Feature Article

Global warming is predicted to induce desiccation in many world regions through increases in evaporative demand. Rising CO2 may counter that trend by improving plant water-use efficiency. However, it is not clear how important this CO2-enhanced water use efficiency might be in offsetting warming-induced desiccation because higher CO2 also leads to higher plant biomass, and therefore greater transpirational surface. Furthermore, although warming is predicted to favour warm-season, C4 grasses, rising CO2 should favour C3, or cool-season plants.

Methane and ethane are the most abundant hydrocarbons in the atmosphere and they affect both atmospheric chemistry and climate. Both gases are emitted from fossil fuels and biomass burning, whereas methane (CH4) alone has large sources from wetlands, agriculture, landfills and waste water. Here we use measurements in firn (perennial snowpack) air from Greenland and Antarctica to reconstruct the atmospheric variability of ethane (C2H6) during the twentieth century.

Atmospheric methane (CH4) increased through much of the twentieth century, but this trend gradually weakened until a stable state was temporarily reached around the turn of the millennium, after which levels increased once more. The reasons for the slowdown are incompletely understood, with past work identifying changes in fossil fuel, wetland and agricultural sources and hydroxyl (OH) sinks as important causal factors. Here we show that the late-twentieth-century changes in the CH4 growth rates are best explained by reduced microbial sources in the Northern Hemisphere.

The previously increasing atmospheric methane concentration has inexplicably stalled over the past three decades. This may be due to a fall in fossil-fuel emissions or to farming practices that are curtailing microbial sources.

Ready or not, the era of big data is coming to ecology. After years of discussion and debate, the United States is moving forward with an environmental moni­toring network that promises to help transform a traditionally small-scale, local science into a continental-scale group enterprise.

Some commercial firms that oversee the ethics and scrutiny of clinical trials have been found wanting. Human volunteers in research deserve better. (Editorial)

Climate change-induced natural disasters represent an additional stress on a country’s infrastructure. In India, investments of US$ 120 billion have been planned for infrastructure asset creation during 2011–2012. This article highlights some crucial reverse impacts of environment on the energy, aviation, water supply and irrigation, road, communications, posts, health and housing, and railway infrastructure assets. The critical climate parameters of temperature, precipitation, sea level rise and extreme events pose direct and indirect impacts on infrastructure assets.

Habitat fragmentation, loss of habitat and other anthropogenic activities have caused a population decline in many species, caused restriction in their distribution or even led to their local extinction. We attempted to understand the impact of such pressures on the newly identified and possibly the largest population of the endangered lion-tailed macaque, Macaca silenus in the Reserve Forests of Sirsi and Honnavara, Karnataka, using a temporal series of satellite images.