Australian farmers want excess water from large floods to be 'banked' in aquifers, for use in dry times.

Space & Earth - Environment

10 hours ago 5 / 5 (1) 0

(Phys.org) —Devastating at the time, the major floods of 2011 have since brought a vital benefit by recharging Australia's depleted reserves of underground water.

Space & Earth - Environment

May 14, 2013 5 / 5 (4) 0

Agriculture is responsible for around 10 to 12 percent of all greenhouse gases attributable to human activities. This raises the question of how these emissions could be reduced. A recent study has investigated—for ...

Space & Earth - Environment

Feb 28, 2013 not rated yet 0

Scientists said Monday they have identified a physical mechanism behind the extreme weather that has plagued many parts of the world in recent years—and that it is tied to climate change.

Space & Earth - Environment

Feb 25, 2013 3.4 / 5 (16) 41

In a letter to Science published last week, Karl-Heinz Erb from the Institute of Social Ecology Vienna and a number of co-authors discuss how the measurement of biomass production and consumption can be used to gain a bett ...

Biology - Ecology

Dec 19, 2012 not rated yet 0

Water is a commodity, and water rights can be freely traded in an open market. Proponents of the free market approach argue that it leads to the most efficient allocation of water resources, as it would for any other commodity. ...

Space & Earth - Earth Sciences

Oct 01, 2012 5 / 5 (1) 0

(Phys.org) -- Farmers are unsustainably exploiting groundwater in a number of important agricultural regions, according to a team of researchers led by Prof. Tom Gleeson of McGill’s Department of Civil Engineering, in ...

Space & Earth - Environment

Aug 09, 2012 5 / 5 (3) 1

Droughts are more than simply climate phenomena. They can have profound social, environmental, and economic impacts and can also be a major threat to food security throughout the world. Though much progress ...

Space & Earth - Environment

Jul 19, 2012 not rated yet 0

An international team of researchers in Colombia, the UK, USA and Switzerland have developed the first ever system to monitor deforestation across Latin America in near real-time using satellite data. Preliminary ...

Space & Earth - Environment

Jun 19, 2012 5 / 5 (2) 0

Several periods of field work during 2008 have led to the discovery of a new species of bamboo-feeding plant lice in Costa Rica's high-altitude region "Cerro de la Muerte". The discovery was made thanks to ...

Biology - Plants & Animals

Feb 06, 2012 not rated yet 0

Changes of seasonal cycles are important to social and economic activities, agricultural planning in particular. Qian et al. quantified changes in the timings of 24 seasonal divisions conventionally known ...

Space & Earth - Environment

Jan 24, 2012 5 / 5 (5) 1

The origins of rice have been cast in a new light by research publishing in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics on June 9, 2011. By reconciling two theories, the authors show that the domestication of rice occurred at lea ...

Biology - Biotechnology

Jun 09, 2011 3 / 5 (2) 1

Archaeologists have made the first three-dimensional topographical map of ancient monumental buildings long buried under centuries of jungle at the Maya site "Head of Stone" in Guatemala.

Other Sciences - Archaeology & Fossils

Apr 13, 2011 5 / 5 (2) 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Stanford researchers have found a way to use satellite data to monitor groundwater aquifers previously obscured by the crops they nourish.

Space & Earth - Environment

Dec 13, 2010 5 / 5 (2) 0

In the first systematic analysis of threats to the biodiversity of the world's mediterranean-climate regions, scientists at The Nature Conservancy and UC Davis report that these conservation hotspots are facing significant ...

Space & Earth - Environment

Feb 17, 2009 3 / 5 (4) 0