Large-scale industrial pollution of soil and groundwater is a well-known problem. Cleaning that pollution is far from easy because site managers may often have little knowledge of how the pollutant is behaving beneath the surface.
Fires can have a devastating impact on invaluable archaeological and cultural sites. These areas are often at greater risk of fires because they are commonly surrounded by vegetation or situated close to forest regions. Early detection, however, can significantly reduce the potential damage fires cause.
Changes in climate patterns, ocean circulation, as well as temperature and light – all related to climate change – are having a growing impact on marine ecosystems. Understanding how these factors, together with anthropogenic drivers (such as fishing and pollution), affect the environmental status of marine ecosystems is vital if we are to ensure that they are effectively managed.
As society strives to produce more effective medicines, cosmetics and other industrial materials, while at the same time minimising the effect on the environment and the depletion of the earth’s resources, one major source of renewable natural materials has remained tantalisingly beyond our reach: the deepest, most inaccessible and hostile parts of the ocean. MAMBA is a pioneering European Union (EU)-funded research project, which is changing that.
An EU-funded project investigating how oxygen in the air millions of years ago might have affected the evolution of plants is making important discoveries that could inform our approach to climate change, space exploration and ensuring future food supplies.
Many ideas for EU-funded projects are born in the quest to further scientific research, particularly in areas where little information exists.
Good crop growth depends mainly on nitrogen. Plants need nitrogen to make proteins, grow and produce good yields. However, not all nitrogen present in the soil is absorbed by the crops, especially when fertiliser or manure are added, resulting in the leaching of nitrates into groundwater, with environmental and health risk.
The Directorate-General for Research & Innovation is organising five symposia at this year's AAAS annual meeting.
Even 10 seconds can make a difference. When Japan was hit by the earthquake in 2011, early-warning systems were in place, and within seconds even the high-speed "bullet" trains stopped. About half of Europe is also a high-risk earthquake area, especially Mediterranean countries like Greece, Italy, and other regions around the Black Sea.
At a time when major changes are affecting the environment - climate change, habitat change, landscape change - the planet’s biodiversity is increasingly under potential threat.
Many efforts are being made at a governmental and global level to reduce deforestation and other major contributors to climate change. The REDD-ALERT project focused on how such international and national policy initiatives – for example, the discussions taking place under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – could be translated into ideas for action on the ground.
Reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is a key priority facing the world today as it attempts to mitigate the scale and effects of climate change. EUROCHAR, a European research project, is developing a technique which not only promises to help tackle this priority, but also offers additional benefits in the form of environmentally-friendly energy production and enhanced soil fertility.
Improving air quality is a major challenge facing all European countries, both in order to combat climate change as well as to minimise the direct effects of breathing polluted air on human health.
Peering into the very depths of the universe gives scientists a better understanding of its origins. Since the speed of light is finite, the objects we are seeing are from the distant past. A recently completed EU-funded project developed not only a new means of measuring these cosmic distances, but also discovered galaxies at the point of their creation.
You may be surprised at what can affect our climate. You always hear about the burning of fossil fuels. But what if you lived in Cyprus? Would you expect atmospheric conditions there to be affected by the sands of the Sahara, wood burning in the Ukraine and the monsoons in India?
The culprit in Cyprus is dust, natural dust from sand storms or man-made dust from the tiny sulphur compounds produced by burning wood.
WISER project offering advice to make our water systems cleaner, safer and more sustainable.
According to the European Union (EU)-funded research project SUME (Sustainable Urban Metabolism for Europe) as much as three-fourths of the European population lives in cities, but the rapid expansion of urban space is being driven more by market forces than by urban planning.
That means that land, fuel and public money is being wasted, a situation that presents a new challenge to town planners – how to curb so-called “urban sprawl” by saving space and resources. The answer? Help city authorities find smart solutions to mesh urban planning, and housing and transportation policies into their future development.
The UN Security Council has expressed concerns that the adverse effects of climate change could lead to threats to international peace and security. In order to improve understanding of the factors involved, the European Union (EU)-funded CLICO project studied the world's most exposed and vulnerable areas to both floods and droughts - the Mediterranean, Middle East and Sahel (MMES) regions.
There is no doubt that climate change is happening worldwide as ice caps shrink, sea and river levels rise. Coastal flooding damages not only buildings and engineering structures, but also the environment and the ecological balance in Europe.
