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Environment

Aquaculture and fish farms must adapt to the changing sea conditions of climate change. Image credit - Ferit Rad from Mersin University
environment | agriculture
09 April 2018

Europe must sea food in a new way thanks to warming waters

Aquaculture, or fish farming, is one of the world's fastest growing food sectors, providing about half of all the fish we eat. As it stands, climate change is altering our ocean’s environment, causing the seawater to become warmer and impacting the marine  ecosystems profoundly. How will these changes affect marine species, consumers and industries that rely on them?

Recycling food waste to use as animal feed and turning manure into green fertilizers can lead to lower environmental impacts from food production. Image credit - pxhere/1271653, licensed under CC0 Public Domain
environment | agriculture
05 April 2018

Turning food waste into animal feed could take a chunk out of livestock emissions

Using European plant and dairy waste as an alternative to soy-based animal feed could see a big drop in agricultural emissions and prevent deforestation.

It is estimated that more than 150 million tonnes of plastics have already accumulated in the world's oceans. Image credit - Pxhere/ 1060974, licensed under CC0 Public Domain
environment
03 April 2018

Garbage-collecting aqua drones and jellyfish filters for cleaner oceans

A Roomba-like ocean trash collector modelled on a whale shark and a microplastic filter made from jellyfish slime could prevent litter from entering our oceans and help tackle a growing problem that poses threats to wildlife, deters tourists and impacts on coastal economies.

Light pollution can be problematic for animals like the Cory's shearwater. Image credit - Airam Rodríguez (Estación Biológica de Doñana CSIC), licensed under CC BY 4.0
environment
27 March 2018

Light pollution is altering plant and animal behaviour

You could call it fatal attraction. Drawn by artificial lights in our brightening night-time world, animals find their lives in peril.

More than 700,000 hectares of land in the EU were destroyed by forest fires between January and September 2017. Image credit – CC0 Public Domain
environment | ict
20 March 2018

Swarming drones could help fight Europe's megafires

Swarms of firefighting drones could one day be deployed to tackle hugely destructive megafires that are becoming increasingly frequent in the Mediterranean region because of climate change, arson and poor landscape management.

New research aims at making climate change prediction more accurate. Image credit - Pixabay/ jodylehigh, licensed under Creative Commons CC0
environment
15 March 2018

Climate sensitivity - reducing the uncertainty of uncertainty

Global warming is a reality – but just how bad will it be? A study published in January 2018 claims to halve the uncertainty around how much our planet's temperature will change in response to rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, potentially giving governments more confidence to prepare for the future.

When ice shelves melt, they dump freshwater into the sea which lightens the salty water. Image credit - Flickr/NASA ICE, licensed under CC BY 2.0
environment
08 March 2018

Warmer, saltier polar water could change global ocean currents

Melting ice shelves are changing the ocean’s chemistry at the South Pole and the result could be a change in global currents and increased glacial melt, according to scientists who are creating maps to feed into climate change models.

Advanced gasification methods can turn any waste except metal and rubble into fuel for electricity. Credit - Pixabay/ Prylarer
energy | environment
07 March 2018

Turning landfill into energy

Landfill is both ugly and polluting. But a new breed of technology promises to make it a thing of the past, transforming a huge portion of landfill material into clean gas.

Geographically defined products such as Parma ham help to assess the social and cultural value of a landscape. Image credit - Pxhere/1165797, licensed under CC0 Creative Commons
environment | social sciences
06 March 2018

Ancient farming techniques could help mitigate climate change effects

High technology is being deployed to uncover long-forgotten irrigation systems and other features concealed in landscapes that farmers developed hundreds of years ago to nurture their land.

As many as 6.5 million premature deaths every year are attributed to air pollution, according to the World Health Organization. Image credit – Public domain
health | environment
05 March 2018

Ultrafine pollution particles create air of menace

An air quality study has for the first time detected nano-sized particles of air pollution in children’s urine. With a diameter of just 100 nanometers - a thousandth of the width of a human hair - these ultrafine particles are the smallest particles found in air pollution and have been linked to heart disease and respiratory conditions in previous studies.

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