Feature Article

The consumption of shallow groundwater with elevated concentrations of arsenic is causing widespread disease in many parts of South and Southeast Asia. In the Bengal Basin, a growing reliance on groundwater sourced below 150-m depth—where arsenic concentrations tend to be lower—has reduced exposure. Groundwater flow simulations have suggested that these deep waters are at risk of contamination due to replenishment with high-arsenic groundwater from above, even when deep water pumping is restricted to domestic use.

Determining how climate change will affect global ecology and ecosystem services is one of the next important frontiers in
environmental science. Many species already exhibit smaller sizes as a result of climate change and many others are likely to
shrink in response to continued climate change, following fundamental ecological and metabolic rules. This could negatively
impact both crop plants and protein sources such as fish that are important for human nutrition. Furthermore, heterogeneity in

Gifting of land, or bhoodan in Hindi, is the current obsession of the government. It is on a spree of acquiring land. This is often termed as bhoodan to corporate houses. There is another kind of bhoodan that is being talked about. For a country that is demographically young, this bhoodan took place as a movement when India was just four years old.

Rising CO2 concentrations and water temperatures this century are likely to have transformative effects on many coastal marine organisms. Here, we compared the responses of two life history stages (larval, juvenile) of three species of calcifying bivalves (Mercenaria mercenaria, Crassostrea virginica, and Argopecten irradians) to temperatures (24 and 28°C) and CO2 concentrations (~250, 390, and 750 ppm) representative of past, present, and future summer conditions in temperate estuaries.

Number of people who can benefit from government’s welfare programmes is going to swell. Currently, the Central government caps the entitlements under most welfare programmes to those below the poverty line, which is as low as Rs 12/day/person for rural areas and Rs 18/day/person for urban areas.

The forest officials of Panna Tiger Reserve worked in close nexus with poachers for over a decade, says an internal report prepared by the Intelligence Cell of the tiger reserve, which had lost all its tigers by 2008.

Read this special report in Down To Earth on how government bent all rules to ensure that Mahan forest in Madhya Pradesh goes to Essar and Hindalco for mining coal.

The strong and mighty bacteria are all around us. They have hardened themselves to fight back the antibiotics administered to patients. This is because we allowed them to, by overusing drugs. Government has woken up from slumber and formulated a policy that targets antibiotic resistance. It restricts sale. But will it be able to contain irrational use of drugs?

The Texas drought is a harbinger of things to come for the entire Southwest – water resource managers are making plans for a drier future.

Why are more and more people in Israel with genetic disorders filing lawsuits for "wrongful life"?.