This'deep sequencing'technique has been used to characterize mixtures of microbes living in environments such as oceans and animal guts.
and predictably, to match their new status."It suggests a lot of plasticity in our gene expression response to our social environment,
Unlike stone tools, evidence of burning, such as ash and charcoal, is destroyed easily by wind and rain.
where lightning could have ignited the fire. That could not have happened in the Wonderwerk Cave. But using fire
Indonesian deforestation ban makes slow progressgary Braasch/Corbisindonesia's moratorium on clearing forests is not enough for the country to meet its climate change goals.
it is growing clear that the moratorium is having little effect on deforestation rates and carbon emissions and secures a smaller area of forest than was thought.
However, the Indonesian government has confirmed its commitment to its climate-change pledge by extending the protected area
a climate-change scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), based in Bogor, Indonesia.
Norway s environment minister, B ¥rd Vegar Solhjell, acknowledges the limitations of the moratorium.""We know that the moratorium itself is not sufficient to reach the climate mitigation pledged
or to stop deforestation in the speed necessary, he said in a statement last week.
Progress is slow in part because the clearance-permit ban is not as radical as it at first seemed.
an environmental think tank based in WASHINGTON DC.""This will determine if Indonesia can stop deforestation, he says.
Sizer welcomed the government s move to retract a permit awarded to Kallista Alam, an Indonesian palm-oil company,
They also hope it will help in the development of tomatoes that can survive pests, pathogens and even climate change,
But the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs, which is responsible for btb control in Britain,
says William Wint, an ecologist at the University of Oxford, UK, who has become frustrated by the badger-centric debate."
Environmental groups oppose Dow s application, which drew more 365,000 public comments last month. News reports have drawn attention to the fact that 2,
weed ecologist David Mortensen of Pennsylvania State university in University Park and his colleagues argue that the growing number of multiresistant weed varieties proves that"weeds can defy the probabilities (D. Â A. Â Mortensen
On 17 may, the US Environmental protection agency approved a bioherbicide from Marrone Bio Innovations in Davis, California.
Such solutions may be easier on the environment but if overused could still breed resistance. Most agree that farming in a post-Roundup era will be complicated more."
growing concerns about climate change, rising energy consumption and dependence on foreign oil  have prompted countries
but the Environmental protection agency projects that companies will collectively achieve only 2%of that goal. Six companies American Process in Atlanta, Georgia;
Brazil set to cut forest protectionthe sound of chainsaws in the Amazon rainforest has faded in recent years as deforestation has slowed,
and mounting public pressure, has helped Brazil to reduce deforestation to its lowest level in more than 20 years (see Turning the tide).
INPE"Brazil has justifiably held up its record on deforestation in the Amazon in recent years,
says Steve Schwartzman, director of tropical forest policy at the Environmental Defense Fund in WASHINGTON DC.""But the changes proposed in what passed the House are fully capable of reversing that trend.
The legislation has been working its way through the National Congress since 2010, motivated by a rural backlash against the crackdown on deforestation.
including a commitment to an 80%reduction in the average deforestation rate by 2020. Although Rousseff is predicted to sign the bill,
an ecologist who heads the Amazon Environmental Research Institute in Brasilia.""The bill is so bad
as protesters skewered her record on other environmental issues. That record includes pushing forward with the controversial Belo Monte dam on the Xingu River in the eastern Amazon,
a dozen social and environmental groups warned that Brazil is in danger of being"both host and villain at Rio+20
Ancient text gives clue to mysterious radiation spikean eerie red crucifix seen in Britain's evening sky in ad 774 may be unrecognized a previously supernova explosion
Such a cloud might also prevent any remnants of the proposed supernova being seen by modern astronomers.
The wording suggests that the object was seen in the western skies shortly after sunset, he says.
The sky is a large place and the historical record is not very good.
Model pigs face messy paththe three litters of Yucatan miniature piglets, born in late May,
and environmental groups are concerned that transgenic animals might escape and interbreed with wild populations. In April, amid the delays, the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada,
improving sustainability and environmental integrity, and climate change adaptation and mitigation; improving the productivity, profitability, sustainability and resilience of farming systems;
improving policies and markets; and improving nutrition and diets. Frank Rijsberman, the new chief executive officer of the CGIAR consortium, said that the organization had made a deliberate decision to shift its strategy to focus on outcome-driven research.
000 years ago in Europe and later spread to Africa could have offered a unique benefit in a parching climate.
The centre, to be launched this summer at the IAEA s Environmental Laboratories in Monaco, is part of the agency s remit to support peaceful uses of nuclear technology.
Scullion, a graduate student in environmental and forest sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle, arrived in the Peruvian region of Madre de dios last September, just after the price of gold hit a record high of US$68 per gram.
The informal operations rarely assess their effects on the environment, or develop plans for what to do with the mines once they are exhausted,
and ordered that all miners must formally register a yearlong process that requires the mine operators to produce a work plan, an environmental-impact assessment and a cleanup strategy, among other requirements.
"This is the epitome of a healthy ecosystem, says Enrique Ortiz, vice-president of the Amazon Conservation Association, based in WASHINGTON DC."
the study s authors found that deforestation in two prominent mining zones increased sixfold between 2003 and 2009,
In March, Katy Ashe, a graduate student in environmental engineering at Stanford university in California, published the first study (K. Ashe PLOS ONE 7, e33305;
That finding tallies with as yet unpublished research by Luis Fernandez, a tropical ecologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, with whom Ashe is about to begin Working in 2009,
It also takes into account environmental factors such as damage caused by tornadoes a real possibility in Kansas and one that the first risk assessment overlooked.
China's emissions estimates don't add upthis week in Nature Climate Change, Guan, an expert in sustainability science at the University of Leeds, UK,
The report is part of spate of bad news for China s environmental progress. Last week the country s Ministry of Environmental Protection and the National Development and Reform Commission released data showing that
in 2011, China emitted 24 million tonnes of nitrogen oxide â¢a 5. 7%increase over the previous year.
Despite these hints of transparency in reporting environmental problems China wants to stay firmly in control of monitoring its pollution.
China's deputy environment minister last week demanded that foreign embassies stop their independent recording of the nation's air-pollution levels,
Zhu Liu, a co-author of the report, from the Institute of Applied Ecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shenyang,
China is stepping up its efforts to combat climate change. This week, it launched the National Climate Change Strategy Research
and International Cooperation Center to advise the country on ways to decrease emissions and to devise a carbon trading system that will be tested in seven provinces and cities next year.
says Greenwood. from Ref 1areas with seasonal rainfall (orange-red) are most suitable for seasonal malaria chemoprevention.
including one that would have granted effectively an amnesty for any illegal deforestation conducted before July 2008.
but also protects the environment. Many expect further legislative wrangling as Congress reviews the new language in the coming months.
Government enforcement has helped to reduce the rate of illegal deforestation dramatically since 2004 but it has sparked also a push-back from politicians in Congress representing agricultural interests.
an ecologist at the University of S £o Paulo in Brazil who helped to organize an October 2011 position paper on forest-code reform."
but Dan Nepstad, a California-based ecologist with the Brazilian Amazon Environmental Research Institute, says that the revised code does not necessarily spell doom for the Amazon.
Various agriculture and forestry initiatives at the state, national and international levels could help to maintain progress in reducing deforestation.
Drought devastates US cropsa farmer inspects his drought-damaged maize crop in Illinois just one of several states affected by scarce June rainfall.
just 5. 8 centimetres of rain fell in June 1. 6 cm less than normal, making June 2012 the tenth driest on record, says NOAA.
unless there is a significant change in the weather. That seems unlikely at the moment, says Maximo Torero, a food-market and trade analyst at the International Food Policy Research Institute in WASHINGTON DC.
Many scientists are trying to unravel the complex crop genetics that allows these crops to tolerate environmental extremes,
which has shown improved productivity in drought conditions that occur late in the growing season in temperate and tropical environments,
Plant breeders are also working to improve the performance of maize under environmental stress using both conventional breeding and genetic modification.
"If I had a rain prayer or a rain dance I could do, I would do it,
The reactor was shut down at the time of the earthquake and tsunami that led to meltdowns in other reactors last March,
and the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, this is no longer true (see chart). Total emissions rose 3%in 2011 to around 34 Â billion tonnes.
topics include the consequences of climate change, and genetically modifying plants to feed the world s population. go. nature. com/m128l22 August The governing board of the Cancer Prevention
but most important are the ecosystems, says Washington Tapia, director of conservation and sustainable development for the Galapagos National park. George was discovered on the island of Pinta in 1971,
C. M Â rquez et al Ecologia Aplicada 3, 98-111 (2004)/ Galapagos Natl Park"What we re trying to do is bring everyone together to synthesize the perspectives of ecologists,
who was one of the first researchers to carry out an in depth study3 of the behavioural ecology of giant tortoises, in the early 1980s."
But the Floreana-like tortoises on Wolf could help with a long-term project to restore the island s ecology.
and are being tracked by satellite to see what impact they have on the ecosystem. For Cayot, introducing a breeding population of tortoises to Pinta is a much more rational proposal than a plan that relies on cloning Lonesome George."In 100,000 Â years, through evolutionary processes,
and climate change. It is pretty daunting. Take climate change: how do you improve water-use efficiency, nitrogen-use efficiency, nutrient-use efficiency or drought tolerance?
How can you grow crops in incredibly arid conditions? Can you increase salt tolerance of crops such as rice,
and food security, adapting to climate change, energy, water, nutrition, and food safety. Â Â Â Luckily for us, in the past couple of years NIFA has received actually a little bit more funding, especially in the competitive-grants arena.
and environmental security through enhancing the pipeline of a well-educated and trained workforce. Â Â I doubt there is an interest in increasing funds for research infrastructure.
five of the world s largest societies for studying evolution and ecology team up for their first joint congress on evolutionary biology. go. nature. com/hwsqna11-15 july Europe s largest
Palm-oil boom raises conservation concernspalm oil was touted once as a social and environmental panacea a sustainable food crop,
presenting evidence that palm-oil farming can cause damaging deforestation and reduce biodiversity, and that the oil s use as a biofuel offers only marginal benefits for mitigating climate change.
But even as the environmental case against it grows stronger, the palm-oil business is booming as never before."
"Oil palm is such a lucrative crop that there is almost no way to stop it, says William Laurance, a forest-conservation scientist at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia.
In January, after the US Environmental protection agency (EPA) found that palm-oil fuels emitted only 11-17%less greenhouse gas than diesel over their entire life cycle,
Although a public consultation on the matter concluded in April, the EPA has not set a date to issue its final ruling.
Research published in April also shows that oil-palm plantations are increasingly responsible for deforestation in Indonesia (K. M. Carlson et al.
oil-palm planting directly caused 27%of the region s deforestation in 2007-08. By 2020, around 40%of Ketapang will be given over to palm oil, up from 6%in 2007-08.
an environmental think tank based in WASHINGTON DC.""It is possible to have carbon-neutral plantations if they are grown on already heavily logged and degraded land,
He and others are keenly watching how the RSPO handles a flood of complaints filed this spring against a planned 70,000-hectare oil-palm plantation in Cameroon, for example, in
In a statement, the RSPO told Nature that it was prepared to act in serious cases of environmental negligence,
But in the face of what Laurance calls"a green tidal wave of oil-palm expansion,
They divided the world into areas of similar growing characteristics on the basis of climate,
says lead author Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota."
and improve the environment by doing nothing more than being smart. But Foley s big-picture perspective does not sit easily with agriculturalists."
or those that receive adequate water from rain; converting a rain-supplied system to an irrigated system is accomplished not easily because of the hefty investment required,
says Tony Fischer, an agricultural scientist at the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation in Canberra, Australia.
Brazil unveils tool to track emissionsthe rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has plummeted by 77%in the past seven years,
but annual carbon emissions associated with deforestation have not fallen nearly as much, says a Brazilian study that combines satellite data
Brazil has had long a sophisticated satellite-based system for monitoring deforestation, but translating forest clearance into emissions has remained a challenge.
He estimates that efforts to forestall deforestation in the Amazon have lowered Brazil s overall carbon emissions by roughly 17%since 2004.
allowing Brazilian scientists to provide annual estimates of both deforestation and carbon emissions, and setting the stage for a deeper analysis of the impacts of logging, agriculture and forest regrowth.
INPE s analysis confirms earlier findings that deforestation is gradually moving into denser forests, which means that emissions per hectare are increasing.
But agencies such as the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural affairs in London are nevertheless watching the situation closely."
Pro-GM plant scientists also point out that the crops can benefit the environment by enabling farmers to use less-toxic herbicides
which are among the most ancient and threatened tropical ecosystems on the planet. And the white-lipped peccary, a species closely related to pigs, has been completely wiped out there, the assessment shows.
The study, by a team of ecologists based in Brazil and the United kingdom, focused on populations of 18 mammal species in 196 forest fragments,
even big forest patches are in fact largely empty of mammals a proxy for the general health of the ecosystem."
says Jean paul Metzger, an ecologist at the University of S £o Paulo, who was involved not in the study.
"The new bill doesn t explicitly stimulate deforestation, but it doesn t impose forest restoration
the new study did not consider the environmental and social effects of indirect land-use change,
A. DI MEO/EPA/CORBISITALIAN dog-breeding facility at risk One of the largest suppliers of beagles (pictured) for mandatory drug testing in Europe could struggle to survive after an Italian court ordered its temporary closure
"It s the world s most ambitious mitigation plan on agriculture, says Eduardo Assad, a climate scientist at the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) in Campinas,
because the ABC had stricter environmental requirements than other agricultural loans. To be eligible, a farmer needed to prove compliance with environmental laws such as the Forest Code,
The ABC itself was stripped later of some of its environmental character. As of 2011, low-carbon agriculture money could be used to fund activities that caused emissions of other greenhouse gases,
which involves legal deforestation. And even that is only the first step. Once the plan is in motion,
This stitched-together image of sections of sky shows the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae,
Rainforest threat Deforestation is on the rise again in the Brazilian Amazon. The amount of clear-cut land hit 522 â°square kilometres in August 2012, up from 163 â°km2 in the same month last year,
Deforestation had been on the wane since April 2011. See go. nature. com/b7ej2p for more.
nsidcarctic sea-ice coverage reached the lowest point of this year s summer melt on 16 Â September, the US National Snow and Ice Data center in Boulder,
CRIIGEN bills itself as an"independent nonprofit organization of scientific counter-expertise to study GMOS, pesticides and impacts of pollutants on health and environment
the transgenic crops should be grown in contained greenhouses to prevent them from escaping into the environment.
The Earth s climate is changing and there is concern about the potentially adverse effects of these changes on life on the planet.
and other policies proposed to address global climate change and what steps can we take to improve our ability to tackle challenges like climate change that cross national boundaries?
Ultimately, the science is an input to the public policy decision; it does not dictate a particular policy response.
and proceeded through his EPA to impose rules that will bankrupt the coal industry. Nowhere along the way has indicated the President
but it will not better the environment. So I oppose steps like a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system that would handicap the American economy
is the key to environmental protection in the long run. So I believe we should pursue what I call a"No Regrets policy steps that will lead to lower emissions,
and energy efficiency in American history and proposed an ambitious Clean Energy Standard to generate 80 percent of our electricity from clean energy sources like wind, solar, clean coal,
Since taking office, electricity production from wind and solar sources has doubled already more than in the United states. We are boosting our use of cleaner fuels,
combined with the resources of America s neighbors, can meet all of the continent s energy needs within a decade.
so that America can benefit from the resources of its neighbors. Fourth, I will ensure accurate assessment of the nation s energy resources by updating decades-old surveys that do not reflect modern technological capabilities.
and enforcing strong environmental protections that ensure all energy development activity is conducted in a safe and responsible manner.
But whereas President Obama has used environmental regulation as an excuse to block the development of resources and the construction of infrastructure,
but instead to facilitate responsible use of all energy sources from oil and coal and natural gas, to nuclear and hydropower and biofuels, to wind and Solar energy development, economic growth,
and environmental protection can go hand-in-hand if the government focuses on transparency and fairness instead of seeking to pick winners
We are also working collaboratively with communities around the country on how to best manage freshwater resources in a changing climate,
and cooperative conservation measures will improve the water quality of our lakes, rivers, streams and coastal environments.
and through foreign policy to protect the environmental health and economic vitality of the oceans? We are directing additional funding to Gulf Coast restoration to bring back the fisheries and coastal ecosystems
which are still recovering in the aftermath of the Deepwater horizon spill. We kicked off the Great lakes Restoration Initiative, the largest investment in the Great lakes in two decades,
which is targeting ecological problems such as invasive species, toxic hot spots, and pollution runoff. We are cleaning up the Chesapeake bay,
establishing a"pollution diet for the Bay that will help restore the natural habitat for fish and other wildlife.
and other regulatory information to more efficiently provide the public with information necessary to participate in key environmental decisions.
and including the public in our decision making process will we harness the power of science to achieve our goals â oe to preserve our environment
yet the EPA estimates that the rule will cost $10 billion to reduce mercury pollution by only $6 million (with an"m). This has stopped not the President from trumpeting the rule as"cost-effective and"common sense,
In February, the FSI, part of the government s Ministry of Environment and Forests, released the India State of Forest Report 2011.
Gill also points to an investigation in 2006 by Meghalaya state s forest and environment department.
But another state government report obtained by Gill documents similar illegal deforestation in the nearby Rongrenggre protected forest,
too coarse to unequivocally identify small-scale deforestation. Instead, he says, the forest survey should use a newer instrument,
In two reports published today1, 2, the CGIAR says that reducing agriculture s carbon footprint is central to limiting climate change.
farmers across the globe will probably have to switch to cultivating more climate-hardy crops and farming practices."
"The food-related emissions and the impacts of climate change on agriculture and the food system will profoundly alter the way we grow
800-16,900 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere in 2008, including indirect emissions from deforestation and land-use changes."
an ecologist and director of the CGIAR research programme on climate change, agriculture and food security.
Kenya, examined the potential effects of climate change on 22 of the world s most important agricultural commodities,
By 2050, climate change could cause irrigated wheat yields in developing countries to drop by 13,
that do better in warmer climates. Campbell says that the CGIAR will use the paper to help set its research agenda for the next decade
He calls on governments meeting next month at the climate-change conference in Doha Qatar, to agree on a way forward to tackle the challenges of mitigating
and adapting to the effects of climate change on agriculture
'Tree of life'constructed for all living bird speciesscientists have mapped the evolutionary relationships among all 9,
when climate and species distribution might have been very different.""This paper makes an attempt to account for how species disperse,
As ecologist Nigel Raine explains in the video, low doses of pesticides have subtle effects on individual bees
and the sky is the limit, he says, "but good luck getting money for GE animals.
and the sky is the limit, but good luck getting money. The USDA supports research to improve livestock and agriculture,
and deemed it safe for the environment and human consumption (see Nature 467,259; 2010), yet the agency has announced still not a final decision.
Yes, counters David King, a chemist and director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, also at Oxford."
In July 2011, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs (DEFRA) laid out a plan for bovine TB eradication in England.
Fracking furore The US Environmental protection agency (EPA) said last week that data provided by the US Geological Survey were consistent with its December 2011 finding that the use of hydraulic fracturing
An independent analysis commissioned by environmental groups and published on 3 october supported the EPA's assessment,
including microbiologist Sarkis Mazmanian, astronomer Olivier Guyon and marine ecologist Nancy Rabalais. The awards, popularly known as genius grants, come with no strings attached as to how the money is spent. see go. nature. com/ru2vgy for more.
Featured topics include the changing ecosystem of global neuroscience with collaborative efforts and'big data'coming to the fore. www. sfn. org/am201214-19 october New results from the Curiosity rover on Mars,
"The current climate for animal biotech is not very good, and therefore, we are nowhere near getting this to the consumer
and academia in general, says Exequiel Ezcurra, a former president of the National Institute of Ecology,
Space budget blow to climate sciencefor Europe s space chiefs, the outcome of last week s European space agency (ESA) budget negotiations was expected better than, given the continent s economic troubles.
is planned a  250-million climate-change mission scheduled for launch in about 2018. One of the two contenders for the mission, Carbonsat, would map atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide
and that the climate benefits of biofuels are modest at best. But the fall has been hardest in Brazil,
has worsened city smog and caused emissions in the transport sector to spike at about 170 million tonnes of CO2 in 2011, up from less than 140 Â million tonnes in 2008."
when climate and energy planning clash with economic decision-making. It began with the 2008 economic crisis,
%says Andrã Ferreira, head of the Institute for Energy and the Environment, a think-tank in S £o Paulo.
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