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Conflict and civilisational threats likely unless action is taken to reduce the stress on rivers, lakes, aquifers, wetlands and reservoirs

More than 5 billion people could suffer water shortages by 2050 due to climate change, increased demand and polluted supplies, according to a UN report on the state of the world’s water.

The comprehensive annual study warns of conflict and civilisational threats unless actions are taken to reduce the stress on rivers, lakes, aquifers, wetlands and reservoirs.

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Aigas, Beauly, Inverness-shire They had to hurry to cache enough food before the ice took over, an underwater stash of nutritious bark kept fresh for winter snacking

I think we’d almost forgotten about ice. A decade of mild winters had pressed delete in our recent memory banks, banished ice to the Winter Olympics or perhaps to nostalgia – something that happened back then. Well, this Highland winter was having none of it. It rampaged in with sharp teeth in November, bit hard and hasn’t let go. It shows no sign of doing so yet.

The beavers in the Aigas loch had to hurry to cache enough food before the ice took over, an underwater stash of birch and willow logs, the nutritious bark kept fresh for winter snacking. They don’t hibernate. They still emerge in the long dark to forage where they can, labouring away at their evenly spaced breathing holes in the ice, gnawing at the rims every night to keep them open.

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The ocean race from Melbourne to Osaka takes place on March 25th.  

Wildlife managers hope taste aversion technique can help safeguard the endangered northern quoll

Scientists are a step closer to stopping the devastating march of toxic cane toads across northern Australia, as the introduced species continues to decimate what is left of the native quoll populations.

Field trials of a technique used to turn quolls off the taste of toads has yielded positive results, which were published in this month’s Austral Ecology journal.

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Carnegie wins NERA funding to integrate solar PV and storage at the Blacktip Wellhead Platform in the Southern Bonaparte Basin.

Strong winds and offshore wind farms helped deliver record 39.6% of UK electricity on Sunday morning.

EPYC withdraws application to develop 54 turbine wind farm in NSW, after two planning department rejections and 400 community objections.

Tree bonds are set to be introduced by a Melbourne city council to protect city trees. But how do they work and why are they needed? Joe Hurley, Senior Lecturer, Sustainability and Urban Planning, RMIT University Dave Kendal, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Management, University of Tasmania Judy Bush, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub, University of Melbourne Stephen Rowley, Lecturer in Urban Planning, RMIT University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Election of Steve Marshall – and expectation he will be a vassal of Coalition in Canberra – likely to do more damage to country's renewable energy transition than that of his state. Jay Weatherill will be missed, but he leaves SA with huge momentum.

Five members have been reappointed to the Australian Heritage Council: the Hon Dr Kemp AC (chair), Dr Jane Harrington, Associate Professor Don Garden OAM, Dr Lyndon Ormond-Parker and Ms Rachel Perkins.

In part two of three-part series, we consider the question of firming variable renewable generation.

New SA Premier Steven Marshall vows to scrap Tesla's plans for world's biggest virtual power plant targeting low income households, in favour of a $100 million subsidy for those homes already with solar.

Clothing banks are disappearing from car parks at night, costing charities in lost revenue and bins

Clothing recycling bins are disappearing from supermarket and council car parks across the UK, costing the charities that should benefit from them hundreds of thousands of pounds, it is claimed.

According to the Textile Recycling Association, the UK’s trade association, 750 clothing banks have recently gone missing from all parts of the UK except Scotland. Some have been found, repainted with the logo of an organisation that is being investigated by the Charity Commission.

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Engineering practice assumes that floods are randomly distributed but science suggests they are not. This raises questions about the reliability of flood infrastructure and management strategies. Anthony Kiem, Associate Professor – Hydroclimatology, University of Newcastle Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Alice Mabin is the photographer and author of the upcoming book The Grower. It tells the story of agriculture in Australia, a difficult industry with isolated landscapes as a backdrop. She spent more than a year visiting 400 properties, shooting enterprises including sheep, beef, dairy and truffles to show what conditions were like for families who live in rural environments and the challenges they face

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New analysis suggests the targets contained in the National Energy Guarantee are actually worse than if the government did nothing.

Green Alliance says ending UK sales earlier would close climate target gap and halve oil imports

Ministers have been urged to bring forward their 2040 ban on new diesel and petrol car sales by a decade, a move which an environmental thinktank said would almost halve oil imports and largely close the gap in the UK’s climate targets.

The Green Alliance said a more ambitious deadline of 2030 is also needed to avoid the UK squandering its leadership on electric cars.

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Three pioneers who are shattering stereotypes surrounding the world of science and engineering.

Underwater sea walls and artificial islands among projects urgently required to avoid devastation of global flooding, say scientists

Scientists have outlined plans to build a series of mammoth engineering projects in Greenland and Antarctica to help slow down the disintegration of the planet’s main glaciers. The controversial proposals include underwater walls, artificial islands and huge pumping stations that would channel cold water into the bases of glaciers to stop them from melting and sliding into the sea.

The researchers say the work – costing tens of billions of dollars a time – is urgently needed to prevent polar glaciers melting and raising sea levels. That would lead to major inundations of low-lying, densely populated areas, such as parts of Bangladesh, Japan and the Netherlands.

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Waterways look cleaner but levels of new pollutants are not being monitored

Beer hasn’t been sold in steel cans for decades. The cans Keith Dopson found in Slough’s Salt Hill stream would be collectors’ items were they in good condition, but they had disintegrated into clumps of rust.

“We filled seven bin bags with rubbish,” he says. “Just from the river, not the banks. Plastic bottles and cans, lots of cans. Those steel ones must have been there for ages.”

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