Earth and Environment
Explore Earth and Environment
Dr Rolien Terblanche | Designing Living Walls that Can Survive in South African Cities
What does it actually take to build a living wall that survives one of South Africa’s driest, most climatically varied cities, and what would it cost? Those were the questions Rolien Terblanche and colleagues at the University of Cape Town set out to answer, designing a new system for the Western Cape.
Ole Anders Nøst | Why Bigger Wind Farms Are Less Effective
As climate change accelerates and energy demand continues to rise, countries are racing to replace fossil fuels with cleaner sources of power, such as off-shore wind. In regions such as the North Sea, plans are underway for a dramatic expansion of off-shore turbines, with the hope that wind could supply a large share of Europe’s future power. But how much energy can we realistically extract from the air?
Dr Samaneh Vahid Dastjerdi | Cleaning Oil Spills and Storing Carbon Dioxide: New Insights into Porous Media
Porous media are all around us! From natural materials like soil, sand and rocks, to everyday products like sponges, filters, diapers, and concrete, these materials contain tiny spaces – or pores – that hold liquids or gases. When you soak up water with a sponge, for example, the pores fill with liquid, pushing out the air. The same process happens underground, where porous rocks store water, oil, or even carbon dioxide. Understanding how fluids move through porous materials is essential for solving real-world problems, such as cleaning up oil spills, improving water filtration, developing better batteries for electric cars, and storing gases underground to fight climate change.
Dr Dimitrios Kotzias | How Light-Activated Coatings Can Tackle Air Pollution
Air pollution is often thought of as an outdoor problem, but the air inside buildings can be just as complex – and sometimes more polluted. Dr Dimitrios Kotzias, former official at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, has been exploring how innovative building materials containing semiconductor oxides might actively clean the air we breathe, both outdoors and indoors, using nothing more than light.
STUOD: Predicting the Oceans in a Warming World
Climate change is changing our oceans in ways that we are still working to understand. The sea absorbs vast amounts of heat and carbon, and even more so as the global temperature rises. But predicting how that energy moves through the ocean – and what it means for climate, sea level, marine life, and weather – remains a major scientific challenge. The international research project STUOD is working to address this.
Dr. Colin Meyer | Cutting through Ice to Understand the Behavior of Glaciers
Imagine cutting through a stick of butter – you end up with two smaller sticks of butter. Now, try cutting through a block of ice. Under the right conditions, surprisingly, you don’t get two separate pieces. Instead, the ice magically fuses back together, remaining as a single block. This fascinating phenomenon is called regelation. Simply put, regelation happens when pressure causes ice to melt into a thin layer of water, which flows and then refreezes once the pressure is removed.
Dr Sriram Iyengar | Resilience Informatics
Pandemics! Heatwaves! Floods! Droughts! We live in an age of overlapping crises. Climate change is intensifying. Acute, short-term stressors and chronic, long-term stressors damage physical and mental health. Such stressors are not going away. We need to develop resilience to these stressors. But what IS resilience?
Dr Andrea Haefner | How Civil Society Groups Are Speaking Up for the Mekong River
The Mekong River is one of Southeast Asia’s great lifelines, supporting more than 65 million people and sustaining extraordinary biodiversity. Yet it is also a river under immense pressure, as countries along its banks pursue rapid economic growth and increasingly turn to hydropower to meet rising energy demands. In her research, Dr Andrea Haefner of Griffith University examines how civil society groups are shaping debates about the future of this vital waterway and whether they can influence decisions around controversial dam projects in Laos and the wider Mekong region. Her research offers a rare window into the difficult politics of water governance in an authoritarian-leaning region, where environmental concerns, community voices and national ambitions often collide.
Dr Pilar Garcia-Jimenez – Dr Rafael Robaina | How Jumping Genes Help Seaweeds Survive Climate Stress
Seaweeds play a vital role in coastal ecosystems, providing food, habitat, and carbon storage. As oceans warm and conditions become more unpredictable due to climate change, understanding how seaweeds cope with stress is increasingly important. Research by Pilar Garcia-Jimenez and Rafael Robaina at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria points to an unexpected source of resilience hidden in seaweed DNA.
Dr Luca Nitschke | A Social-Ecological Model of How Daily Routines Intertwine with Nature
Everyday activities such as gardening or commuting might not seem like they have much to do with global environmental crises – but a new study led by Luca Nitschke argues otherwise. He and his colleagues, Lukas Sattlegger and Immanuel Stieß at the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE), introduced the idea of ‘social-ecological practices’ to show how our daily routines are deeply connected to the integrity of the natural world.
Healthy Streams, Stronger Farms: A Conservation Plan for the Mississippi Alluvial Valley
The streams and rivers of the Mississippi Alluvial Valley were once teeming with life. In the early 1800s, naturalist John J. Audubon described beautiful waters “covered with thousands of geese and ducks, and filled with fish.” Now, after more than a century of human activity, many of these waterways are struggling.
How Biomolecular Solutions Can Make Fish Farming Sustainable
Fish farming has become one of the fastest-growing sources of food in the world, providing nearly half of all fish consumed globally. Yet behind this success lies a complex set of challenges. Intensive aquaculture can strain ecosystems, spread diseases, and increase dependence on antibiotics and chemicals that harm both fish and the environment. As climate change and rising demand for seafood put even more pressure on aquatic systems, scientists and producers are searching for smarter, more sustainable ways to farm fish without compromising animal welfare or water quality. Across Europe, a pioneering initiative called BioAqua COST Action, funded by the European Union, is working to meet this challenge.
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