Ecology, The Environment and Conservation

This complex theme deals primarily with interactions between organisms and the environmental factors that impact them, but to a greater extent between individual inanimate environmental factors.

innovations-report offers informative reports and articles on topics such as climate protection, landscape conservation, ecological systems, wildlife and nature parks and ecosystem efficiency and balance.

Microbialities: Indicators Of Environmental And Climatic Changes?

Microbial communities can adapt to and colonize all kinds of habitat, owing to their metabolic versatility. They occur in abyssal oceanic situations, in polar ice caps, also in thermal springs, lakes, rivers, deserts and on carbonate (karst) platform systems.

Under favourable conditions, the microbial communities can proliferate and contribute to the construction of monumental edifices, termed microbialites 2 . They can do this in marine environments or in terrestrial setti

Rainfall research could help flood control

A new method of measuring rainfall accurately could help to improve flood control. Following a study in the Bolton area, the method, devised by the University of Essex and using dual-frequency microwave links, will now be tested in Italy and Germany.

The recent devastating floods in central Europe have demonstrated the need for accurate rainfall forecasting. To do so, it is essential to be able to measure the amount of rain falling along a particular path, particularly in situations where tr

Fragmentation may be linked to local amphibian extinctions

Habitat fragmentation is a primary threat to amphibians worldwide, and new research suggests one of the reasons why. Experimental evidence for three species shows that fragmentation may hinder the dispersal of juvenile amphibians, which could contribute to population declines.

“Habitat fragmentation is likely to reduce dispersal rates between local populations of these three species,” say Betsie Rothermel and Raymond Semlitsch of the University of Missouri in Columbia in the October issue o

Why are cod stocks collapsing?

Sudden collapses in many ecological systems are the rule rather than exceptions to the rule. This is shown by Professor Lennart Persson of Umeå University, Sweden, in the latest issue of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Among other things, the article provides an explanation for the collapses in cod stocks in different parts of the world. Several models have shown that ecological systems can experience catastrophic collapses. On the other hand, th

NASA scientists use satellites to distinguish human pollution from other atmospheric particles

Driven by precise new satellite measurements and sophisticated new computer models, a team of NASA researchers is now routinely producing the first global maps of fine aerosols that distinguish plumes of human-produced particulate pollution from natural aerosols.

In the current issue of the journal Nature, atmospheric scientists Yoram Kaufman, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., Didier Tanré and Olivier Boucher from CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

PEOPLE project: Population Exposure to Air Pollutants in Europe

Project Synopsis:

The PEOPLE project involves the monitoring of ambient outdoor and indoor levels of air pollutants as well as measuring population exposure in European capitals. With the selection of benzene as a first pollutant to be measured, EC directive 2000/69/EC is also supported. Benzene is a carcinogenic pollutant to which exposure is associated with the risk of the development of leukaemia.

Brussels and Lisbon have been selected as the first cities for the PEOPLE

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