Ecology, The Environment and Conservation

There is a strong link between poor health and environmental problems. A recent report from the European Environmental Agency, EEA, shows that as many as 60 000 deaths per year in large European cities are caused by long-term exposure to air pollution. Children are more exposed to environmental risks than adults.

One child in seven is affected by asthma. Compared to 30 years ago this is a dramatic increase. In order to reverse this alarming trend the European Commission is today launc

Statistically, there is little likelihood of anybody experiencing a major river flood whose average recurrence interval is one hundred or one thousand years. Predicting and designing of such events involves going back in time, three or four centuries, by scrutinising records of severe flooding. Joint researches by Cemagref hydrologist Michel Lang and historian Denis Coeur have reconstructed the history of three French rivers, the Guiers, Isere and Ardeche, a unique picture which has been incorporated

Medicines released into the environment may be a risk to living species in the long term. Jeanne Garric’s ecotoxicology team at Cemagref Lyon has shown that certain molecules disrupt reproduction, embryo development and growth of representative organisms in aquatic environments. Toxicity tests have been conducted in the laboratory on Daphnia, Rotifera and zebra fish under standard protocols. Active pharmaceuticals ingredients (APIs) concentrations in the environment however are found to be 1000 to 10

If the world’s human population continues to rise at its current rate, the planet will increase the numbers of threatened species at least 7 percent worldwide in the next 20 years and twice that many by the year 2050.

In a recent model of the impact human population growth has on biological diversity, Ohio State University anthropologist Jeffrey McKee and his colleagues warn that the United States alone will add at least 10 additional species to the “threatened” list within 50 years.

A NASA-Department of Energy jointly funded study concludes the Earth has been greening over the past 20 years. As climate changed, plants found it easier to grow.

The globally comprehensive, multi-discipline study appears in this week’s Science magazine. The article states climate changes have provided extra doses of water, heat and sunlight in areas where one or more of those ingredients may have been lacking. Plants flourished in places where climatic conditions previously limited gro

By analyzing data on tree pollen extracted from ancient lake sediments, ecologists have sharpened the understanding of how forests can maintain a diversity of species. Their findings indicate that stabilizing processes have been more important than previously thought, and that the human-caused loss of species could upset that stability in ways that remain poorly understood.

“Quantifying the link between stability and diversity, and identifying the factors that promote species diversity, ha