earth’s soils, could change the rate of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, rising into the atmosphere, according to a new study.
Scientists believe about 300 times more carbon is stored in soils than is being put in the atmosphere in the form of C02, according to biology Assistant Professor Alan Townsend of the University of Colorado at Bould
EU and USA co-sponsor international measurement campaign on Arctic ozone loss
The ozone layer is thinning and we do not yet know to what extent future ozone losses will be affected by climate change, or what impact this will have on human health.
For this reason, the European Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin today welcomed the start of the first phase of the VINTERSOL (Validation of International Satellites and Study of Ozone Loss) campaign, composed of national and EU projects. VINTERSOL will be closely co-ordinated with the SAGE III Ozone Loss and Valid
PhD student filters water vapour information from satellite data
PhD student Rüdiger Lang has developed a method to obtain information about water vapour from satellite data not specifically measuring this. The research is part of a project from the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF), the Space Research Organisation Netherlands (SRON) and the Free University of Amsterdam.
Water vapour has a greenhouse effect three times stronger than that of carbon dioxide. Therefore a good picture as to the presence, distribution and influence of wate
Cleaning up pollutants with sunlight
A cheap, harmless chemical and sunlight could provide an environmentally friendly way of destroying micro-pollutants in the environment.
UK researchers are developing a new type of reactor to destroy persistent contaminants such as pesticides and pharmaceutical residues.
The technology, which breaks down the polluting molecules into carbon dioxide and water, could provide a breakthrough for a sustainable way of cleaning up fresh water supplies and industrial wastewater.
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Despite Lower Carbon Dioxide Emissions, Diesel Cars May Promote More Global Warming than Gasoline Cars
Laws that favor the use of diesel, rather than gasoline, engines in cars may actually encourage global warming, according to a new study. Although diesel cars obtain 25 to 35 percent better mileage and emit less carbon dioxide than similar gasoline cars, they can emit 25 to 400 times more mass of particulate black carbon and associated organic matter (“soot”) per kilometer [mile]. The warming due to soot may more than offset the cooling due to reduced carbon dioxide emissions over several decades, ac
Cleaner Air Linked To Reduced Death Rates
Two population studies in this week’s issue of THE LANCET highlight how poor air quality is directly related to increased risk of death from respiratory and cardiovascular disease.
Luke Clancy from St James Hospital, Dublin, and colleagues from Trinity College and Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland, and Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA, examined the effect of the 1990 coal ban in Dublin on population death-rates in the six years before and after the ban was i