News
March 15, 2023
Russian scientists have assessed how the vegetation of Arctic wetlands behaves under the influence of industrial emissions from Norilsk city and climate change. Before the nineteen nineties, trees and shrubs were oppressed and died due to high sulphur emissions. However, starting from the two thousandth, after reduction of pollution and increase of summer and autumn air temperatures, they began to recover. The results of the study are published in the Water journal.
March 14, 2023
Russian scientists have found out that ferromanganese nodules, or rounded mineral formations bedded in the Kara Sea shelf, are inhabited by unique microbial communities, which are probably accelerating the process of their formation. At the same time, the composition of microbial communities that use ferromanganese nodules as their habitat and "shelter" for protection from the harsh conditions of the Arctic seas largely depends on the chemical composition of the nodules.
February 20, 2023
The Battle for the Memory of Copernicus: Poland vs. Germany. 550 years have passed since the great astronomer, who established the place of our planet in the Solar system was born. "He made the earth move, and the Sun and the sky rise" - this inscription (in Latin) adorns the pedestal of the monument to Nicholas Copernicus in his hometown Torun, in present-day Poland.
February 16, 2023
Mining at key hydrothermal vents could endanger species at distant sites.
February 7, 2023
Are tropical forests threatened by democracy? Democracy may lead to more deforestation in the tropics. So write environmental scientist Joeri Morpurgo and his colleagues in Biological Conservation. They found that competitive elections are associated with more loss of tropical rainforest than elections without competition. "We must prevent politicians from exploiting the remaining rainforest for political power."
February 2, 2023
Today is the World Wetlands Day. Wetlands are ecosystems where water is the primary factor controlling the environment and the associated plant and animal life. A broad definition of wetlands includes both freshwater and marine and coastal ecosystems such as all lakes and rivers, underground aquifers, swamps and marshes, wet grasslands, peatlands, oases, estuaries, deltas and tidal flats, mangroves and other coastal areas, coral reefs, and all human-made sites such as fishponds, rice paddies, reservoirs and saltpans.
January 13, 2023
The ozone layer is on track to recover within four decades, with the global phaseout of ozone-depleting chemicals already benefitting efforts to mitigate climate change. This is the conclusion of a UN-backed panel of experts, presented 2023/01/09 at the American Meteorological Society’s 103rd annual meeting. Examining novel technologies such as geoengineering for the first time, the panel warns of unintended impacts on the ozone layer.
January 12, 2023
Trigger mechanisms of gas hydrate decomposition, methane emissions and glacier breakup in polar regions as the result of deformation tectonic waves. New paper presents a new revolutionary theory of Academician Leopold Isaevich Lobkovsky on the impact of strong subduction earthquakes on the Earth’s climate and the catastrophic collapse of ice shelves as a trigger effect.
December 13, 2022
Microbial miners could help humans colonize the moon and Mars. The biochemical process by which cyanobacteria acquire nutrients from rocks in Chile's Atacama Desert has inspired engineers at the University of California, Irvine to think of new ways microbes might help humans build colonies on the moon and Mars.
December 7, 2022
Kazan (Republic of Tatarstan, Russian Federation) is hosting the International Forum for the 50th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.