By Brandon Keim6 July 2012 The vast wildfires of this summer and last represent a new normal for the western United States. They may signal a radical landscape transformation, one that will make the 21st century West an ecological frontier. “These transitions could be massive. They represent the convergence of several different forces,” said Donald […]
Discards, the proportion of total catch that is returned to the sea (in most case dead, dying, or badly damaged), represent a significant part of the world’s marine catches and are generally considered to be a wasteful misuse of marine resources. The first global assessment was published in 1994 and it identified a total discard […]
By Mark Lubell6 July 2012 Last week, my parents had to pack their belongings and flee as the Waldo Canyon fire barreled toward their house in Colorado Springs. They were among 32,000 people forced from their houses by the fire, which has destroyed nearly 350 homes. My parents were lucky. Despite the trauma and fear […]
Contact: Louise Bennet, Media Unit, +613 9035 3372, +61 412 975 350, ebennet@unimelb.edu.au 6 Jul 2012 The combination of melting sea ice and global atmospheric warming are contributing to the high rate of warming in the Arctic, where temperatures are increasing up to four times faster than the global average, a new University of Melbourne […]
By Robert Krier3 July 2012 The fires that are burning throughout the country offer a window into what we can expect in the future as the climate heats up. That grim assessment comes from Steve Running, a wildfire expert, ecologist and forestry professor at the University of Montana. Running was among the scores of scientists […]
Caption by Tassia Owen7 July 2012 Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of Borneo, was once a lush tropical landscape full of some of the most sought-after timber in the world. In recent years, a combination of logging and agriculture has contributed to a rapidly changing landscape. Forests are gradually being cleared and replaced by palm oil […]
By Kelly Helm Smith, National Drought Mitigation Center; Steve Smith, University Communications5 Jul 2012 (UNL) – More of the United States is in moderate drought or worse than at any other time in the 12-year history of the U.S. Drought Monitor, officials from the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said today. […]
By Patrick Evans 6 July 2012 Chernobyl, Ukraine (BBC) – Much of the 30km exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant is pine forest, and some of it so badly contaminated that a forest fire could create a devastating radioactive smoke cloud. Heading north from Kiev in Ukraine, you can see old ladies and their […]
By Oren Dorell, USA TODAY6 July 2012 Health officials are better prepared for heat waves than they used to be, but they have more to do in the face of climate change, experts say. “Nationally and internationally we are much more aware of the danger of extreme heat than we were in 1995,” says sociologist […]
MOSCOW (AP) – Intense flooding in the Black Sea region of southern Russia killed 103 people after torrential rains dropped nearly a foot of water, forcing many to scramble out of their beds for refuge in trees and on roofs, officials said Saturday. Many people were asleep when the flooding hit overnight in the Krasnodar […]
