Ecology, The Environment and Conservation

Wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest are in trouble — 26 populations are listed as threatened or endangered — and many conservationists fear hatcheries are a big part of the problem. In support of this belief, new research suggests that hatchery-reared steelhead are a threat to wild chinook in the Snake River.

“Our work suggests that steelhead released from hatcheries may increase the extinction risk of wild populations of Snake River chinook,” say Phillip Levin and John Williams of the N

Oil from the wrecked tanker off the northwest coast of Spain had already reached the Spanish coast when ESA’s Envisat satellite acquired this radar image of the oil slick, stretching more than 150 km, on Sunday, 17 November, at 10.45 UTC.

The 26-year-old tanker, Prestige, can be seen as a bright white point located about 100 km off the coast. Support vessels are identifiable as smaller white points surrounding the ship. The huge oil slick is clearly visible as a dark plume emanating from the

A nuclear probe developed by CSIRO for minerals exploration and mining may soon be used to combat some of the world’s biggest environmental problems.

Overseas the probe could help prevent acid rain, one of the most pressing environmental problems in the northern hemisphere.

CSIRO also hopes to use the probe to measure salt concentrations in soil as part of its assault on dryland salinity.

“Acid rain is caused when high sulphur fossil fuels are burnt,” says Dr Mihai Bo

The earlier the smoke in a forest will be detected, the easier it would be for firemen to stop the fire from spreading. The problem of forest fires have always been one of the most difficult and dangerous problems. Russian scientists from MULTITECH Ltd. have developed an equipment, which can help solving the problem.

Right now the equipment is not of much use, because autumn rains have already quenched forest and turf fires. However, if the scientists put their invention to industria

Research detailed in the journal, Environmental Science and Technology

Microorganisms are cleaning up contaminants in the mud beneath Boston Harbor, and if humans prevent future fuel spills and leaks, the harbor could potentially cleanse itself within the next 10 to 20 years, according to research conducted at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The findings are detailed in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology. The work was funded by the Office of

From 800 km in space, you would have to squint really hard to see one of these – a micron-sized phytoplankton and its armoured shell. But when a lot of them get together, say, a few trillion or so…

…what you see is the image below from the European Space Agency’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument. The sensor, carried onboard the Envisat satellite, acquired imagery of a phytoplankton bloom that occurred this summer in the north Atlantic, off the coasts of Nova Scotia