Cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill?
Photo of oil spill of Gulf of Mexico taken 4 days ago by Astro_Soichi (twitpic.com) This is not the first time an accident resulting in oil spill in the sea has happened. Other disasters include: the Exxon Valdez disaster in the Alaskan shoreline of Prince Williams in 1989; the cargo oil spill of tanker Volgoneft-248,…
Belo Monte Dam – “Ecological disaster similar to Avatar”
Image of Xingu River (Amazon Watch) Oscar-winner film director, James Cameron (Avatar), compared the plight of the Amazon indigenous people to that of the movie Avatar, in face of plans to build the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Brazilian Amazon. Read on to find out why.
Tree rings help predict monsoon weather patterns
Historical rainfall across Asia has been documented for the first time from tree-ring data from more than 300 sites in the region. This data has provided information on monsoon rains dating back as far as 1300 AD, which will prove valuable for climate modelling. Much of the world's population lives in monsoon Asia and depends…
Challenges of sharing knowledge – including volcanoes
The struggle to make agricultural information more widely available faces many challenges, but they do not normally include volcanic eruptions. For the last few days, the IAALD conference on Scientific and Technical Information and Rural Development’s website has been providing updates on the effects of activity from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland. So it was a big…
Capturing and reusing rainwater in L A – it’s the law!
In a news item I read in the IWA publication online, Water 21, it was reported that the Los Angeles Department of Public Works has agreed a new law that will require the use of one of several means of capturing, reusing or redirecting rainwater runoff such as rain gardens, infiltration swales and rain storage…
World Water Day 2010 – Clean Water for a Healthy World
World Water Day is held annually on the 22nd of March and this year’s UN selected theme is “Clean Water for a Healthy World.” With over 1.1 billion people (around one sixth of the world’s population) in the world today lacking access to clean water and with less than 1% of the world’s freshwater being…
Too much tourism traumatising dolphins
Dolphin watching. Image: Zanzibar-island.com In many parts of the world, watching whales and dolphins in their natural habitat has become a vital and growing part of the tourist industry. Cetacean tourism is also often used in arguments for the protection and conservation of whales, dolphins and other iconic marine animals, by presenting a potentially…
Invasive plant to meet its match
Today sees an important milestone in a CABI project, led by Dr Dick Shaw. Defra gave the go-ahead to release an insect, a psyllid, to stop the spread of the non-native invasive plant, Japanese Knotweed.
What killed the dinosaurs?
A new study presented this week at the 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas, USA, gives compelling evidence, which shows the most likely cause of the dinosaurs’ extinction 65 million years ago. The two main theories up to now were that a giant asteroid hit Mexico and wiped them out or that…
Canada strikes gold, but Olympics given a bronze rating on climate change
Canada's gold medal winner – Picture by BBC Sport. Yesterday, Canada ended its 34 year wait for an Olympic gold medal won on home soil, with a win for Alexandre Bilodeau in the men's moguls event in Vancouver. But the 2010 Winter Olympics were given only a bronze medal for climate protection initiatives by the Vancouver-based David…