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.
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,
Medicated ecosystems: human drugs alter key aquatic organism
The overuse of antibiotics not only leads to more resistant strains of infection, but, according to new research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, antibiotics also may be adversely affecting zooplankton, tiny organisms that underpin the health of all freshwater ecosystems.
In the last decade, European and American researchers have found more evidence that lakes and streams are tainted by common drugs, ranging from caffeine to anticancer agents.
This pollution, says Colleen
University study shows low radiological risk to the public around atomic sites
A study team led by experts at the University of Southampton has found that there is no significant risk to the public from radioactive contamination from the Atomic Weapons Establishments at Aldermaston and Burghfield in West Berkshire.
The three-year environmental radioactivity project, carried out by the University’s Geosciences Advisory Unit at the Southampton Oceanography Centre, examined over 600 soil and other samples from a wide variety of locations and environments.
Doctor
Modelling To Develop European Sand Dredging Guidelines
Computer predictions of the effects of commercial sea-sand dredging on coastal erosion, produced by an international team headed by Dr Alan Davies of the University of Wales, Bangor`s School of Ocean Sciences, will play a key role in developing new European Guidelines for siting commercial sand dredging activities.
Increased demand for North Sea sand is anticipated, both for use as beach and sand dune nourishment and to meet demand for sand from large-scale European construction projects. Sa