Environment

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed an approach to accurately record and fully track the biodegradation of plastics in soils.  

The 2022 summer was a further illustration of how climate is becoming more extreme year after year. Sticking to business-as-usual and counting on adaptation alone will not work. Only a rapid phase out of fossil fuels will prevent the worst, says Sonia Seneviratne.  

Nature conservation pays off: amphibians benefit from new ponds - despite many causes of endangerment that still affect them. This is what researchers from WSL and Eawag found in a joint study using data from amphibian monitoring in the canton of Aargau. The study was published in the scientific journal PNAS.

A high fraction of the endemic biodiversity of the Alps is very old. The endemics – species found only in a confined area – have developed over the past millions of years during the cycles of glacial and interglacial periods or even before these cycles began. Fish, however, are an exception: most endemic fish species emerged only after the end of the last ice age about 15,000 years ago.

At a conference the international ice core science community discusses the latest developments in their field.