Researchers in Berlin have demonstrated that urban wasteland areas can be used as suitable habitats for a range of grassland species. Using simple and cost-effective measures to sow grassland seed mixtures, they found that such areas flourished despite poor soil conditions and high levels of impact from people.

Assessing the potential of new environmental management tools often brings an ???innovation dilemma???: is it better to stick with what is known to work, or to implement new measures that are potentially more effective, but also more uncertain? Researchers have proposed an approach to deal with these dilemmas, and applied it to the case study of an invasive species programme in the US.

The development of Green Infrastructure (GI) in a UK case study has been researched in a recent study. Some issues caused by an imbalance in stakeholder power and conflicting roles played by major stakeholders were identified with the project. Stakeholder participation is central to the concept of GI and the research reiterates the importance for those implementing GI to ensure that participation is effective and balanced.

Neither the public nor conservation managers are fully aware of the different risks posed by invasive alien species (IAS), new research suggests. A study examining perceptions of five invasive species in the UK shows that both conservation managers and the public regard some highly damaging species as ???low risk???, and that their awareness does not increase with the amount of scientific research on the topic.

Tourism businesses operating in protected conservation areas in Europe engage in a high number of sustainable practices, a recent survey of over 900 small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) reveals. Reasons for their sustainable behaviour include cutting costs, improving company image and lifestyle choices.

The global production, trade and use of goods and services has a significant impact on the environment — and rates of consumption are rising. A new study combines two assessment methods to quantify the impact of European trade on the environment. It finds that, overall, the EU was a net importer of environmental impact from 2000 to 2010, that machinery, equipment and vehicles contributed most to the EU’s export impacts and that the EU’s trade balance (import impact minus export impact) is increasing over time. The two assessment methods complement one another well and could form the basis for future country or region-wide studies, suggest the researchers, by enabling a detailed analysis of individual steps within a product’s trade flow, while also providing a larger picture of the overall process.

In 1989, researchers dragged a plough harrow across the seafloor of the Peru Basin to recreate some of the effects of deep-sea mining. Twenty-six years later, a new team of researchers returned to the site to assess whether there were any long-term ecological effects. They found that the seabed ecosystem remained disrupted, with significantly fewer suspension feeder species, such as anemones and sea sponges, than in undisturbed areas of seafloor. This suggests that deep-sea mining could cause irreversible changes to marine food webs in highly disturbed areas.

Invasions of alien species are rising at an alarming rate, largely due to growing global trade and transport routes. Preventing the successful establishment of alien species by better understanding the factors determining success is a step toward limiting the threat of future biological invasions. Statistical modelling using observed bird invasion data — including location, event and species-level factors showed which factors were key to successful establishment by the alien species.

A survey of over 600 private boats docked in marinas throughout the Mediterranean showed that 71% are carrying non-indigenous species. In certain cases, non-indigenous species can become ‘invasive’ and have enormous and long-lasting impacts on ecosystems. The findings suggest that a common monitoring strategy may be necessary to prevent further disruptions to natural ecosystems.

Relatively simple, low-cost measures, such as insulating walls and installing solar collectors and efficient heaters for hot water can significantly reduce energy consumption in housing developments, according to a recent study from Portugal. Energy-efficient homes not only benefit the environment, but were found to potentially reduce residents’ energy bills by over half in an apartment block studied by the researchers.

New research has compared the environmental impact of four alternative methods of water supply in Copenhagen. Results indicated that rain and stormwater harvesting is the most environmentally sound approach, whilst desalination currently has a large environmental impact, mainly due to electricity use. However, if freshwater extraction is included as an impact, the environmental credibility of desalination is improved.

Increasing resource efficiency is a central aim of European environmental policy, and effective waste management must play a key role in this. A new report assesses waste management in 32 European countries, and identifies key lessons. Landfill taxes and mandatory separate collections of different waste types are highlighted as particularly successful policy instruments.

A new study provides recommendations to reduce the environmental impact of personal hygiene and cleaning products on the environment. Researchers undertook life-cycle assessments of products including detergents, soaps and toilet cleaners, and compared their environmental footprints looking at different types of environmental damage.

A method has been developed to compare how EU Member States have implemented the Energy Performance Buildings Directive. It suggests that implementation varies widely across Europe but that the Czech Republic, Finland, Portugal and Slovakia have kept to the Directive’s aims and guidelines most closely, based on data available in 2009.

A new global map of urban areas is available for use which shows that cities occupy less than 0.5 per cent of the world’s total land area.

A new study of attitudes towards transport and mobility has identified five groups of travellers. The groups differ significantly in their choice of transport, distance travelled and the impact their transport choices have on the environment in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The public can help assess the human impact on wild birds through amateur ‘citizen science’ networks, according to new research. Scientists evaluated the suitability of data collected by amateur bird-watchers for long-term monitoring of European bird populations. Their findings suggest that citizen data may significantly improve the accuracy of existing official survey methods, as well as help increase public awareness of wild bird conservation.

Higher public awareness of sustainable fishing practices, led by environmental NGOs, may have helped reduce the incidence of mislabelled fish in the UK, compared to Ireland, according to a recent study which assessed levels of fish fraudulently sold as ‘cod’ in these two countries.

Since the arrival of the European Soil Data Centre in 2006, assessing the state of soils at European level has never been easier, more efficient or more reliable, according to a new report by its designers. The database, which contains state-of-the-art scientific information for a range of key environmental concerns, was accessed 26,000 times in the first 11 months of operation.

The majority of respondents to a UK survey would like to see labels explaining the carbon footprint of the food they buy. 72% of the supermarket shoppers questioned were in favour of carbon labels on food. The survey also found that 42% had changed their shopping habits in the last 10 years in response to environmental concerns.

Standardised methods of categorising environmental data are needed at European and international levels for effective international policies. A recent study has concluded that a European framework that harmonises environmental data at the continental scale corresponds well with national classification systems, although some modifications may be needed to capture small-scale regional variations.

A new study from Denmark has indicated that a substantial proportion of farmers may place professional values above cost savings when making decisions about how much pesticide to use. This implies that agricultural policy should consider a broad array of policy instruments to reduce pesticide usage.

A new framework to help decide whether to translocate species that are threatened by climate change has been developed. The framework provides a simple method of assessing different strategies and ensuring that limited budgets are used effectively.

An early warning system to predict the overfishing of individual species, far in advance of severe population decline, has been developed by researchers. The ‘eventual threat index’ was applied by the researchers to historical data on tuna and billfish populations, and accurately predicted their current declines as early as the 1950s.

A new tool to help environmental managers make faster, more evidence-based decisions on how to eradicate alien aquatic species has been developed. The tool is a statistical model based on over 140 management case studies in the scientific literature. Packaged as a user-friendly computer program, it allows different management options to be easily compared.

The impact of air quality on public welfare is important to policy development. However, it is difficult to make a clear link between the two when air pollution tends to be reported at a country level and wellbeing is an individual measure. A new study takes a step further towards linking the two by analysing regional level air quality across the EU and relating it to levels of life satisfaction.

A fossil that has been in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History since it was discovered in 1951 is today helping scientists piece together the evolutionary history of whales and dolphins, including the origins of the endangered South Asian river dolphin.

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For more than 120 years the Venus Table of the Dresden Codex -- an ancient Mayan book containing astronomical data -- has been of great interest to scholars around the world. The accuracy of its observations, especially the calculation of a kind of 'leap year' in the Mayan Calendar, was deemed an impressive curiosity used primarily for astrology.

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A Bosnian pine (Pinus heldreichii) growing in the highlands of northern Greece has been dendrocronologically dated to be more than 1075 years old. This makes it currently the oldest known living tree in Europe. The millenium old pine was discovered by scientists from Stockholm University (Sweden), the University of Mainz (Germany) and the University of Arizona (USA).

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The fossil remains of a new tiny species of marsupial lion which prowled the lush rainforests of northern Australia about 18 million years ago have been unearthed in the Riversleigh World Heritage Area of remote north-western Queensland.

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Scientists today announced the discovery of a new species of pterosaur from the Patagonia region of South America. The cranial remains were in an excellent state of preservation and belonged to a new species of pterosaur from the Early Jurassic. The researchers have named this new species 'Allkauren koi' from the native Tehuelche word 'all' for 'brain', and 'karuen' for 'ancient'.

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A rare small-bodied pterosaur, a flying reptile from the Late Cretaceous period approximately 77 million years ago, is the first of its kind to have been discovered on the west coast of North America.

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Millions of years ago, Africa's savannas were covered with thick, ancient forests, which disappeared and turned into the grassy ecosystems that they are today.

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An extinct reptile related to crocodiles that lived 212 million years ago in present day New Mexico has been named as a new species, Vivaron haydeni, in a paper published this week by Virginia Tech's Department of Geosciences researchers.

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A new Pan-European landscape map (LANMAP) has been developed that allows a common classification of landscapes across Europe.

New Dutch research has investigated the composition and strategies of local activist groups who oppose changes to land use. The results indicated that activists tend to have a higher level of education and live in densely populated areas. They most frequently use awareness-raising strategies, especially when fighting new housing projects.

High quality landscape assessments of areas protected under the Natura 2000 network are critical for effective long-term management plans. In a recent study, scientists have presented a integrated assessment of a Natura 2000 site in Sicily, Italy, which not only considers preservation of environmental features, as required by Natura 2000, but also human features, such as places of historical interest or industrial activity.

Researchers in Berlin have demonstrated that urban wasteland areas can be used as suitable habitats for a range of grassland species. Using simple and cost-effective measures to sow grassland seed mixtures, they found that such areas flourished despite poor soil conditions and high levels of impact from people.

A recent study has revealed that grassland plots planted with a mixture of several agricultural plant species produced a greater yield than plots planted with a single species. The findings provide valuable evidence for scientists, farmers and policymakers who strive to increase the productivity of grassland, while reducing input of nitrogen fertilisers.

Over 8% of land in Europe could be at moderate-to-high risk of wind-driven soil erosion, a new study has estimated. In the first assessment of its kind, the researchers produced maps which show wind erosion risk across 36 countries. This information could help guide actions to tackle land degradation.

An analysis of flash flood forecasting in Europe has produced recommendations for emergency planners and others to improve flood risk management in vulnerable regions. In particular, the researchers recommend improved data collection and sharing, a common European policy for flash flood forecasting, and that local risk management recognises the specific challenges presented by flash floods.

Researchers have created a simple tool to analyse the risk of river flooding across almost all of Europe, and to estimate the associated economic losses. They found that Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Austria and the UK are the regions and countries most at threat.