El Niño arrived early. Why its impact was felt from India to the Panama Canal
Parts of the world experience impacts of El Niño differently. The same broad climate phenomenon…
El Niño arrived early. Why its impact was felt from India to the Panama Canal
Parts of the world experience impacts of El Niño differently. The same broad climate phenomenon can contribute to drought in one region and unusually heavy rain in another. Many people expected El Niño to become a major factor later in the year, particularly as it strengthened towards the winter months.But signs of the phenomenon had…
Trump Administration Carbon Limits: ‘Unleash American energy’: Trump moves to scrap Biden-era carbon limits on US coal & gas power plants
Trump’s latest climate rollback targets carbon emissions from US power plants The Donald Trump administration is set to scrap Biden-era limits on carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants, marking another major rollback of US climate policy and removing restrictions that targeted a sector responsible for nearly a quarter of the country’s greenhouse gas…
Underwater sensors caught a rare event off Cornwall: one porpoise became trapped in a net while two animals exchanged possible distress calls
Bycatch, the accidental capture of animals in fishing gear is considered the world’s greatest direct human-caused threat to dolphins and porpoises. Off the coast of Cornwall, a set of underwater sensors was listening to the ocean when it detected something researchers rarely get to see. According to an online report by Phys Org, two harbor…
Sea otters returned to a polluted California estuary in 1984; eelgrass expanded 600%, while marsh-edge erosion later slowed by 69% on average
Sea otters returned to California’s Elkhorn Slough in 1984 when pollution had severely affected its ecosystem. When sea otters returned to California’s Elkhorn Slough in 1984, the estuary was already facing severe environmental pressure. The coastal wetland had high nutrient levels linked to its agriculture-dominated watershed, while eelgrass had fallen to an all-time low of…
Brazil restored a former cattle landscape with native trees; decades later, lowland tapirs returned after disappearing for 100 years |
South American tapir. Image Credit: Charles J. Sharp/Wikipedia A former cattle landscape in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest has been transformed into a thriving wildlife refuge through years of restoration and the planting of native trees. At the Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve in Rio de Janeiro State, land that was once cleared and used for grazing has gradually…
Quote of the day by Isaac Newton: “Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things” |
Isaac Newton, one of history’s most influential scientists, spent much of his life trying to understand the laws governing the natural world. His work transformed physics, mathematics and astronomy, but his approach to discovery was rooted in careful observation, experimentation and the search for underlying principles. One of his enduring observations was that truth is…
A Scottish river project set out to revive oysters that once covered an area the size of Edinburgh; now, 60,000 have been returned |
A Scottish restoration project has returned 60,000 native oysters to the Firth of Forth, reviving a species that once formed vast oyster beds across an area roughly comparable to the size of Edinburgh. The Restoration Forth partnership originally aimed to return 30,000 European flat oysters to the estuary, but the target was later doubled after…
In 2015, Canada sank a 113-metre retired warship off British Columbia; five years later, monitoring had recorded more than 170 marine species on the wreck
A lingcod guards its egg mass on the Annapolis (Image Credit: Michel Joseph via Artificial Reef Society of British Columbia) A retired Canadian warship that was deliberately sunk off British Columbia in 2015 has become an artificial reef supporting a growing community of marine life. The former HMCS Annapolis, measuring 113.1 metres in length, was…
Human hair, receipts, fishing nets, and eggshells were among 17 waste materials tested to create stronger, lower-carbon cement building products |
Cement is one of the most widely used materials in construction, but its production comes with a high environmental cost. Circular Design Cement, a 2026 James Dyson Award project, is exploring a new approach to construction materials. The project uses everyday waste and industrial byproducts as recycled aggregates in cement-based materials designed for architectural applications….
Meet Franklin Howley-Dumit Serulle, the amateur naturalist whose online insect photo helped reveal a new hoverfly species |
PC: Swiss Academy of Sciences A photograph shared online has helped scientists identify a hoverfly species that had remained a mystery for years. The insect, named ‘Monoceromyia ndidiae’, was photographed in the Dominican Republic and posted on iNaturalist. Its unusual appearance caught the attention of an entomologist, who began asking whether the fly represented something…
