More than a fifth of the world's migrating species are at risk of going extinct as a result of climate change and human encroachment, according to this report by the United Nations. Migratory species globally are facing critical challenges, with nearly half in decline and over 20 per cent threatened …
Long-term monitoring of distributed, multiple plots is the key to quantify macroecological patterns and changes. Here we examine the evidence for concerted changes in the structure, dynamics and composition of old-growth Amazonian forests in the late twentieth century. In the 1980s and 1990s, mature forests gained biomass and underwent accelerated …
International Day for Biological Diversity is being observed on Thursday to raise awareness of the importance of biodiversity at a time when over 60 per cent of ecosystem services were being degraded as a result of human activity. One of the most important challenges facing mankind today is to feed …
AS THE green building movement in India gathers steam with growing numbers of real-estate developers adopting eco-friendly construction methods, it is trying to overcome a huge shortage in green-friendly industry professionals. The Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) - the nodal body for eco-friendly construction - has some 190 buildings registered …
This is a fascinating story of intellectual property rights (IPR) involving one of the greatest national parks in the world, a tiny bacterium found in its fetid bubbling springs and the millions of dollars it has helped to generate for a pharmaceutical giant in another continent. Tied to this saga …
Desiccation of the Sahara since the middle Holocene has eradicated all but a few natural archives recording its transition from a "green Sahara" to the present hyperarid desert. Our continuous 6000-year paleoenvironmental reconstruction from northern Chad shows progressive drying of the regional terrestrial ecosystem in response to weakening insolation forcing …
An awareness programme was held under the aegis of the Howraghat Science Club in collaboration with Assam Science Society at Howraghat Town Girls High School yesterday with a view to bring awareness on the conservation of biodiversity. Sources said that students and teachers from different educational institutions like
Despite two centuries of effort in characterizing environmental gradients of species richness in search of universal patterns, surprisingly few of these patterns have been widely acknowledged. Here we show that when resampling a data set comprising 400,000 records for 3,046 Pyrenean floristic species at different scales of analysis (achieved by …
Lack of proper guidelines has led to unplanned construction of structures in tourist sites and thoughtless commercial tourism, causing massive damages to ecosystem and natural habitat of wildlife and marine life in forests, sea and plain as well as on hills, conservationists warn. Tourism business has proliferated in recent years …
Ecosystems of the Iwokrama rainforest reserve in Guyana have been sold off. A uk -based private equity firm, Canopy Capital, has purchased the rights to environmental services generated by the 371,000-hectare tropical forest. In return, the firm has guaranteed a "meaningful contribution' to the forest's running costs for five years. …
Honjo: Thinking of throwing out your old cell phone? Think again. Maybe you should mine it first for gold, silver, copper and a host of other metals embedded in the electronics
A regional forum under the Mangroves For the Future (MFF) project implemented in six countries in the tsunami aftermath will begin at Hotel Heritance, Ahungalle today. According to the country office of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the five-day forum will present and discuss outcomes of the …
France's upper house of parliament has passed a bill laying down conditions for the growth of crops using genetically modified organisms (GMO) after changing a key amendment aimed at limiting their cultivation. The measure, passed by the upper house, or Senate, late on Wednesday, is a response to European Union …
Time to check salinity intrusion in the Sundarbans Mohammad Asrafur Rahman Sundarban Mangrove forest of Bangladesh covers an area of about 6017 sq. km which is 62 percent of its total area whereas other 38 percent is situated in the West Bengal province of India. The average elevation from the …
XISHUANGBANNA, China: On a map on the ecologist Liu Wenjie's computer, the subtropical southern tip of Yunnan Province is slowly turning from green to red. Rubber plantations, shown in red on Liu's computer screen, have supplanted nearly all the low-lying forest in the prefecture of Xishuangbanna and are now starting …
BUSINESS will be expected to massively boost investment in Victoria's stressed environment under a State Government plan to save species threatened by climate change. Launching a draft blueprint for rebuilding devastated ecosystems over the next 20 to 50 years, Environment Minister Gavin Jennings yesterday called on the community to start …
A venture capital company has bought the rights to ecosystem services from a 370,000-hectare rainforest reserve in Guyana. In return for its investment, London-based Canopy Capital will receive a percentage of any income that might one day be made from the reserve's ecosystem services. The company's hope is that these …
In 2008, World Health Day focuses on the need to protect health from the adverse effects of climate change. WHO selected this theme in recognition that climate change is posing ever growing threats to global public health security.
This report presents a wide-ranging review of arctic climate impact science. It spans the width of subject areas, covering impacts on physical and biological systems, as well as on humanity. The report presents the scientific evidence for arctic climate change impacts in review sections, each of which targets a particular …
At a building site in Lokhandwala complex, Andheri, Sheetal Jhondale (11), daughter of a construction worker, wonders aloud, "Hong Kong kya hota hai?' In a little more than a month, three children from Sheetal's mobile cr
