Forest fires, also called wildfires and bush or vegetation fires, are described as uncontrolled, often widespread burning of plants in forests, grasslands, brushland, and tundra. These fires can be of…
A study published last month in The Journal for Nature Conservation reported the presence of plastic and other human-made materials in elephant dung in the forests of Uttarakhand. The study…
Carbon sinks are places and/or products that sequester and store carbon as organic or inorganic compounds for different periods of time. Essentially, anything that absorbs more carbon than it emits…
Wildlife trafficking, which is the illegal trade of wild animals and plants, either as dead or live specimens, or their parts, has a huge negative effect on the world’s environments,…
Every year, around the first week of June, a vast expanse of roiling grey clouds advances from the Arabian sea and makes landfall in Kerala to the tune of rumbling…
In the 1920s, a British economist, Arthur Pigou, highlighted the social benefits of making industries pay for the costs of the pollution they caused. In time, this concept was taken…
The Indian summer monsoon is a vast weather event that is crucial to the 1.39 billion people that live in India, as most of the rainfall (70-90%) that the country…
Urban heat islands or UHIs are metropolitan areas that are significantly warmer than the surrounding rural areas. The occurrence of a UHI was recorded as early as 1810 by Luke…
Plastics, which are infinitely useful materials, are ever present in our lives today. A quick look around one’s house, whether in a city or in a village, will confirm this…
Plastics are the Anthropocene era’s ultimate convenience. The more mundane uses of plastics in our lives range from kitchenware, storage containers, and packaging materials to toys and small tools that…
As the COVID-19 pandemic brought sweeping changes to lifestyles, it also altered an important but seldom thought-of aspect of human existence – trash. The pandemic has drastically changed the types and…
Over the last decade, the waste industry has been quietly growing. Given the growing rates of trash generation, this is hardly a surprise. In 2012, the world generated 1.3 billion…
Plastic is a boon to many industries as a versatile material that can be moulded into myriad products from simple packaging bags to life-saving medical devices. When a plastic product…
In an effort to identify plastic accumulation and leakage hotspots along the Ganges river, a recent project in three north Indian cities found that roughly 10–25% of all the plastic…
Tigers once roamed the lands from Turkey in the west to the Amur river basin in the east, across south and southeast Asia all the way to the island of…
Humans are testing the limits of most species’ survival, with their planet-wide changes. As urbanisation, deforestation, loss of wildlife, and human-wildlife conflicts continue to spiral up, there is a need…
Ethologist and evolutionary ecologist, Raghavendra Gadagkar has been researching animal behavior for the last 25 years using simple, inexpensive, and exquisitely thought-out experiments. In his latest book, Experiments in Animal…
Of the insect world’s many architects, the termites are undoubtedly the reigning monarchs. The earthen mounds that these tiny insects construct out of soil, water and their own saliva, are…
