Thick smog from heatwave fires covers Moscow

  Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman, Tanya Ustinova, Ben Judah and Alexei Anishchuk; Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman, Editing by Peter GraffMOSCOW | Mon Jul 26, 2010 7:53am EDT MOSCOW (Reuters) – Muscovites struggled to breathe on Monday and Red Square was blanketed in smoke as a record-setting heatwave that that has already ruined crops caused fires […]

Australian mammals in steady decline even in large National Park — ‘This decline is catastrophic’

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.comJuly 19, 2010 Kakadu National Park, one of the Australia’s “largest and best-resourced” protected areas, is experiencing a staggering decline in its small mammal population, according to a new study published in Wildlife Research. Spanning nearly 2 million hectares—larger than Fiji—the park lies in tropical northern Australia. “This decline is catastrophic,” John […]

Russia swelters in heatwave and worst drought in 130 years — Many crops destroyed

  By Dmitry Solovyov, Gleb Bryanski and Alexander Reshetnikov; Editing by Matthew Jones (Reuters) – Soaring temperatures across large swathes of Russia have destroyed nearly 10 million hectares of crops and prompted a state of emergency to be declared in 17 regions. On Friday the state-run Moscow region weather bureau said it expected the heatwave, […]

Most Valencia forest threatened by desertification

[Google Translate] VALENCIA, 26 June (IRIN) – Viu Bosc platform, which includes virtually all environmental groups Valencia, has warned that almost all Valencia forest land is “threatened” by a “high risk” of desertification due to erosion – loss of topsoil, – “as a result of the elimination or degradation of vegetation cover,” according to a […]

What now? Debate over beetle-kill pine burns as bugs move to Front Range

By Jefferson Dodge They’re tiny, but they leave a lot of damage and debate in their wake. And their next stop appears to be the northern Front Range. There is fresh debate about what to do with the millions of acres of pine trees in the West that have been destroyed by the mountain pine […]

Sydney covered by smoke from prescribed burns

By BEN CUBBY ENVIRONMENT EDITORMay 12, 2010 SYDNEYSIDERS were told to stay indoors or don masks, and about 25 people were treated for breathing problems as clouds of bushfire smoke unfurled across the city. A rogue breeze drove smoke from hazard reduction burning in the Blue Mountains down to street level yesterday. Westerly winds had […]

Fire spreads through Vietnam forests as heat wave lingers

By staff writers – Translated by Hai MienWednesday, Apr 28,2010, Posted at: 13:26(GMT+7) Forest fires are worse as several new infernos flared up at different zones of Tram Chim National Park in Dong Thap Province. The national park, which is located in the Mekong Delta province’s Tam Nong District, catched fires on April 25 and […]

What’s killing the great forests of the American West?

By Jim Robbins For many years, Diana Six, an entomologist at the University of Montana, planned her field season for the same two to three weeks in July. That’s when her quarry — tiny, black, mountain pine beetles — hatched from the tree they had just killed and swarmed to a new one to start […]

Graph of the Day: Global Forest Cover Loss by Biome, 2000-2005

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.comApril 26, 2010 Forests continue to decline worldwide, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). Employing satellite imagery researchers found that over a million square kilometers of forest were lost around the world between 2000 and 2005. This represents a 3.1 percent loss of […]

In Venezuela savanna, clash of science and fire

By SIMON ROMERO; Maria Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting from CaracasPublished: April 22, 2010 YUNÉK, Venezuela — The mist-shrouded mountains rising out of the forest here form one of the world’s most beguiling frontiers of exploration and research, inspiring Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 fantasy novel “The Lost World” and teams of biologists who still mount expeditions […]

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