articles

A new study from the University of Eastern Finland presents, for the first time, the isotopic fingerprint of nitrous oxide produced by Arctic soils. The finding opens new avenues for predicting future trends in atmospheric nitrous oxide as well as in identifying climate change mitigation actions in the Arctic, a region that is particularly sensitive to climate change.

During the summer at the Wildlife Safari zoo in Oregon, visitors can pay $25 to have elephants “wash” their vehicles. The elephants use their trunks as sponge holders and hoses.

A new report illustrates how groundwater pumping can affect the amount of water available in streams within the Malad-Lower Bear River Area in Utah. The product was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Utah Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water Rights.

To find out how rising temperatures could affect species diversity, biologists from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and the Leipzig University have developed a simple experiment: they covered the bottom of different Petri dishes with litter material, then put in two species of springtails, that is, arthropods only a few millimetres in size, and then added mites feeding on springtails. Subsequently, for some of the Petri dishes they increased the ambient temperature from originally 13.5°C to 18.5°C and for some other Petri dishes to 23.5°C. In those Petri dishes, the temperatures were hence five, respectively ten degrees higher than the conditions to which the animals had been exposed to in long-term cultures over years. This created simplified miniature ecosystems under climate change conditions, in which the springtail species that peacefully coexist in the wild represented the prey, and the mites represented the predators. For two months, the researchers then observed how the interactions between the three species would develop with different temperatures.

A UBC researcher is drawing attention to the human cost of our consumer behaviour by examining the number of deaths caused by air pollution from manufacturing goods. While some countries bear the brunt of the health risks from air pollution, the products often end up in the hands of consumers in other countries.