Researchers at North Carolina State University are working to demonstrate that trees can be used to degrade or capture fuels that leak into soil and ground water. Through a process called phytoremediation – literally a “green” technology – plants and trees remove pollutants from the environment or render them harmless.
Through a partnership with state and federal government agencies, the military and industry, Dr. Elizabeth Nichols, environmental technology professor in NC State’s Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, and her team are using phytoremediation to clean up a contaminated site in Elizabeth City, N.C.
March 2006: The Coast Guard site before trees were planted.
Phytoremediation uses plants to absorb heavy metals from the soil into their roots. The …

An international study involving Monash University mathematician Dr Malcolm Clark has been used to demonstrate the impact of global warming and to predict the effect further warming will have on plant life.
The study, published in the International Journal of Climatology, predicts a difference in flowering times of certain plants in certain climates by as much as 50 days by the year 2080.
The study, by Dr Malcolm Clark, an Adjunct Research Fellow at Monash University’s School of Mathematical Sciences and Professor Roy Thompson, a geophysicist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, investigated the possibilities of flowering spring plants blooming in the depths of winter as the plants respond to the effects of global warming.
The study …

Will all of the ice on Greenland melt and flow out into the sea, bringing about a colossal rise in ocean levels on Earth, as the global temperature rises?
The key concern is how stable the ice cap actually is and new Danish research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen can now show the evolution of the ice sheet 11,700 years back in time – all the way back to the start of our current warm period. The results are published in the esteemed journal Nature.
Numerous drillings have been made through both Greenland’s ice sheet and small ice caps near the coast. By analysing every single annual layer in the kilometres long …

Climate Central’s climate characters: Now appearing on TIME.com
Many people worry about the link between rising bark-beetle infestations and an increase in western wildfires. But Dr. Susan Prichard, a Research Scientist at the University of Washington, adds another concern: what happens after the fires go out?
Prichard’s story is the latest in a series of video shorts featured on TIME.com and produced by Princeton, NJ-based nonprofit Climate Central, an authoritative, non-advocacy source for science-based information about climate change. The series introduces viewers to people from all walks of life who are studying or dealing with the impact of climate change today.
Climate Central’s Correspondent and Senior Research Scientist, Dr. Heidi Cullen, interviewed Prichard. Cullen says Prichard helps bring …

New Fraunhofer IWES presents research highlights at the European Offshore Wind Energy Conference in Stockholm:
- Research at the offshore wind energy test site alpha ventus
- Rotor Blade Competence Center
- Technical Reliabity
- Wind Power-Management-System WPMS
“We offer the complete research spectrum for advancing offshore wind energy systems”, Dr. Hans Gerd Busmann and Prof. Dr. Jürgen Schmid are justifiably self-assured. They are the directors of the new Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology IWES with locations in Bremerhaven and Kassel. Along with their research calalogue, the scientists are currently presenting selected highlights at the leading European offshore wind energy conference EOW in Stockholm.
Highlights presented at the European Offshore Wind Energy Conference
Research at the offshore wind …

Spain is one of the leading European countries, along with Sweden, in terms of wood production for paper paste, but this uses large amounts of energy.
Spanish and Swedish scientists have compared the environmental load stemming from forestry operations, and have concluded that the Spanish sector uses more energy than the Swedish one. They are proposing improvements, such as the use of biofuels, in order to make forestry production more sustainable.
In order to predict the consequences of forestry operations, the scientists have studied the most important wood species used in making paper paste – the eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus) plantations in Spain, and those of the Norway Spruce and Scots Pine in Sweden.
The research study, published recently …

Using a completely new method, researchers have shown that high atmospheric and oceanic oxygen content makes the climate colder.
In prehistoric times, the earth experienced two periods of large increases and fluctuations in the oxygen level of the atmosphere and oceans. These fluctuations also lead to an explosion of multicellular organisms in the oceans, which are the predecessors for life as we know it today. The results are now being published in Nature.
Everybody talks about CO2 and other greenhouse gases as causes of global warming and the large climate changes we are currently experiencing. But what about the atmospheric and oceanic oxygen content? Which role does oxygen content play in global warming?
This question has become extremely …