In crisis-hit Greece, government decisions taken in haste and despair to save the country from default, risk having a serious impact on the environment. A new bill seeks to relax restrictions on construction of public and private forestland even for those areas, which are considered protected.

The biodiversity of our rivers, lakes, and ponds has gone largely un-addressed in our efforts to predict the impacts of land development. Planners look at increased runoff and the potential for downstream flooding, and on pollutant discharges and contamination issues. The biodiversity of freshwater bodies is also impacted buy development and agricultural activities, but until…

New research has found the first evidence that large rivers control desert sands and dust. But how exactly? First we need to know a little bit about loess. Loess is a silt-sized sediment which is formed by the accumulation of wind-blown dust. Loess deposits may be very thick and often blankets areas. One of the…

So, here I am, running in a forest at night over 2,000 miles from home. This forest—dry, stout, and thorny enough to draw blood—lies just a few miles north of a rural town in the western edge of the Dominican Republic on the border with Haiti. I’m following—or trying to keep pace with—a local hunter…

Assessing the effect of climate change on upwelling ecosystems is essential to be able to predict the future of marine resources. The zones concerned by this upwelling of cold deep water, which is very rich in nutrients, provide up to 20 % of global production of fish. Since the 1990s, the theory adopted by the…

Our company has seen firsthand the disastrous consequences that occur when financial gain is divorced from environmental and social considerations. Nowhere are these consequences more tragic than in former company towns that have gone bust – places created to concentrate workers on a singular economic enterprise, but are now landscapes of abandoned assets, economic atrophy…

Exciting and dramatic changes have taken place in the Elwha River in the last two years with the removal of two dams. The Glines Canyon Dam (1927) and the Elwha Dam (1910) were removed to restore the watershed’s ecology unblocking passage for migratory salmon. Salmon have already begun to find their way up the newly…

Surging storms and rising seas threaten millions of U.S. residents and billions of dollars in property along coastlines. The nation’s strongest defense, according to a new study by scientists with the Natural Capital Project at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, comes from natural coastal habitats. Of the 25 most densely populated counties in…

Stella, a solar-powered family car designed by students from the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in has won the World Solar Challenge 2013, ushering in a new era of efficient, practical cruisers that get all of their juice from the sun. Solar Team Eindhoven from the Netherlands spent over a year developing their family car,…

It’s commonly accepted that record food prices were one of the key triggers for the Arab Spring. This year in Zimbabwe, critical levels of crop failure put over two million people at risk of chronic malnutrition. Even a prosperous state like Singapore, which imports over 90 percent of its produce, is starkly aware of its…