Ecology, The Environment and Conservation

While many scientists and policy makers have focused only on how heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide are altering our global climate, a new NASA-funded study points to the importance of also including human-caused land-use changes as a major factor contributing to climate change.

Land surface changes, like urban sprawl, deforestation and reforestation, and agricultural and irrigation practices strongly affect regional surface temperatures, precipitation and larger-scale atmospheric cir

Downstream from mining sites, a suffocating gel forms in the water of creeks and rivers. A new study by an international team of researchers details the processes that make that gel and should advance our understanding of the damaging environmental effects of mine drainage and acid rain.

“This new nanoscale level of understanding of trace metal pollution of streams opens new doors for addressing the problem of contaminated waters in affected areas,” says Sonia Esperanca, program director in

Microbial communities can adapt to and colonize all kinds of habitat, owing to their metabolic versatility. They occur in abyssal oceanic situations, in polar ice caps, also in thermal springs, lakes, rivers, deserts and on carbonate (karst) platform systems.

Under favourable conditions, the microbial communities can proliferate and contribute to the construction of monumental edifices, termed microbialites 2 . They can do this in marine environments or in terrestrial setti

A new method of measuring rainfall accurately could help to improve flood control. Following a study in the Bolton area, the method, devised by the University of Essex and using dual-frequency microwave links, will now be tested in Italy and Germany.

The recent devastating floods in central Europe have demonstrated the need for accurate rainfall forecasting. To do so, it is essential to be able to measure the amount of rain falling along a particular path, particularly in situations where tr

Habitat fragmentation is a primary threat to amphibians worldwide, and new research suggests one of the reasons why. Experimental evidence for three species shows that fragmentation may hinder the dispersal of juvenile amphibians, which could contribute to population declines.

“Habitat fragmentation is likely to reduce dispersal rates between local populations of these three species,” say Betsie Rothermel and Raymond Semlitsch of the University of Missouri in Columbia in the October issue o

Sudden collapses in many ecological systems are the rule rather than exceptions to the rule. This is shown by Professor Lennart Persson of Umeå University, Sweden, in the latest issue of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Among other things, the article provides an explanation for the collapses in cod stocks in different parts of the world. Several models have shown that ecological systems can experience catastrophic collapses. On the other hand, th