Even as the negotiators were hammering out the final com­promises in Montreal in September 1987, an unprecedented international scien­tific expedition was under way in Antarctica.

Water and poverty FAQs
Water and poverty timeline

An economic perspective on water and the environment
Clean Water Act, United States
Distribution of wealth
Environmental justice
Environmental Protection Agency, United States
Fecal pollution of water
Millennium Development Goals
Safe Drinking Water Act, United States
Society and water resources
Surface water management
Water governance
Water resources
Women and water in the developing world

Scientists see looming water crisis in western […]

The essence of a conventional nuclear power reactor is the controlled fission chain reaction of uranium-235 (²³⁵U) and plutonium-239 (²³⁹Pu). This produces heat which is used to make steam to drive a turbine.

Nitrogen (N) is an essential macronutrient the non-availability of which in suitable form or concentration often limits biological production both in the terrestrial and marine environments. It is a polyvalent element that occurs in oxidation states ranging from –3 to +5.

How is “Net primary production” defined?
Net primary production (NPP) is the biomass produced by green plants in the process of photosynthesis. It is defined as gross primary production (GPP), i.e. the total amount of carbon assimilated by a plant during photosynthesis, minus carbon lost due to plant respiration. NPP is a flow – as opposed […]

10,000 BP
Around that time, the socio-ecological transition from hunter-gatherers to agrarian societies commences in a process often denoted as the “Neolithic revolution”. Prior to that, humans lived off the products of the ecosystems they inhabited to some extent similar to other ecologically similar heterotroph species, i.e. they collected (parts of) plants and hunted animals for […]

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Helmut Haberl
Helmut Haberl holds a doctoral degree in plant ecology from the University of Vienna and is qualified to teach in human ecology at its Department of Anthropology. He is now associate professor of Human Ecology at the Vienna Institute of Social Ecology of Klagenfurt University. His research is focused on the analysis of society-nature […]

Predation is an interaction between species in which one species uses another species as food. Predation is a process of major importance in influencing the distribution, abundance, and diversity of species in ecological communities. Generally, successful predation leads to an increase in the population size of the predator and a decrease in population size of the prey.

HANPP FAQs
HANPP timeline

Agriculture
Anthropogenic biomes
Biodiversity
Biome
Carbon footprint
Economic growth
Forestry
Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Human population explosion
Land-use and land-cover change

Biodiversity is crucial to ecosystem productivity
Medical miracles slipping away as extinction claims species
Assessing the global food crisis
The end of cheap clothes is near
Going, going, gone? New satellite images reveal a shrinking Amazon rainforest
Agriculture: the need for change
Agriculture and biodiversity: […]