http://www.physorg.com/space-news/environment/ en-us PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on the environment, environmental issues, earth science and space exploration. (PhysOrg.com) -- Large areas of rainforests in Central Africa mysteriously disappeared over three thousand years ago, to be replaced by savannas. The prevailing theory has been that the cause was a change in climate, and the deforestation then enabled humans to increase their agricultural activities. A new study suggests that climate change alone cannot fully explain the transition and that human activities might be implicated. http://www.physorg.com/news248075212.html Space & Earth - Environment Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:47:09 EST news248075212 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists are preparing to launch a 10-year project to study water resources, gas exchange and carbon cycling in three man-made landscapes built in a half-acre laboratory at the University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2. http://www.physorg.com/news247912036.html Space & Earth - Environment Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:27:37 EST news247912036 (PhysOrg.com) -- As most people are well aware, global warming isn’t just about the atmosphere, it’s about rising ocean temperatures as well. And like increases in the atmosphere, scientists aren’t really clear on what impact such temperature increases will have on the oceans. One such impact most researchers thought was well understood was the bleaching of coral reefs. As ocean temperatures rise and become more acidic, coral reefs tend to slough off the algae that grows on them, causing them to slowly die. Now however, new research by a team from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, has found that coral reefs off the western shores of the Australian continent are not only not suffering from the increased temperature, but are apparently thriving, as the study they’ve published in Science describes, they have actually been growing faster in the past hundred years than prior to that time. http://www.physorg.com/news247480947.html Space & Earth - Environment Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:20:01 EST news247480947 The northern forests of western Canada are likely absorbing less carbon dioxide because of climate change, and the decline may be making a bad situation worse, researchers from Quebec and China have concluded. http://www.physorg.com/news247394569.html Space & Earth - Environment Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:50:01 EST news247394569 Tropical cyclones will cause $109 billion in damages by 2100, according to Yale and MIT researchers in a paper published in Nature Climate Change. http://www.physorg.com/news247316254.html Space & Earth - Environment Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:57:44 EST news247316254 More intense heat waves due to global warming could diminish wheat crop yields around the world through premature ageing, according to a study published Sunday in Nature Climate Change. http://www.physorg.com/news247065373.html Space & Earth - Environment Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:16:23 EST news247065373 A study published in Nature Climate Change today finds that tropical vegetation contains 21 percent more carbon than previous studies had suggested. Using a combination of remote sensing and field data, scientists from Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC), Boston University, and the University of Maryland were able to produce the first "wall-to-wall" map (with a spatial resolution of 500 m x 500 m) of carbon storage of forests, shrublands, and savannas in the tropics of Africa, Asia, and South America. Colors on the map represent the amount of carbon density stored in the vegetation in a continuum fashion (Figure 1). Reliable estimates of carbon storage are critical to understanding the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere by changes in land cover and land use. http://www.physorg.com/news247033820.html Space & Earth - Environment Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:00:18 EST news247033820 A new study comparing the carbon-holding power of freshwater wetlands has produced measurements suggesting that wetlands in temperate regions are more valuable as carbon sinks than current policies imply, according to researchers. http://www.physorg.com/news246802973.html Space & Earth - Environment Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:23:13 EST news246802973 (PhysOrg.com) -- Two university professors, one from the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle, the other from Oxford, have published an opinion piece in the journal Nature, where they argue that governments aren’t doing enough to wean modern societies off of oil and onto more sustainable and stable sources, including atomic energy. James Murray, who is also the founding director of the University of Washington's Program on Climate Change and David King, Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford as well as senior science adviser to the bank UBS also has served as chief scientific adviser to the British government back in 2000-07; together write that because global oil production hit a cap in 2005, small disruptions in supply have led to large disruptions in economic systems and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. http://www.physorg.com/news246787930.html Space & Earth - Environment Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:00:03 EST news246787930 Might a penguin's next meal be affected by the exhaust from your tailpipe? The answer may be yes, when you add your exhaust fumes to the total amount of carbon dioxide lofted into the atmosphere by humans since the industrial revolution. One-third of that carbon dioxide is absorbed by the world's oceans, making them more acidic and affecting marine life. http://www.physorg.com/news246554949.html Space & Earth - Environment Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:00:08 EST news246554949 Recent carbon dioxide emissions have pushed the level of seawater acidity far above the range of the natural variability that existed for thousands of years, affecting the calcification rates of shell-forming organism. These findings by an international team of scientists appear in the Jan. 22 online issue of Nature Climate Change. http://www.physorg.com/news246459581.html Space & Earth - Environment Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:00:24 EST news246459581 Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and gas have been increasing over the past decades, causing the Earth to get hotter and hotter. There are concerns that a continuation of these trends could have catastrophic effects, including crop failures in the heat-stressed tropics. This has led some to explore drastic ideas for combating global warming, including the idea of trying to counteract it by reflecting sunlight away from the Earth. However, it has been suggested that reflecting sunlight away from the Earth might itself threaten the food supply of billions of people. http://www.physorg.com/news246458725.html Space & Earth - Environment Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:00:08 EST news246458725 Bottom trawling fishing boats have devastated many cold water coral reefs along the margin of the North East Atlantic Ocean. Now, researchers have found large cold water coral colonies clinging to the vertical and overhanging sides of submarine canyons 1350 metres below the surface of the Bay of Biscay. http://www.physorg.com/news246272084.html Space & Earth - Environment Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:55:04 EST news246272084 A new paper published today in Nature reveals that human land use activity has begun to change the regional water and energy cycles-the interplay of air coming in from the Atlantic Ocean, water transpiration by the forest, and solar radiation-of parts of the Amazon basin. In addition, it shows that ongoing interactions between deforestation, fire, and climate change have the potential to alter carbon storage, rainfall patterns and river discharge on an even larger basin-wide scale. http://www.physorg.com/news246122275.html Space & Earth - Environment Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:18:06 EST news246122275 Rising human carbon dioxide emissions may be affecting the brains and central nervous systems of sea fish, with serious consequences for their survival, according to new research. http://www.physorg.com/news245904763.html Space & Earth - Environment Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:52:57 EST news245904763 Researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of York have played a key role in a new study that shows that implementing 14 key air pollution control measures could slow the pace of global warming, save millions of lives and boost agricultural production. http://www.physorg.com/news245644866.html Space & Earth - Environment Fri, 13 Jan 2012 02:41:36 EST news245644866 There are simple, inexpensive ways to cut back on two major pollutants -- soot and methane -- and taking action now could slow climate change for years to come, international scientists said Thursday. http://www.physorg.com/news245601299.html Space & Earth - Environment Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:20:02 EST news245601299 Preserving diverse plant life will be crucial to buffer the negative effects of climate change and desertification in in the world's drylands, according to a new landmark study. http://www.physorg.com/news245595637.html Space & Earth - Environment Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:20:04 EST news245595637 When UC Santa Barbara geochemist David Valentine and colleagues published a study in early 2011 documenting how bacteria blooms had consumed almost all of the deepwater methane plumes following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, some people were skeptical. How, they asked, could almost all of the lethal gas emitted from the Deepwater Horizon well just disappear? http://www.physorg.com/news245326204.html Space & Earth - Environment Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:00:14 EST news245326204 By combining detailed chemical measurements in the deep ocean, in the oil slick, and in the air, NOAA scientists and academic colleagues have independently estimated how fast gases and oil were leaking during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. http://www.physorg.com/news245326074.html Space & Earth - Environment Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:00:01 EST news245326074 Bad news for the Gulf of Mexico: a study released in late December sheds new light on the toxicity of oil in aquatic environments, and shows that environmental impact studies currently in use may be inadequate. The report was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.physorg.com/news245338656.html Space & Earth - Environment Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:20:01 EST news245338656 Those making land use decisions to reduce the harmful effects of climate change have focused almost exclusively on greenhouse gases – analyzing, for example, how much carbon dioxide is released when a forest is cleared to grow crops. A new study in Nature Climate Change aims to present a more complete picture – to incorporate other characteristics of ecosystems that also influence climate. http://www.physorg.com/news245240094.html Space & Earth - Environment Sun, 08 Jan 2012 13:00:25 EST news245240094 Summertime hail could all but disappear from the eastern flank of Colorado's Rocky Mountains by 2070, according to a new modeling study by scientists from NOAA and several other institutions. http://www.physorg.com/news245240521.html Space & Earth - Environment Sun, 08 Jan 2012 13:00:11 EST news245240521 (PhysOrg.com) -- A demonstration project on the southeastern tip of Australia has helped to verify that depleted natural gas reservoirs can be repurposed for geologic carbon sequestration, which is a climate change mitigation strategy that involves pumping CO2 deep underground for permanent storage. http://www.physorg.com/news245059639.html Space & Earth - Environment Fri, 06 Jan 2012 08:07:27 EST news245059639 Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.---Shakespeare, Macbeth http://www.physorg.com/news244971434.html Space & Earth - Environment Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:37:47 EST news244971434 (PhysOrg.com) -- The Khmer Empire, known to many as the Angkor Civilization, was a society of people that lived for several centuries in Southeast Asia in what is now Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Viet Nam. What has kept the memory of the empire alive are the huge structures built by the people who lived in the area during that time. Also of note were the roadways, canals and water movement and storage systems that were constructed to support a large population. But like many other lost cultures, what was once a flourishing metropolis, in a very short period of time, gave way to collapse. http://www.physorg.com/news244803365.html Space & Earth - Environment Tue, 03 Jan 2012 08:57:09 EST news244803365 The 2007 Cosco Busan disaster, which spilled 54,000 gallons of oil into the San Francisco Bay, had an unexpectedly lethal impact on embryonic fish, devastating a commercially and ecologically important species for nearly two years, reports a new study by the University of California, Davis, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. http://www.physorg.com/news244130965.html Space & Earth - Environment Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:00:04 EST news244130965 A group of 19 scientists from five research organizations have conducted the broadest field study of ocean acidification to date using sensors developed at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. http://www.physorg.com/news243768590.html Space & Earth - Environment Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:30:05 EST news243768590 (PhysOrg.com) -- The amount of air pollutants in the atmospheric plume generated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was similar to a large city according to a new NOAA-led study published today in a special issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.physorg.com/news243592198.html Space & Earth - Environment Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:00:02 EST news243592198 (PhysOrg.com) -- In February 2012, the journal Nature Climate Change will publish a paper on rainfall extremes in India by principal investigator Vipin Kumar of the University of Minnesota's computer science and engineering department and co-principal investigator Auroop Ganguly of the civil and environmental engineering department at Northeastern University in Boston, members of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Expeditions project team. Nature pre-published the paper online today.  http://www.physorg.com/news243496382.html Space & Earth - Environment Mon, 19 Dec 2011 05:54:10 EST news243496382