TOP 100 CAMPING SITES
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| Advice on Creating a Rooftop Garden Dear EarthTalk: I’m sure there are many good environmental reasons to build a rooftop garden. Can you enlighten? And also I’d like to know how to go about creating one and whether or not some municipalities might offer incentives to do so. -- Linda, via e-mail [More] rss.sciam.com |
How much are coral ecosystems worth? Try $172 billion--A year Coral ecosystems are worth an amazing $172 billion a year to the world economy, according to research presented last week at the DIVERSITAS biodiversity conference in Cape Town, South Africa. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Hybrid Solar Panels Combine Photovoltaics with Thermoelectricity Tar and shingles are hardly environmentally friendly materials, so the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) hopes to soon help homeowners and businesses replace the roofs over their heads with something greener. To that end, the DOE awarded Weidlinger Associates , a New York City-based structural engineering firm, a $150,000 grant earlier this month (matched by a 10-percent commitment from the state) to develop durable hybrid solar roofing panels with integrated photovoltaic cells and thermoelectric materials that harvest the sun's energy to produce both electricity and hot water for buildings. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Shark fin soup: CITES fails to protect 5 species of sharks from overfishing and finning The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) this week decided not to create any new international trade restrictions to protect five endangered shark species, all of which are highly prized for their use in the Chinese delicacy known as shark fin soup, or as I call it "extinction in a bowl."Shark fin soup is particularly unappetizing dish to conservationists, as shark "finning" remains one of the most controversial hunting or fishing activities in the world. Sharks are caught, their fins are chopped off, and the bodies (which are not prized) are dumped back into the ocean--often alive, where they suffer a horrible death. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Good Riddance to Overfishing: New Management Can End Unsustainable Practices Editor's note: This story is part of a series of online exclusives about natural phenomena and human endeavors we'd like to see come to an end. They are connected with the September 2010 special issue of Scientific American called " The End ." The meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES (pronounced "sight-eez") this past March was a decided defeat for the Atlantic bluefin tuna . Delegates voted 72 to 43 not to restrict fishing and international trade of the tuna so prized for its sushi that stocks are estimated to be at 15 percent of their historic levels . Although dismayed, conservationists remain upbeat, because they have at their disposal other management tools that could save the species. [More] Fish - Tuna - Thunnus - Environment - CITES rss.sciam.com |