Almost 150 years ago, Christmas, aboard the SMS Gazelle, a mid-sized German warship that circumnavigated the globe in the late 19th century, was a day of activity. The vessel’s naval…
A popular snack in India, makhana, is the seed of a water lily species, Euryale ferox, found in south and east Asia. When harvested, it is actually a tough blackish…
A new study by the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata, found the first record of plastiglomerates in the Indian sub-continent on Aves Island in the Andaman archipelago.…
Bush crickets, also known as katydids, form an important part of the diet of the insectivorous lesser false vampire bat Megaderma spasma. A new research study by the Centre for…
Armed with the idea that shifting cultivation is primitive and unsustainable, based on a certain narrative she was exposed to in the academic world, Assam-born researcher Joli Rumi Borah had…
India’s water requirement is expected to be 1.5 trillion cubic metres by 2030. The country only treats 16.8% of the total estimated sewage generated. There is a huge gap between…
Microfossils are fossils that need to be studied with the help of a microscope. They are an important feature of our geological record that help scientists reconstruct past climates. They…
Extinction is the termination of all members of a species and it occurs because of environmental forces, overexploitation or evolutionary changes. What can fossils tell us about extinction? They provide…
Asian elephants, despite needing 150 kilograms of wild fodder every day, are picky eaters, suggests a recent study in PLOS One by scientists from the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology…
What can shells tells us about marine paleoclimate? It is essential to collect fresh paleoclimatic data based on past analogues to understand the current climate change. Shells and molluscs store…
In October 2022, two elephants were electrocuted to death in Assam. Further investigation revealed that this accident had occurred while the tuskers were foraging in areas with heavy human habitation.…
At noon, on a hot March day, in the flat semi-arid plains of Kachchh, a lone figure stood on a slight rise, fiddling with the controller of a drone that…
Every year, the monsoon’s onset is accompanied by sharp changes in wind speed, which makes monsoon forecasts easier for experts. During the monsoon’s withdrawal, however, wind speed and other meteorological…
Local folklore of the Mising people (an indigenous community) has facilitated a reverence for rivers and their wild inhabitants over the centuries. The story features a Mising woman named Yakashi,…
“No one was willing to buy the argument that mangroves buffer against tsunami,” environmental economist Saudamini Das recalls the research and debate surrounding storm protection services of mangroves following the…
“Every time, the story is one-sided. Politicians often use ‘climate change’ as an excuse (in disasters),” climate scientist Roxy Mathew Koll said to a clique of legislators in the coastal…
Imagine a residential complex in a city such as Indore or Surat in the year 2030. If it looks like the high-rises being built in these cities today, it will…
Satellite images of the Sundarbans mangroves along the Bay of Bengal, that capture changes before and after tropical cyclones, are helping make sense of mangrove damage from extreme weather events…
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…
A 2020 block-wise groundwater resources assessment by the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) found that most of the districts in Punjab had over-exploited the groundwater levels. In some districts, the…
