General Awareness

ENVIRONMENT - December 2018

Dec 2018

Feb 06, 2022

Scientists Discover Lost Range of 'Supermountains' Three Times Longer than the Himalayas

Twice in our planet's history, colossal mountain ranges that towered as tall as the Himalayas and stretched thousands of miles farther reared their craggy heads out of the Earth, splitting ancient supercontinents in two.
Geologists call them the supermountains.
"There's nothing like these two supermountains. It's not just their height — if you can imagine the 1,500 miles (2,400 km) long Himalayas repeated three or four times, you get an idea of the scale.

Feb 05, 2022

Aravali Biodiversity Park in Gurugram is India's First OECM Site

The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change announced Aravali Biodiversity Park as India's first "other effective area-based conservation measures" (OECM) site.
The proposal to declare Aravali Biodiversity Park an OECM site was sent by the National Biodiversity Authority to the IUCN in December 2020.
The Aravali Biodiversity Park is spread across 390 acres and has semi-arid vegetation, with around 300 native plants, 101,000 trees, 43,000 shrubs, and several species of birds.
The park was transformed into a city forest from a 40-year-old mining site through the efforts of citizens, ecologists and scientists along with the help of the urban local body of Gurugram, Haryana.

Feb 04, 2022

Greenland Lost Enough Ice in Last 2 Decades to Cover Entire US in 1.5 Feet of Water

The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on the planet, and the toll on Greenland's massive ice sheet is becoming achingly clear.
According to new satellite data compiled by Polar Portal, a collection of four Danish government research institutions, Greenland lost more than 5,100 billion tons (4,700 billion metric tons) of ice in the past 20 years — or roughly enough to flood the entire United States in 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) of water.
This extensive ice loss has contributed to half an inch (1.2 centimeters) of global sea-level rise in just two decades.
The team's data covers the 20 years from April 2002 to August 2021 and is based on observations taken by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) fleet of satellites.

Feb 03, 2022

Two Wetlands Bag Ramsar Tag

Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav said that two more wetlands in India — Khijadia Wildlife Sanctuary in Gujarat and Bakhira Wildlife Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh — were declared Ramsar sites.
India now has the most number of such sites in South Asia--49 wetlands covering an area of 1,093,636 hectares.
Wetlands are extremely important for a healthy biodiversity in the country, where forests act like lungs and wetlands work like kidneys to clean the environment. The government is also trying to ensure that 75 lakes across the country are declared as Ramsar sites as we celebrate 'Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav' this year.
The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands is an inter-governmental treaty adopted on February 2, 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar, on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. It came into force in India on February 1, 1982.

Feb 02, 2022

Alien Hammerhead Flatworm Named after Pandemic

Scientists have discovered an alien hammerhead flatworm species that looks a bit like a miniature king cobra, or perhaps an itty-bitty snake with a moustache. The researchers found the tiny creatures hunting snails in France and Italy, and they've named the invaders after the COVID-19 pandemic.
These new hammerhead flatworms are among two newly described species found in countries that researchers believe are not part of their native range so they were very likely introduced there by humans.
Scientists dubbed the first soil-dwelling predator species Humbertium covidum, with covidum being a reference to COVID-19 as an "homage to the numerous casualties" of the pandemic and because much of the 55-page study was written during lockdowns.

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