ANN ARBOR, Mich.— As a child in Mali, Abdrahamane Traoré often did his homework by the sooty, dim light of a kerosene lamp.
As an adult in Michigan, he sometimes has a tough time reaching his family back home. Traoré’s mother must walk to a neighboring village to keep a cell phone charged. (more…)
Research could rescue fragile ecosystems and halt complex cascade events
In an effort to better understand the dynamics of complex networks, scientists have developed a mathematical model to describe interactions within ecological food webs. This research, performed by Northwestern University physics professor Adilson Motter and his student, Sagar Sahasrabudhe, is published in the January 25 issue of Nature Communications. The work illustrates how human intervention may effectively aid species conservation efforts. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Mercury contamination, a worldwide environmental problem, has been called “public enemy No. 1” in California’s San Francisco Bay. (more…)
Stanford, CA — Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes had an impact on the global carbon cycle as big as today’s annual demand for gasoline. The Black Death, on the other hand, came and went too quickly for it to cause much of a blip in the global carbon budget. Dwarfing both of these events, however, has been the historical trend towards increasing deforestation, which over centuries has released vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as crop and pasture lands expanded to feed growing human populations. Even Genghis Kahn couldn’t stop it for long. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— The decreases in Earth’s snow and ice cover over the past 30 years have exacerbated global warming more than models predict they should have, on average, new research from the University of Michigan shows. (more…)
*Study of Chinese citizens says jobs more important than salary when it comes to pro-environmental behavior*
People with good jobs found in large cities are more likely to engage in pro-environmental activities. So says a new study of China’s environmental behavior published this week in the British journal Environmental Conservation.
For the first time, scientists weighed employment and leadership when considering how people act regarding their natural surroundings. They found the status and political power of companies in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin strongly influence the conservation practices of their employees. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—On the heels of last week’s federal recommendations to help prevent another BP oil spill disaster, a University of Michigan researcher says the tragedy has come close to acting as a catalyst for deeper change—but not quite.
“The BP oil spill is, potentially, a ‘cultural anomaly’ for institutional changes in environmental management and fossil fuel production,” said Andrew Hoffman, professor of management and organizations at the Ross School of Business and a professor at the School of Natural Resources and Environment. “But true change in our approach to handling issues related to oil drilling, oil consumption and environmental management have yet to occur.” (more…)
WASHINGTON — Scientists have taken a major step toward accurately determining the amount of energy that the sun provides to Earth, and how variations in that energy may contribute to climate change.
In a new study of laboratory and satellite data, researchers report a lower value of that energy, known as total solar irradiance, than previously measured and demonstrate that the satellite instrument that made the measurement—which has a new optical design and was calibrated in a new way—has significantly improved the accuracy and consistency of such measurements. (more…)
