October 15 (NRK/Press release) – The melting of the Arctic sea ice is progressing much faster and more dramatically than earlier estimated, according to new research by the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI). This means that the Arctic Sea could be free of ice in the summer in ten years time, rather than the 50 to […]
BY RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI, ASSOCIATED PRESS13 October 2011 HOUSTON — In a 30-mile area of the Texas Panhandle, biologists found 76 white-tailed deer — but zero babies. Not far away, they located only three quail on a stretch of road where they would see 15 in a normal year. In South Texas, a biologist reports a […]
Caption by William L. Stefanov, Jacobs/ESCG at NASA-JSC10 October 2011 The rainforest of South America, also known as Amazonia, has been undergoing a continual and accelerated conversion process into farmlands (including pasture for livestock) since the early 1960s. This process has typically been achieved by clearing the forest using fire—“slash and burn”—followed by planting of […]
An oil spill from a stranded cargo ship off New Zealand is the country’s worst environmental disaster in decades, the government says. Officials say 350 tonnes of oil may have leaked from the 775ft (236m) Rena, which ran aground on the Astrolabe Reef off the port of Tauranga on Wednesday. Bad weather has halted work […]
By Faimon A. Roberts, Advocate Florida Parishes bureau11 OCtober 2011 This year’s white shrimp harvest in the waters off Louisiana’s southeastern coast is significantly lower than in the past, forcing some people in the industry to look elsewhere for product and scale back operations while others blame the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. “I […]
By Seth Koenig, BDN Staff7 October 2011 SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — They’re called dead muds. Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere combined with unregulated nitrogen pollution are having a deadly effect on Maine’s shellfish, some researchers say. Scientists are starting to measure the impact of increasingly acidic waters on coastal organisms, and what […]
October 9 (mongabay.com) – The 2010 drought that affected much of the Amazon rainforest triggered the release of nearly 500 million tons of carbon (1.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere, or more than the total emissions from deforestation in the region over the period, estimates a new study published in the journal […]
By Jeff Kart, Bay City, Michigan9 October 2011 Elkhorn coral is endangered. And it’s being threatened by us, as in humans, and what we flush down the toilet. A recent study published in the journal PLoS One says that human sewage is largely responsible for a disease which is killing off elkhorn coral in Florida. […]
By JUSTIN GILLIS7 October 2011 In an article last weekend about rising stress in the world’s forests, I briefly mentioned that computer projections regarding the future of forests are still in a primitive state. Scientists cannot really say whether trees will continue to take up a big proportion of our carbon emissions through the rest […]
Why did ice extent fall to a near record low without the sort of extreme weather conditions seen in 2007? One explanation is that the ice cover is thinner than it used to be; the melt season starts with more first-year ice (ice that formed the previous autumn and winter) and less of the generally […]
