Road salt and cars produce extreme water contamination in Frenchman's Bay

Contact: Eleni Kanavasekanavas@utsc.utoronto.ca416-208-5103University of Toronto (University of Toronto) The levels of contamination to water and sediment in Frenchman’s Bay in Pickering, Ontario, greatly exceed provincial water quality standards, in some cases by as much as 250 per cent, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. This is largely due […]

Yemen capital ‘will be a ghost city in 20 years’ due to groundwater depletion

By Ulf Laessing SANAA, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Yemeni water trader Mohammed al-Tawwa runs his diesel pumps day and night, but gets less and less from his well in Sanaa, which experts say could become the world’s first capital city to run dry. “My well is now 400 metres (1,300 feet) deep and I don’t […]

Agriculture in warming tropics and subtropics: ‘20 percent to 30 percent decline in production yields in the next 50 years’

  ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2010) — Yields from some of the most important crops begin to decline sharply when average temperatures exceed about 30 degrees Celsius, or 86 Fahrenheit. Projections are that by the end of this century much of the tropics and subtropics will regularly see growing season temperatures above that level, hotter than […]

Kenya rounds up prey for starving lions

By Staff Writers Soysambu Conservancy, Kenya (AFP) Feb 10, 2010 Kenyan game rangers on Wednesday began rounding up thousands of zebras to be moved to a reserve where starving lions have been attacking livestock. … “Some herders lost as high as 80 percent of their stock due to the drought and the few that were […]

Loss of species hits economy; new U.N. goals needed

By Alister Doyle, Environment CorrespondentOSLOFri Feb 5, 2010 1:31pm EST OSLO (Reuters) – Losses of animal and plant species are an increasing economic threat and the world needs new goals for protecting nature after failing to achieve a 2010 U.N. target of slowing extinctions, experts said Friday. Losses of biodiversity “have increasingly dangerous consequences for […]

Will it be possible to feed nine billion people sustainably?

  By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com January 28, 2010 Sometime around 2050 researchers estimate that the global population will level-out at nine billion people, adding over two billion more people to the planet. Since, one billion of the world’s population (more than one in seven) are currently going hungry—the largest number in all of history—scientists are […]

Peak Water: ‘The iconic rivers of our imagination are drying up’

By SYLVIA THOMPSON FORGET PEAK OIL. Forget climate change. Peak water is where it’s at, according to Scottish journalist and broadcaster, Alexander Bell, who has just written a fascinating book, Peak Water (Luath Press, Scotland). “It’s the coming issue of our age,” says Bell. “Civilisation is thirsty. It has never stopped to think about what […]

Melbourne dams suffer driest decade

By PETER KERJanuary 13, 2010 MELBOURNE’S dams collected more water than the city needed in 2009, but it was a rare triumph for the old system at the end of a dire decade. Data released yesterday showed the decade between 2000 and 2009 was easily the driest on record for inflows to the city’s major […]

California butterfly populations declining rapidly; ‘There is nowhere to go except heaven’

(University of California – Davis) California butterflies are reeling from a one-two punch of climate change and land development, says an unprecedented analysis led by UC Davis butterfly expert Arthur Shapiro.The new analysis, scheduled to publish online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, gives insights on how a major […]

Human expansion leading to 'extinction crisis', UN warns

Human expansion is wiping out species at about 1,000 times the “natural” or “background” rate and something must be done to slow the decline, according to the United Nations. The UN will launch the International Year of Biodiversity today, warning that the on-going loss of species around the globe will seriously affect the future of […]

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