news 2012

University of Leeds-led research has used tree rings from eight cedar trees in Bolivia to unlock a 100-year history of rainfall across the Amazon basin, that contains the world's largest river system. The new study shows that the rings in lowland tropical cedar trees provide a natural archive of data closely related to historic rainfall.

SMOS has a better look at salinity Earth observation measurements shouldn't be taken with a pinch of salt. ESA is comparing readings of sea-surface salinity from drifting floats to confirm the SMOS water mission's measurements. Since its launch in 2009, ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite has been helping us to understand the water cycle.

Is fishing alone responsible for stock collapses, or are there other dominant factors? Determining the causes driving changes in complex networks such as ecosystems is especially challenging. Until recently, scientists had a limited toolbox for detecting causation. Often they would correlate two variables and suggest it implied causation.

The Great Salt Lake in Utah is the last remnant of Lake Bonneville, which once covered much of the state. (Photo: karma17/Creative Commons) New research suggests the Great Basin was flooded during the last glacial period by storms moving up from the tropics. By Bjorn Carey Between 20,000 and 14,000 years ago, the deserts in the American Southwest were covered with enormous lakes.

A low-cost new material that could lead to innovative technologies to tackle global warming has been discovered by scientists at The University of Nottingham. The porous material, named NOTT-300, has the potential to reduce fossil fuel emissions through the cheaper and more efficient capture of polluting gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulphur dioxide (SO2).

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. For nearly 260 years - since Carl Linnaeus developed his system of naming plants and animals - researchers classified species based on visual attributes like color, shape and size. In the past few decades, researchers found that sequencing DNA can more accurately identify species.

The world's corals and coral reefs face severe degradation if global-mean temperatures rise 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, an international study has found. The study was published today. The study by a research team from Australia, Germany and Canada, looked at more than 2000 coral reef locations worldwide and projected how often these locations might face severe bleaching events due to increasing sea surface temperatures in the future.

Research indicates the out-of-Africa spread of humans was dictated by the appearance of favourable climatic windows. The idea that we can reconstruct climate, and estimate food availability and finally figure out the demographic changes and movements of our ancestors all over the world is simply amazing." —Andrea Manica By integrating genetics with high resolution historical climate reconstructions, scientists have been able to predict the timing and routes taken by modern humans during their expansion out of Africa.

Latest research has discovered four new species of Horseshoe bat in Africa by piecing together clues such as DNA data and sonar frequency. This innovative approach could be used to tackle mysteries of other 'cryptic' species.

Researchers affiliated with Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History have published the first detailed scientific account of a recently discovered monkey species living in a remote part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It is only the second new species of African monkey discovered since the mid-1980s.

Researchers simulate an arid climate using greenhouse tunnels to study the effects of increased dryness on forage grown on mountain pastures.

Little Ice Age led to migration of island hopping arctic foxes The Little Ice Age allowed a new wave of arctic foxes to colonise Iceland, according to new research. A "bridge" of sea ice appeared during a dip in temperatures between 200 to 500 years ago allowing arctic foxes to migrate to Iceland from different Arctic regions including Russia, North America and Greenland.

Bucking the idea that environmentalism hurts economic performance, a new UCLA-led study has found that companies that voluntarily adopt international "green" practices and standards have employees who are 16 percent more productive than the average. Professor Magali Delmas, an environmental economist at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the UCLA Anderson School of Management , and Sanja Pekovic from France's University Paris-Dauphine are the first to study how a firm's environmental commitment affects its productivity.

Critically low water levels in many rivers could lead to the partial collapse of food webs that support aquatic life, according to a study co-authored by a University of Leeds researcher. In one of the longest experiments on drought ever conducted in freshwaters, the team periodically lowered water flow in artificial streams, mimicking severe drought conditions in natural running water.

Researchers develop nano-strips for inexpensive testing of mercury levels in our lakes and oceans with unprecedented sensitivity Mercury, when dumped in lakes and rivers, accumulates in fish, and often ends up on our plates. A Swiss-American team of researchers led by Francesco Stellacci at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Bartosz Grzybowski at Northwestern University has devised a simple, inexpensive system based on nanoparticles, a kind of nano-velcro, to detect and trap this toxic pollutant as well as others.

Critically low water levels in many rivers could lead to the partial collapse of food chains that support aquatic life, according to research led by the University of Birmingham published Climate Change today (09 September 12). This is the conclusion of one of the longest experiments on drought ever conducted in freshwaters.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.-Fuel economy of all new vehicles sold in the United States is up for the first time in five months, say researchers at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. Average fuel economy (window-sticker values) of cars, light trucks, minivans and SUVs purchased in August was 23.8 mpg, the fourth-best month on record and an 18 percent increase (3.7 mpg) from October 2007, the first month of monitoring by UMTRI researchers Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle.

Deforestation can have a significant effect on tropical rainfall, new research confirms. The findings have potentially devastating impacts for people living in and near the Amazon and Congo forests. A team from the University of Leeds and the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology found that for the majority of the Earth’s tropical land surface, air passing over extensive forests produces at least twice as much rain as air passing over little vegetation.

A new study, by scientists from the Universities of York, Glasgow and Leeds, involving analysis of fossil and geological records going back 540 million years, suggests that biodiversity on Earth generally increases as the planet warms. But the research says that the increase in biodiversity depends on the evolution of new species over millions of years, and is normally accompanied by extinctions of existing species.

Organic farming is generally good for wildlife but does not necessarily have lower overall environmental impacts than conventional farming, a new analysis led by Oxford University scientists has shown. The researchers analysed data from 71 studies published in peer-reviewed journals that compared organic and conventional farms in Europe.