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.
Marine biodiversity essential to preserving species
A new study of marine ecosystems suggests that the preservation of biodiversity is more than just a lofty goal – it’s an absolute necessity to keep the system healthy and prevent both local or regional extinction of multiple species.
The population balance between various fish species, their competitors and their predators are all essential to the proper functioning of the ecosystem, the study showed, and overfishing of any one species can have ripple effects that destabilize the whole
Genetic diversity necessary for optimal ecosystem functioning, according to UGA research
Though it has long been known by scientists that an ecosystem needs different kinds of plants and animals for optimal functioning, University of Georgia scientists have recently found that the genetic diversity of species within a habitat also affects ecosystem processes.
“It is not just the quantity of species diversity that matters, it is also the quality of genetic diversity,” said lead author Mike Madritch, an ecology doctoral student at UGA. Madritch studied carbon and nitrogen fluxes
Underground Nuclear Explosions Deteriorate The Ozone Layer
Russian scientists have found one more cause of depletion of the ozone layer. They think that abyssal gases can go to the surface and reach stratosphere, deteriorating the ozone shield. Underground nuclear explosions enforce this process. A geologist Boris Golubov of the Institute of Geosphere Dynamics RAS and a climatologist Grigoriy Kruchenitsky of Central Aerology Observatory are authors of this hypothesis.
Winter and spring are the most common seasons for ozone holes above Yakuti
Plant detectives seek sources of invasive trees
Tamarix invading the southwest
Like modern day Sherlock Holmeses, plant biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have donned their deerstalkers to get to the bottom of some botanical mysteries.
Barbara A. Schaal, Ph.D., Washington University professor of biology and her graduate students use DNA sequences to reveal information on historical events. Schaal has traced the origins of cassava using molecular techniques, and now is using systematics and phylogeography to docum
Dust threatens Kyoto protocol
On the eve of the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, scientists at UCL have detected a flaw in the Kyoto protocol`s global plans to reduce the impact of global warming, all because of something as simple as atmospheric dust.
Dr Mark Maslin of UCL`s Environmental Change Research Centre explains: “Dust is vital to the health of the planet. This is not household dust, but tiny fragments of rock and soil, almost too small to see with the naked eye”.
Billions of tons of this dust are blown a
Satellites see big changes since 1980s in key element of ocean’s food chain
Since the early 1980s, ocean phytoplankton concentrations that drive the marine food chain have declined substantially in many areas of open water in Northern oceans, according to a comparison of two datasets taken from satellites. At the same time, phytoplankton levels in open water areas near the equator have increased significantly. Since phytoplankton are especially concentrated in the North, the study found an overall annual decrease in phytoplankton globally.
The authors of the study,