Environment
U.S. Forest Service scientists believe an Oregon State University graduate student working on a cooperative project with the agency’s Pacific Southwest Research station on the Tahoe National Forest has photographed a wolverine, an animal whose presence has not been confirmed in California since the 1920s.
Katie Moriarty, a wildlife biology student, was conducting research on another carnivore called the American marten when a remote-controlled camera she set photographed the animal on February 28, 2008. Forest Service scientists who are experts at detecting rare carnivores believe the…
Windmills and desalination installations are already commercially available. The windmills produce electricity from wind power, the electricity is stored and subsequently used to drive the high-pressure pump for the reverse osmosis installation.
It's not very efficient. The storage of electricity is expensive and energy is also lost during conversion. But Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) thinks the traditional windmill driving a pump directly can be more efficient and cheaper.
In the TU Delft installation, the high-pressure pump is driven directly by wind power. Water storage can…
Turning just one Sumatran province's forests and peat swamps into pulpwood and palm oil plantations is generating more annual greenhouse gas emissions than the Netherlands and rapidly driving the province's elephants into extinction, a new study by WWF and partners has found.
The study found that in central Sumatra's Riau Province nearly 10.5 million acres of tropical forests and peat swamp have been cleared in the last 25 years. Forest loss and degradation and peat decomposition and fires are behind average annual carbon emissions equivalent to 122 percent of the Netherlands total annual…
A research team from the University of Granada has managed to produce the most useful material to-date that will eliminate pollutants like benzene, toluene and xylene, organic solvents widely used in the hydrocarbon industry and generated by road traffic in cities.
The world-wide problem of the exposure to aromatic hydrocarbons has mainly focused its attention on benzene, which is considered to be harmful to health, even in low concentrations.
This material is a monolithic carbon aerogel with the advantage of not only being able to retain these pollutants: it can also be easily regenerated…
Applying organic fertilizers, such as those resulting from composting, to agricultural land could increase the amount of carbon stored in these soils and contribute significantly to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, according to new research published in a special issue of Waste Management & Research.
Carbon sequestration in soil has been recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the European Commission as one of the possible measures through which greenhouse gas emissions can be mitigated.
One estimate of the potential value of this approach – which…
“Antarctica is the ultimate destination for anyone interested in natural history but it also challenges those people who visit to think broadly about our responsibilities to all life on Earth.”
That’s the view of Dr Robert Lambert, a lecturer on Tourism and the Environment at The University of Nottingham, who has just returned from the Antarctic in his role as an Observer for the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO).
Dr Lambert, who is a member of the Business School’s Christel DeHaan Tourism and Travel Research Institute, says the relationship between nature and…
Tiny particles of pure silica coated with an active material could be used to remove toxic chemicals, bacteria, viruses, and other hazardous materials from water much more effectively and at lower cost than conventional water purification methods, according to researchers writing in the International Journal of Nanotechnology.
Peter Majewski and Chiu Ping Chan of the Ian Wark Research Institute, at the University of South Australia, explain that the availability of drinking quality water is fast becoming a major socio-economic issue across the globe, especially in the developing world.…
Dr. Tom Hansen has a vision for clean power. It’s big and bold. Dubbed the ‘Hansen Plan’ in a January 2008 Scientific American article, it would completely replace fossil fuels and nuclear power generation across the country. The idea is gaining fervent followers for its seeming simplicity, and equally passionate detractors for the cost and effort required to implement it.
At first blush Dr. Hansen seems an unlikely visionary. The mild, even humble manner, worn running shoes, plaid shirt and rumpled khakis belong to a man who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. For years he ran coal-fired…
As oceans warm and become more acidic, ocean creatures are undergoing severe stress and entire food webs are at risk, according to scientists at a press briefing this morning at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston.
Gretchen Hofmann, associate professor of biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has just returned from a research mission to Antarctica where she collected pteropods, tiny marine snails the size of a lentil, that she refers to as the “potato chip” of the oceans because they are eaten widely by so many species. The…
Results from field research supported by Earthwatch, the international environmental charity, will help scientists predict threats to wildlife should climate change result in a sea level rise in the Baltic.
During the six year research programme, coordinated by Earthwatch scientists Drs. Chris Joyce and Niall Burnside (University of Brighton), and Elle Puurmann (NGO Läänerannik), monitoring stations were installed in Vormsi Island, Silma Nature Reserve and Matsalu National Park, some of the best coastal wetlands in Estonia for nature conservation. The stations’ data loggers recorded water…