Unregulated trash burning around the globe is pumping far more pollution into the atmosphere than shown by official records. A new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research estimates that more than 40 percent of the world’s garbage is burned in such fires, emitting gases and particle...
Climate change poses a growing health threat, the UN warned on Wednesday, saying extreme weather and rising temperatures could claim hundreds of thousands of lives and spread disease.
"Climate change is no longer only an environmental issue," said Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, head of the clima...
Poachers killed an estimated 100,000 elephants across Africa between 2010 and 2012, a huge spike in the continent's death rate of the world's largest mammals because of an increased demand for ivory in China and other Asian nations, a new study published Monday found.
Warnings about massive...
A new analysis suggests the planet can produce much more land-plant biomass – the total material in leaves, stems, roots, fruits, grains and other terrestrial plant parts – than previously thought.
The study, reported in Environmental Science and Technology, recalculates thetheoretical...
Trees cool the environment by shading houses, roads, and sidewalks that absorb heat. If you have ever walked barefoot on pavement in warm weather, you know that pavement is hot and that you scurry from one patch of shade to another. All the heat absorbed by pavement that does not radiate into the so...
Arusha, Tanzania: A recent aerial report has revealed a worrying number of elephant carcasses in the world famous Mara-Serengeti ecosystem in east Africa. A total of 192 elephant carcasses were counted, of which 117 were in Kenya and 75 in Tanzania. More shocking is that of all the carcass...
An unprecedented marine heat wave that swept the Southeast Indian Ocean in 2011 has given FIU scientists a glimpse into the future of climate change.
The heat wave caused the loss of more than 90 percent of the dominant seagrass in some regions of Shark Bay, Australia. Since seagrass meadow...
About 60 percent of California is experiencing "exceptional drought," the U.S. Drought Monitor's most dire classification. The agency issued the same warning to Texas and the southeastern United States in 2012. California's last two winters have been among the driest since records began in 1879. Wit...
Humanity has exhausted its annual ecological budget in less than eight months, according to data from Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability think tank and WWF partner. For the rest of 2014, we are “in the red” – effectively overdrawn on the balance sheet of nature’s goods an...
An international team of conservationist scientists and practitioners has published new research showing the precarious state of the world's primary forests.
The global analysis and map are featured in a paper appearing in the esteemed journal Conservation Letters and reveals that...
PHILADELPHIA — Groundwater and air quality testing before, during, and after natural gas drilling – which includes hydraulic fracturing -- should be key components of efforts to ensure the safety of communities near these sites, according to an expert panel convened to weigh in on public health rese...
Climate change is having a direct negative effect on the Great Lakes, including impacts to recreational value, drinking water potential, and becoming more suited to invasive species and infectious pathogens, according to a Grand Valley State University researcher.
The impact of climate chan...
Even when the sea looks clean, its surface can be flecked with tiny fragments of paint and fiberglass. That’s the finding from a study that looked for plastic pollution in the uppermost millimeter of ocean. The microscopic fragments come from the decks and hulls of boats, and they could pose a ...
Man-made noise pollution may pose a threat to marine eel populations by dulling crucial responses to predators, according to a study by a team of researchers from the Universities of Exeter and Bristol, UK.
The study has been published in the journal Global Change Biology on August 6.
The exp...
More than a year after the entry into force of the EU’s law governing timber trade, a survey by WWF confirms that many EU countries are still failing to halt the entry of illegal wood products into the EU markets. WWF’s EU Government barometer, conducted in the first half of 2014, shows th...
A team of UNSW students has broken a 26-year-old world speed record*, potentially establishing their Sunswift car as the fastest electric vehicle over a distance of 500 kilometers, on a single battery charge.
The world record was broken this afternoon by the team at a racetrack in...
In the United States, natural-gas production from shale rock has increased by more than 700 percent since 2007. Yet scientists still do not fully understand the industry's effects on nature and wildlife, according to a report in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
As gas extr...
Here's what we know about white-band disease: It has already killed up to 95 percent of the Caribbean's reef-building elkhorn and staghorn corals, and it's caused by an infectious bacteria that seems to be transmitted through the water and by coral-eating snails.
Here's what we don't know: ...
The government of Montenegro has revived a plan to erect four dams on the Moraca river abandoned after an international outcry and a lack of investors less than three years ago.The government – which seeks to attract tourists under the slogan “wild beauty” – is bringing the dam plan back under its j...
The selective logging of trees in otherwise intact tropical forests can take a serious toll on the number of animal species living there. Mammals and amphibians are particularly sensitive to the effects of high-intensity logging, according to researchers in the Cell Press journal Current Biolog...
