Insects act in coordination with natural light regimes and are sensitive to changes in light intensity, wavelengths, sources and other factors. Nocturnal insects perform various activities such as foraging, reacting…
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…
The Himalayas are witnessing an increasing threat of glacial lake outburst flooding (GLOF). Over the years, several GLOFs hit the Himalayas, causing massive destruction to the infrastructure, while also claiming…
Beneath the vast, fertile northern plains of India, groundwater has been vanishing at a rampant rate. According to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the groundwater in north…
Plastics today are blighted, as their impact on the environment has now been exposed. But it was not always so. In 1869, the first synthetic polymer named celluloid - marked…
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…
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…
On Monday, the Indian government referred the Biological Diversity Act Amendment Bill (2021) to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC). The Bill was developed to amend certain provisions of the Biological…
The largest division on the geological time scale (GTS), which depicts distinct time periods in geological history, is called eons. Eons are further divided into eras, which are divided further…
Mid-October saw extreme weather events, specifically unusually heavy rains in some parts of India. In Kerala, heavy downpours — an excess of 135% for the first 19 days of the…
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…
The wait for the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is almost over, with the report scheduled to be released on August 9. The…
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…
Thai Sacbrood, a viral disease affecting honey bee colonies, has resurfaced in southern India. The disease, which has been dormant in the southern states for some years, is back and…
Sand, a natural resource that seems abundant and often ignored is the second most extracted one, just after water. Sand extracted from rivers, lakes, coastlines, deltas is one of the…
What is entomophagy? Entomophagy is the practice of eating insects. Humans have harvested insects, as components of their food, for thousands of years. This practice was previously considered ‘ancient’ and…
