Earth

Giving nature a helping hand

Dutch ecologist Marijke van Kuijk has studied the regeneration of the tropical forest in Vietnam. Abandoned agricultural land does regenerate to tropical forest, but only slowly. Two procedures are used to help nature along: pruning of foliage to free up space for trees and planting the desired tree species. Van Kuijk used the PHOLIAGE model to calculate the appropriate measures.

Acidifying oceans add urgency to CO2 cuts

Stanford, CA— It's not just about climate change anymore. Besides loading the atmosphere with heat-trapping greenhouse gases, human emissions of carbon dioxide have also begun to alter the chemistry of the ocean—often called the cradle of life on Earth. The ecological and economic consequences are difficult to predict but possibly calamitous, warn a team of chemical oceanographers in the July 4 issue of Science, and halting the changes already underway will likely require even steeper cuts in carbon emissions than those currently proposed to curb climate change.

AGU Journal Highlights -- July 3, 2008

1. Carbon enters deep Arctic Ocean mainly from continent edges

Geologists push back date basins formed, supporting frozen Earth theory

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Even in geology, it's not often a date gets revised by 500 million years.

Giving nature a helping hand

Dutch ecologist Marijke van Kuijk has studied the regeneration of the tropical forest in Vietnam. Abandoned agricultural land does regenerate to tropical forest, but only slowly. Two procedures are used to help nature along: pruning of foliage to free up space for trees and planting the desired tree species. Van Kuijk used the PHOLIAGE model to calculate the appropriate measures.

Some fundamental interactions of matter found to be fundamentally different than thought

Collisions have consequences. Everyone knows that. Whether it's between trains, planes, automobiles or atoms, there are always repercussions. But while macroscale collisions may have the most obvious effects - mangled steel, bruised flesh - sometimes it is the tiniest collisions that have the most resounding repercussions.

Some fundamental interactions of matter found to be fundamentally different than thought

Collisions have consequences. Everyone knows that. Whether it's between trains, planes, automobiles or atoms, there are always repercussions. But while macroscale collisions may have the most obvious effects - mangled steel, bruised flesh - sometimes it is the tiniest collisions that have the most resounding repercussions.

Where is your soil water? Crop yield has the answer

Special topics in environmental mechanics

Human influences challenge penguin populations