Tag: Environment

For half a century, millions of workers have repeated a task across the deserts in northern China: inserting forearm-length sticks into shifting sand, first in a row, then in an intersecting line, gradually forming a grid. Then saplings are planted at the centre of each small square. The technique, known as “straw checkerboards”, is a...

Wildlife ecology in India looks different today than it did a decade ago. Climate change, habitat fragmentation, invasive species, and rapid development are all reshaping ecosystems faster than scholars can document them. Thus, ecologists are interested in how biodiversity has changed as well as how it is likely to change next. Just these questions shaped...

A team of scientists has, for the first time in India, identified and genetically characterised a virus that often causes rapid death in captive psittacine birds, raising concerns about the health of exotic pets and conservation of threatened parrot species. Psittacine, which means relating to or resembling a parrot, describes the bird family Psittacidae and...

A massive decline in bovine milk production in India, especially among buffaloes in the trans-Gangetic plains of northwestern India — one of the country’s biggest sources of milk — has now been attributed to climate change. The phenomenon has a profound impact on the milk industry that caters to consumers every day. While climate change significantly undermines livestock...

At the Bonn climate talks in Germany on June 8-18, alongside the usual laundry list of contested themes like climate finance, tipping points became an unexpected source of debate and controversy. According to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, India urged care and clarity in using terms like “tipping points”, which it said would present challenges around...

More than a thousand varieties of mangoes exist in India, the popular ones being Banganapalli, Dassheri, Alphonso, Badaami, Imaam Pasandh, and Mulgoa. There is even a “Lalbagh” variety in Bengaluru. Many of us associate the fruit with a summer childhood memory, of eating it with our bare hands, the mango juice dripping on our clothes....

In the mines of Mongbwalu, the epicentre of an Ebola outbreak in the northeastern Democratic Republic Congo, gold prospectors have no choice but to overcome their fear of the virus and carry on their backbreaking work. “Ebola is real and it scares us. But if I stay at home, what are my children going to...

Birds fly in flocks, fish swim in schools. What bonds them together, without dispersal or collision? Mathematicians from New York University (NYU) explained the method to the madness: the animals move in tandem, like an orchestra with a maestro leading them. A bird’s flapping wings, for instance, produces “vortex wakes” (or travelling waves) with each...

A United Nations (UN) body that regulates deep international waters is preparing to elect its next leader, a crucial position as it faces pressure to either ban, approve or place a moratorium on seabed mining. The upcoming election comes as the Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority (ISA) ended a two-week session on July 26 without reaching...

While the world’s coffee drinkers favour Arabica or Robusta, a newly identified hybrid called Coffea x libex (the X denotes its hybrid status) — or just Libex — could be their brew of choice in future. The world drinks roughly 17,000 tonnes of Arabica and 10,000 tonnes of Robusta beans (pre-roasting) every day. Together, they...