Environment
The Biscuit Fire of 2002 burned more severely in areas that had been salvage logged and replanted, compared to similar areas that were also burned in a 1987 fire but had been left to regenerate naturally, a new Oregon State University Study concludes.
The analysis, one of the first to ever quantify the effect of salvage logging and replanting on future fire severity, is being published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a professional journal.
It found that fire severity was 16 to 61 percent higher in logged and planted areas, compared to those that had burned…
In the cover story of this month’s BioScience journal, leading tiger experts warn that if tigers are to survive, governments must stop all trade in tiger products from wild and captive-bred sources, as well as ramp up efforts to conserve the species and their habitats.
The paper, “The Fate of Wild Tigers,” describes the wild tiger's population decline as "catastrophic" and urges international cooperation to ensure the animal's continued existence in the wild.
Courtesy: www.tigertrust.info
Habitat loss and intense poaching of tigers and their prey, combined with inadequate government efforts…
The huge potential of agricultural soils to reduce greenhouse gases and increase production at the same time has been reinforced by new research findings at NSW Department of Primary Industries' (DPI) Wollongbar Agricultural Institute.
Trials of agrichar - a product hailed as a saviour of Australia's carbon-depleted soils and the environment - have doubled and, in one case, tripled crop growth when applied at the rate of 10 tonnes per hectare.
Agrichar is a black carbon byproduct of a process called pyrolysis, which involves heating green waste or other biomass without oxygen to generate…
The wild tiger now occupies a mere 7 percent of its historic range, and the area known to be inhabited by tigers has declined by 41 percent over the past decade, according to an article published in the June 2007 issue of BioScience.
Growing trade in folk medicines made from tiger parts and tiger skins, along with habitat loss and fragmentation, is believed to be the chief reason for the losses. The assessment, by Eric Dinerstein of the World Wildlife Fund and 15 coauthors, describes the wild tiger's population trajectory as "catastrophic" and urges international cooperation to ensure the…
Broccoli, eggplant, cabbage and capsicum grown with compost made from recycled garden offcuts have produced equivalent yields to those cultivated by conventional farm practice, but without the subsequent build up of phosphorus.
NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) scientists have found very high levels of phosphorus and low levels of organic carbon in vegetable growing soils, during a major research project designed to help Sydney Basin vegetable growers significantly improve soil quality and productivity.
According to a DPI study of 34 farms covering the major soil types in the Sydney…
While promiscuity in the animal kingdom is generally a male thing, researchers for the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) have found that, in cheetah society, it’s the female with the wandering eye, as reported in a paper in the latest issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
According to the study, researchers found that about 43 percent of cheetah litters with more than one cub were fathered by more than one male, revealing a mating system that deviates from those used by other carnivores, most of which consist of single or sibling males…
In 2006, Greenland experienced more days of melting snow and at higher altitudes than average over the past 18 years, according to a new NASA-funded project using satellite observations.
Daily satellite observations have shown snow melting on Greenland’s ice sheet over an increased number of days. The resulting data help scientists understand better the speed of glacier flow, how much water will pour from the ice sheet into the surrounding ocean and how much of the sun’s radiation will reflect back into the atmosphere.
CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE. Satellite imagery shows the number of days in…
Rains are back, and we hardly remember how dry it was a couple of weeks ago. Usually, we do not associate moist tropical forests with drought, but during the ‘verano' it gets astonishingly dry in most Panamanian lowland forests, just as in many tropical forests worldwide: Plants suffer from drought, they grow slower, wilt and even die.
credit: STRI
Droughts are predicted to increase in intensity and frequency in the tropics. Understanding their importance is essential for projecting consequences of global climate change for tropical forests.
Panama is an ideal site to study the importance…
Tracing the evolutionary history of wildlife could improve global habitat conservation, a major Cardiff University study has found.
Researchers in the School of Biosciences analysed the African bushbuck, a common species which lives in most sub-Saharan habitat types to test whether DNA similarity between populations living in different habitats can reveal the similarity of those ecoregions now and in the past.
The African bushbuck, a common species which lives in most sub-Saharan habitat types. Credit: Cardiff University
The study, one of the first of its kind, identified 28 key regions for…
Between 2000 and 2004, worldwide CO2 emissions increased at a rate that is over three times the rate during the 1990s—the rate increased from 1.1 % per year during the 1990s to 3.1% per year in the early 2000s.
The research also found that the accelerating growth rate is largely due to the increasing energy intensity of economic activity (the energy required to produce a unit of gross domestic product) and the carbon intensity of the energy system (the amount of carbon per unit of energy), coupled with increases in population and in per-capita gross domestic product. “No region is…