Bus and truck companies could cut their fuel bills by more than 7 percent simply by training their drivers on more efficient driving techniques and offering a financial reward to those who improve fuel economy. A study published in the International Journal of Sustainable Society, suggests that training and financial reward improves efficiency by 7.3 percent whereas training or reward alone leads to about 5 percent savings.
As scientists continue the hunt for energy sources that are safer, cleaner alternatives to fossil fuel, an ever-increasing amount of valuable farmland is being used to produce bioethanol, a source of transportation fuel. And while land-bound sources are renewable, economists and ecologists fear that diverting crops to produce fuel will limit food resources and drive up costs.
City of Tulsa aggressively leading the country in providing for vehicles' easy switch to alternative, inexpensive fuels.
Past disturbances, such as logging, can obscure the effects of climate change on forest ecosystems. So reports a study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper, exploring nitrogen dynamics, found that untangling climate impacts from other factors can be difficult, even when scientists have access to decades of data on a forest's environmental conditions.
The final report summarizes impacts from the November 2007 oil spill and describes restoration projects, which trustees will begin to fund this spring.
Farmers in the U.S. and the European Union receive billions of dollars in government subsidies each year to make changes in their operations that will improve the environment. However, a new study by Paul Armsworth, assistant professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, finds that these government programs may offer very poor value for money.
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) applauds the efforts of Argentina’s Grupo Costa del Río Colorado cooperative in its first U.S. sale of “green” cashmere, produced through a system of sustainable practices that protects guanacos, rheas, Andean cats, and other wildlife of the windswept expanse of the Patagonian Steppe.
A Cornell study's contention that hydraulic fracturing would be worse for climate change than burning coal is being challenged by another study, also by Cornell researchers.
A new study concludes that fossil fuel emissions are likely contributors to a substantial amount of organic carbon found on glaciers in Alaska.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is encouraging individuals and community groups in the U.S. Virgin Islands to apply for grants that will allow “citizen scientists” to collect information on air and water pollution in their communities and seek solutions to environmental and public health problems.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a plan to clean up contaminated sediment, soil and debris in streams and in an area near lagoons in which industrial wastewater was stored at the Universal Oil Products Superfund site in East Rutherford, N.J. The proposed cleanup plan will eliminate the threat of contaminants spreading off the site through the streams that carry water into Berry’s Creek, located on the eastern border of the site. The EPA is simultaneously overseeing a comprehensive study of the site to determine what other measures may be necessary to address the contamination.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will provide up to $15 million in funding for training and technical assistance to small drinking and wastewater systems, defined as systems that serve fewer than 10,000 people, and private well owners.
Polar ecosystems could be at risk from the spread of toxic cyanobacteria if the climate continues to warm, say scientists.
As Asian countries develop, they are emitting more ozone precursors that pollute surface level air. Many studies have documented this pollution being carried by air currents to the western United States.
A new report published in the online journal PLoS ONE, analyzing water consumption in 405 river basins around the world, found that water scarcity impacts at least 2.7 billion people for at least one month each year.
Alternative fuels expert Dr. Cliff Ricketts of Middle Tennessee State University firmly believes he can go coast-to-coast on l0 gallons of gasoline or less.
A pilot research project into vibration energy on the N34 provincial motorway near Hardenberg in the eastern Netherlands has shown that vibration energy as a local energy source is a sustainable alternative for the batteries of roadside sensors and other applications.
Urgent action is needed to reduce the high concentrations of dangerous air pollutants in Europe, according to experts writing in the European Respiratory Journal.
Lake Tahoe clarity improved in 2011, but overall has remained nearly stable since 2000, according to UC Davis scientists who study the lake.
From gannets to seagulls, puffins to penguins, all seabirds suffer the same drop in birth rates when the supply of fish drops to less than a third of maximum capacity. That's the result from an international study on the relationships between predators and prey in seven ecosystems around the world, published in the magazine Science and coordinated by Philippe Cury, an IRD researcher.