By Chris Thomas26 December 2013 (Science Network) – Ocean warming and acidification are leading to an increase in the rate of sponge biomass and bioerosion. Combined German-Australian research, recently presented at the Ninth World Sponge Conference in Fremantle, used past, present and future climate scenarios to explore how changes are occurring. The Australian Institute of […]
By Tamasin Ford, with additional reporting by Iloniaina Alain Rakotondravony23 December 2013 CAP EST, Madagascar (The Guardian) – Blood-red sawdust coats every surface in the small carpentry workshop, where Primo Jean Besy is at the lathe fashioning vases out of ruby-coloured logs. Besy and his father are small-scale carpenters in Antalaha in north-east Madagascar, and […]
By Bridie Smith 12 December 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – Mining poses a greater threat to the health of the Great Barrier Reef than agriculture, according to one marine scientist who has cast doubt on the federal government’s prediction that water quality will improve along the reef coast. On Tuesday federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt […]
By David Schmalz27 November 2013 (Monterey County Weekly) – Tucked away on the third floor of the Naval Postgraduate School’s building of Engineering and Applied Sciences, a small team of researchers is leading an effort that will change the way the world thinks about the world. Their project is the Regional Arctic System Model (RASM), […]
23 November 2013 (The Economist) – Humans, being a terrestrial species, are pleased to call their home “Earth”. A more honest name might be “Sea”, as more than seven-tenths of the planet’s surface is covered with salt water. Moreover, this water houses algae, bacteria (known as cyanobacteria) and plants that generate about half the oxygen […]
By Mark Schleifstein6 December 2013 (The Times-Picayune) – The extensive damage caused by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the ensuing cleanup efforts to natural resources along the shoreline and in deepwater habitats of the Gulf of Mexico were outlined for the first time Friday (Dec. 6) in a comprehensive environmental assessment. The assessment, […]
By Jeff Barbee and Mira Dutschke in Nata, Botswana, David Smith in Johannesburg 17 November 2013 (The Guardian) – Botswana has been accused of sacrificing the Kalahari, one of the world’s most precious wildlife reserves, to commercial fracking while ignoring the concerns of environmentalists and communities who could lose access to scarce water. Hydraulic fracturing, […]
By Brad Plumer14 November 2013 (Washington Post) – From a new study in the journal Science: the first effort to quantify in detail how forests are changing and disappearing over the past decade. The research team, led by the University of Maryland, used Landsat satellite images and Google’s Earth Engine to assemble detailed new maps. […]
By Brad Plumer14 November 2013 (Washington Post) – Want to know where we’re destroying the world’s forests? Here’s the very first high-resolution map showing the change in the world’s tree cover between 2000 and 2012. That comes from a new study published Thursday in the journal Science — the first effort to quantify in detail […]
By Miles Grant13 November 2013 (NWF) – Rising temperatures, deeper droughts and more extreme weather events fueled by manmade climate change are making survival more challenging for America’s treasured big game wildlife from coast to coast, according to a new report from the National Wildlife Federation. Nowhere to Run: Big Game Wildlife in a Warming […]
