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Archaeologists have uncovered a mysterious stone structure buried under what they describe as Scotland's "largest Neolithic rubbish dump".

As the National Parks Service turns 100 this week, we look at how receding ice, extreme heat and acidifying oceans are transforming America’s landscapes, and guardians of national parks face the herculean task of stopping it

After a century of shooing away hunters, tending to trails and helping visitors enjoy the wonder of the natural world, the guardians of America’s most treasured places have been handed an almost unimaginable new job – slowing the all-out assault climate change is waging against national parks across the nation.

As the National Parks Service (NPS) has charted the loss of glaciers, sea level rise and increase in wildfires spurred by rising temperatures in recent years, the scale of the threat to US heritage across the 412 national parks and monuments has become starkly apparent.

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Spider silk is used to create a superlens for a microscope, allowing Bangor University scientists to view objects previously deemed "invisible".

Summer Arctic sea ice is at its lowest since records began over 125 years ago

Scientists have pieced together historical records to reconstruct Arctic sea ice extent over the past 125 years. The results are shown in the figure below. The red line, showing the extent at the end of the summer melt season, is the most critical:

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Peter Cowling, Anne McEntee and JC Sandberg discuss the global landscape for renewables, policy and innovation and what the future energy mix looks like.

Award-winning state green building program scrapped by Victoria's former Coalition government, has been reinstated by Labor with a $33m investment over two years to cut building energy consumption and emissions.

Energy ministers hailed progress, but their summit ducked key issues. They refused to embrace the target zero net carbon emissions, while South Australia indicated it favoured an "emissions intensity" scheme to replace the renewable energy target.

Fight looms between retailers and networks over right to install solar and battery storage in homes, businesses. Spark Infrastructure says proposed rules "ludicrous".

DUE’s share price will likely be driven by the success or otherwise of its remote energy and clean energy segment.

Multicoloured slug, a species of nudibranch, was discovered in 2000 off the Western Australian coast and will be officially named Moridilla fifo

A multicoloured sea slug discovered off the coast of Western Australia has been named for the state’s fly-in, fly-out mining workforce after a judging panel ruled that Sluggy McSlugface breached the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.

The slug, which is a species of nudibranch, was discovered in 2000 off the coast of Dampier, about 1,500km north of Perth, by the WA scientist Dr Nerida Wilson.

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New water policies could cause even more harm to the already damaged Tukituki River. Phillip Capper/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Balancing the environment with development is tricky. One way for policymakers to include the value of ecosystems in development is to set limits for pollution and other environmental impacts, known as environmental bottom lines (EBLs). These can be a helpful way of embedding into an economy the value of ecosystems. They also help protect natural assets in order to maintain a sustainable cash flow.

Unfortunately, bottom lines also risk developments meeting limits without actually helping the environment. Bottom lines form a significant part of environmental policy in New Zealand, in particular in the areas of freshwater and greenhouse gas emissions.

Bottom lines should not have as much influence in New Zealand policy as they do. So how can we make better policy that actually helps the environment?

Setting a low bar

The New Zealand government is reviewing its National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and is emphasising the need to maximise an economic return on fresh water as a commodity.

In addition, the statement identifies various bottom lines for local councils (such as maximum acceptable concentrations of pollutants and/or minimum water quality attributes), as well as mechanisms to protect minimum flows.

The combination of listing bottom lines while looking for the best economic return can lead to perverse outcomes. For example, the proposed Hawke’s Bay Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme would protect water supply for intensifying farming, but increases the risk of worsening the already ecologically crippled Tukituki River.

The bottom-line philosophy is so entrenched that environmental groups recently celebrated a ruling that developers could not pollute a river so badly that it would kill off organisms. A bare minimum standard must be met, but it is not something we should aspire to celebrate.

On the other hand, many regional councils are trying to do better than this by specifying goals for improving water quality in certain areas. The Rotorua Lakes and Lake Taupo are examples of central and local government working together to improve conditions.

Lake Taupo Sids1/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

But without clear central government support, those councils that want to go beyond the bottom line and make more significant environmental improvements may end up facing legal action brought by those suffering real or imagined erosion of their property rights.

The same is true of greenhouse gases, particularly those related to transport development. The current benefit-cost approach to investment in roads is not assessed against national emission reduction targets. This leads (as one example) to nationally signficant road projects being approved without accounting for transport emissions increases.

While better roads increase fuel efficiency and so lower emissions per vehicle, they also generate more car use, meaning a net increase in emissions. Road transport emissions have increased 72% between 1990 and 2014.

True, the government has voiced support for electric cars and use of biofuels and also funded more public transport, walking and cycling, which will help reduce emissions. But overall the lack of joined-up thinking and a bottom-line approach – we will pollute, but only this much – protects economic growth rather than the environment.

While water quality and greenhouse emissions are less bad than they might have been with no policies at all, the bottom-line concept implies that ecosystems can be maintained at some measurable minimum acceptable standard, with the option of improvement when conditions allow.

Unless matched with clear timelines and goals to improve ecological health, the result is a continued trading down of ecosystem assets in order to boost economic ones.

Positive developments

An alternative to the bottom-line mindset would be to implement environmental policies that call for net positive ecological outcomes – so-called “positive development”.

This integrates ecological decline and improvement into economic decision-making. The human and ecological history of a place would be accounted for. You would look not only at whether the materials for, say, a building came from sustainable sources, but whether you were contributing to improving ecosystems.

For example, protecting and enhancing biodiversity is done in Australia and New Zealand to offset development impacts. The preference is not just to minimise harm, but to improve things.

In the same way that economic investments need to demonstrate a positive financial outcome, so positive development will require a demonstration of how human activity will contribute to improving ecological health – water quality, biodiversity, local and global air quality, and so on.

Attached to resource consents, it could mean failure to demonstrate net ecological benefit means no permit. This shifts things from, say, just rehabilitating a mine site to requiring demonstrated improvement in its post-mining ecological value, or contributing to improving ecological values elsewhere.

As explained by Janis Birkeland in her 2008 book Positive Development, this approach goes beyond reducing use of materials, carbon and energy (the kind of outcomes attached to such initiatives as green buildings), to requiring improvements in total ecological health over the life cycle of a proposed development.

Applied to water quality, it would require developers to show how they would improve water quality and associated ecological values, rather than merely meeting minimum defined standards. And in terms of climate change, it would require proof that transport funding would result in a decline in emissions, rather than simply limiting the rate of increase.

What is needed is a government that is willing to go beyond requiring that development minimises harm to requiring that it does actual good.

Stephen Knight-Lenihan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Burneside, Cumbria I walked a narrow bank, the mill race on one side and a steep drop to the swirling Sprint on the other. And I thought of last December’s flood

Sprint Mill sits in a small wooded gorge below a cascade of sinuous waterfalls on the river Sprint. There has been a cloth manufacturing or processing mill on this site since at least the 1400s, all dependent on water power provided by the river. The current owners have restored the 19th-century mill with the help of a grant from Natural England; the front wall had developed a worrying bulge. When work began, they found that this three-storey building had been constructed without foundations.

The Dales Way weaves around the most recent mill race, hollowed out of the earth like a small canal and used until the mill closed in 1954. Ahead of me, long-tailed tits fidgeted, tails flicking up and down as they moved on, their ratcheting, rolling contact calls travelling on the breeze.

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ANU scientists achieve record solar thermal efficiency of 97% – a breakthrough that could cut CST electricity costs by 10%.

Spot prices were below last year, in all States, possibly reflecting good level of wind generation, soft demand and that most interconnectors seem to be working.

Shishmaref is one of dozens of indigenous villages in Alaska that face growing threats of flooding and erosion due to global warming.

Originally published in the Guardian on 26 August 1966

HAMPSHIRE: The wondrous fine days of last week have come just right for the harvesters. Although tractors with trolleys are not so picturesque as horses with wains, there remains a flavour of the sacred earth at harvest-time. The more especially in large fields with men and girls scattered at various jobs. And I have seen a young fellow, stripped to the waist, and as brown as a South Sea islander, with a girl beside him, her hair neatly plaited in pigtails, both holding on to a jolting bar, as they returned to the farm after work. The quality remains, in spite of the combustion engine. In many fields the straw is being trussed, and not wastefully burnt. Various uses are being found for it besides the bedding down of animals; in right conditions cabbages can be grown, also seed potatoes bedded and grown, with great saving of labour. If for no better use, it can be made into compost. The hot days have brought swarms of flying ants, fat, juicy, young queens, that birds relish. Starlings, that naturally have quick, gliding flight, learn to hover, not very well, but sufficiently slowly to snatch at the flying ants in midair. The starlings fly at a low level over fields and gardens, and, higher up, seagulls circle to taste the formic acid flavour. They remind me of the time when I have eaten honey-ants in West Australia that were dug up by aborigine girls. These were the only form of sweetmeats that the bush provided, and very good too. I was sorry to learn that the Scops owl had escaped, with but poor chance of survival I fear.

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An exotic visitor, that should should have been sunning itself by the Mediterranean, attracts crowds of birdwatchers to the Ham Wall reserve

My birding friend Rob may have got married only the day before, but nothing stops him from looking regularly at his pager to check out the latest sightings of rare birds. Fortunately, he then took the trouble to text me the news: that a collared pratincole had turned up at the RSPB’s Ham Wall reserve, just down the road from my home.

It would have been rude not to pay this bird a visit, especially as it should have been sunning itself on some Mediterranean marsh, not flying around the Somerset Levels. I had never actually seen this species before in Britain, so I walked along the disused railway line that bisects the marshes with more than the usual spring in my step.

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Scalloped hammerhead, a species that is listed as endanged by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Mark Priest, CC BY-SA

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) recently raised over A$200,000 to buy shark fishing licences in Queensland’s waters. They estimate the licences, for operating nets in and around the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, could have been used to catch 10,000 sharks each year.

Retiring these licences is a new development in Australian shark conservation, but may also limit locally caught seafood.

But do Australia’s sharks need saving, or can we eat them? It depends on where you look.

Sustainable sharks

Sharks in general are much more vulnerable to overfishing than other fish. Compared to most fish, sharks have far fewer offspring over their lifetimes. As a result, shark populations cannot tolerate the same levels of fishing that fish can sustain.

Globally, there is great reason for concern over the status of sharks. About a quarter of all sharks and rays are threatened with extinction. The high value of shark fins in Asian markets drives a large and often unsustainable shark fishery that reaches across the globe.

Australia has an important role to play in combating this trend. Many species that are globally threatened can find refuge in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which has an extensive system of protected areas and comparatively low fishing effort. Despite this potential safe haven, some species in Australia still rest on an ecological knife edge.

A white-tip reef shark in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Christopher Brown

For example, the great and scalloped hammerheads (which the WWF says will benefit from the licence purchase) are both by-catch species in the Australian fishery and are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as endangered.

Australian fishermen don’t head out to catch hammerheads intentionally; most people do not consider the meat palatable. However, their hammer-shaped head is easily entangled in nets. Therefore hammerheads may be highly susceptible to any increase in fishing pressure.

Commercial fishers are legally required to have a licence. By buying the licences, WWF can limit the number of active nets in the water.

However, not all shark species are as vulnerable to fishing as the iconic hammerhead. Several shark species in Australia are well-managed. For instance, the spot tail shark is fast-growing and has many young, making it relatively resilient to fishing pressure. Many Australians regularly enjoy these species with a side of chips.

Species targeted by Queensland’s shark fishery are likely sustainable. The latest fishery assessment published by the Queensland government in 2014 found that catches of most shark species were well within safe limits.

Supporting our local shark fisheries is therefore far better than importing shark from overseas where fisheries may be poorly managed.

But it is not all good news in Australia. Both the assessment and an independent review found that while Queensland’s shark catch likely is sustainable, we need to be cautious about allowing any increases.

Importantly, Queensland’s 2014 shark assessment relies on very limited data. A crucial fishery observer program was cut in 2012. The limited data mean that regulations for Queensland’s shark catches are set conservatively low. Any increase in catch is risky without an assessment based on higher-quality data.

Scientists use tag-and-release programs to track the movements and population size of sharks. But more direct fisheries data are needed. Samantha Munroe A win for fishers and fish

Buying up licences in an uncertain fishery may be an effective way to prevent the decline of vulnerable species. Although buying licences is a new move for marine conservation groups in Australia, elsewhere it has proven an effective strategy for conservation and fisheries.

For instance, in California the conservation group Nature Conservancy bought fishing licences for rockfish, some species of which are endangered.

The Nature Conservancy now leases those licences back to fishers that promote sustainable fishing methods. The fishers themselves can charge a higher price for sustainable local catches of fish. What started as a move purely for conservation has had benefits for those employed in fisheries.

The lesson here is that conservation organisations can be the most productive when they work with, not against, fisheries. The recent shark licence purchase in Australia could be a great opportunity for fishers and conservation organisations to work together to maintain healthy ecosystems and fisheries.

But if Australians are serious about protecting sharks, there are other steps we still need to take. Queensland should reinstate the fishery observer program so we have reliable data to assess shark populations. For instance, currently we don’t know how many sharks are caught as by-catch in other fisheries.

A lemon shark seeks its fish prey in the shallow waters on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Lemon sharks are caught by our fisheries, but are not a target species. Megan Saunders

Shark control programs designed to protect bathers are also a threat to endangered shark populations. However, data on deaths from shark control in Queensland were not accounted for in the government’s catch limits.

Accounting for these missing deaths could make a serious dent in our sustainable catch, an independent review found.

There is an opportunity to address these issues in Queensland’s upcoming fisheries management reform. Have your say here.

If conservation groups can work with fisheries, a more consistent and sustainable shark-fishing strategy may emerge. Australians can continue to be proud of our efforts to protect marine life, but can still enjoy shark for dinner.

Christopher Brown receives funding from The Nature Conservancy and the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the Australian Marine Sciences Association and the Society for Conservation Biology.

Samantha Munroe receives funding from the Save Our Seas Foundation and the Australian Research Council. She is also a member of the Oceania Chondrichthyan Society.

Michael Grange (Letters, 19 August) recommends “not asking the frogs first” before building tidal barrages on the Severn. But we are already being spoken to by the sand eels, mosquitoes, birds, butterflies and even the humble Highland saxifrage (Climate change threatens UK’s mountain plant life, 18 August) if only we would listen.

They are on the move already. The environmental effects of sea-level rise will dramatically alter the Severn estuary, and all its inhabitants, if we do little to deploy alternatives to fossil fuels now. Can the seriousness of the crisis justify the sacrifice of some present wetlands in order to avoid them being found far inland by our great grandchildren?
Professor Terry Gifford
Research Centre for Environmental Humanities, Bath Spa University

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In his letter (11 August) Dr David Lowry raised the issue of radon and shale gas quoting studies in Pennsylvania and sought to reinforce his own views by quoting from a study undertaken by Public Health England in 2014. Let me quote the same study, which states, “caution is required when extrapolating experiences in other countries to the UK since the mode of operation, underlying geology and regulatory environment are likely to be different” and “the PHE position remains, therefore, that the shale gas extraction process poses a low risk to human health if properly run and regulated”.

Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas present throughout the UK at very low levels. PHE recognised that radon may be released to the environment from shale–gas activities, as is the case with existing natural gas supplies, but at concentrations that are not expected to result in significant additional radon exposure. PHE will be undertaking baseline outdoor and household radon monitoring in the Vale of Pickering in North Yorkshire in areas around Third Energy’s KM8 well near Kirby Misperton at three-monthly intervals. The first monitoring “measurements indicated that the radon concentration in the outdoor air around KM8 is close to the UK average”. There is no indication of elevated radon concentrations in Pickering, a radon affected area in close proximity of KM8. The analysis for the control site in Oxfordshire showed that the radon concentrations were similar to those for the Vale of Pickering.

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