Ocean warming could raise mercury levels in fish, says new report

According to researchers from Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, rising sea surface temperatures may increase the ability of the fish to accumulate mercury in their tissue.  This could present a risk to the health of consumers of seafood due to the bioaccumulation of methylmercury and transfer between marine food webs.  The paper is published in the…
Read Further

Warming in the climate system is unequivocal – IPCC Fifth Assessment Report on Climate Change

The much anticipated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report on Climate Change was released today. In fact, what was released is the summary report for policymakers, which was produced by the IPCC’s Working Group I, and aimed to present the findings as clearly as possible. The full report will be released in…
Read Further

World Tourism Day highlights need to safeguard water resources

Today (September 27th) is World Tourism Day. To link with the 2013 UN International Year of Water Cooperation, the theme chosen to celebrate the tourism industry this year is Tourism & Water: Protecting our Common Future. The aim is to spotlight the value of water as a resource not just for direct use by tourists…
Read Further

Food waste is damaging the environment says new FAO report

According to the report, global food wastage is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after China and the USA. On September 11th the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) released its report titled Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources, which it claims is the first assessment of global food wastage from an environmental perspective,…
Read Further

New urban invasives report launched with CABI contributions

  Highly invasive Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) growing in High Wycombe, UK   Contributed by Esther Gerber, CABI Switzerland Last week in Gland, Switzerland, a meeting was held on the threat of urban ecosystems titled ‘Invasive Alien species: the Urban Dimension.” During the meeting, a representative of the European Commission announced a series of upcoming…
Read Further

Can the growth of cities help to eliminate malaria?

The past century has seen unprecedented growth in cities around the world. Whilst the rise of megacities is a source of concern to some (see Feral cities, BBC Radio 4), according to researchers from the UK and USA, urbanization has been followed by a significant contraction in the extent of malaria throughout endemic countries.
Read Further

One of our invasive species in the mainstream media

Picture: ©Muséum de Toulouse/Didier Descouens-2013. CC BY-SA 3.0 Some of the species that are included in our open-access Invasive Species Compendium are well known to the general public, for example Japanese Knotweed. Others are more obscure, and I had never heard of the Asian Hornet, Vespa velutina, until I edited the datasheet about it earlier…
Read Further

Water a constraint to hotel development

As featured on this blog by Vera Barbosa on Monday, World Water Week is currently highlighting issues in global water resources. To coincide with Water Week, the International Tourism Partnership (ITP) has published a report on water risk issues in key development areas for the hotel industry – Rio de Janeiro, Beijing and Shanghai, India's…
Read Further

World Water Week 2013

Water is an important resource, which we cannot live without and yet it is also one which is taken for granted, wasted and polluted freely, even though some parts of the world, usually the poorest regions, have very limited access to clean water. To try to highlight the importance of water as a resource and…
Read Further

India passes controversial new food bill

On Monday August 26th, India's Lower House of Parliament (the Lok Sabha) approved a Food Security Bill that aims to provide subsidised food to two thirds of its population.  Continue reading to find out more.
Read Further