Contact: Alan Buis, Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov, 818-354-0474 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.17 February 2012 PASADENA, California – A NASA-led science team has created an accurate, high-resolution map of the height of Earth’s forests. The map will help scientists better understand the role forests play in climate change and how their heights influence wildlife habitats within them, while […]
By Tom Horton January 2012 Sea-level around the Chesapeake Bay is rising. Larger-than-ever storm surges are a certainty. Land is sinking further. The time has come to plan an orderly human retreat from more development along the watershed’s low-lying edges. The science that backs this advice gets drowned out when developers wave big money at […]
17 February 2012 (bigpondnews.com) – The Rena oil spill clean-up has reached another milestone with the last group of birds being released into the wild. Seven little blue penguins oiled after the container ship Rena crashed into Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga, have been released near Motiti Island, Maritime New Zealand says. Hundreds of birds have […]
By Steve Connor, Vancouver 18 February 2012 The indiscriminate slaughter of vast numbers of turtles, sharks, albatrosses, and other endangered marine animals that get unintentionally caught by fishermen as “by-catch” could be prevented by a radical proposal of mobile marine reserves, scientists said yesterday. Protected areas of the ocean where commercial fishing is banned would […]
By Ruairidh Villar and Yuriko Nakao; Writing by Elaine Lies; Editing by Michael Perry10 February 2012 FUKUSHIMA (Reuters) – On the snowy fringes of Japan’s Fukushima city, now notorious as a byword for nuclear crisis, Zen monk Koyu Abe offers prayers for the souls of thousands left dead or missing after the earthquake and tsunami […]
NEW YORK, New York, 15 February 2012 (ENS) – Bangladesh has established three new wildlife sanctuaries for endangered freshwater dolphins in the world’s largest mangrove ecosystem, the Sundarbans. Officially declared on January 29, the sanctuaries are intended to protect the last two remaining species of freshwater dolphins in Asia – the Ganges River dolphin, Platanista […]
Editing by Robert Birsel18 February 2012 SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia will carry out a comprehensive assessment of development pressure on the Great Barrier Reef to help preserve the world’s largest coral reef system, ministers said Saturday. The assessment will take into account how development along Australia’s northeast coast is affecting the reef, Environment Minister Tony […]
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent19 February 2012 Biologists at the University of Sussex have been analysing how effectively different species of flowers attract foraging insects. Preliminary results have revealed there is a 100-fold difference in the lure that some popular garden plants have for honey bees and bumblebees. The best plants are the Mexican giant […]
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent19 February 2012 Biologists say they have found the rosette agent, a disease that has caused widespread damage in the United States, in a UK waterway for the first time. They have shown the disease, which is carried by an invasive fish called the topmouth gudgeon, can cause 90% mortality in […]
By Hiroki and Ngaire Takano15 February 2012 The earthquake and nuclear meltdown in Japan last year compounded pre-existing issues like falling birth rates, fragmented families and shrinking communities. What does the future hold? The triple disaster of the earthquake, tsuanami and Fukushima nuclear station meltdown in March 2011, saw intense media focus on the safety […]
