General Awareness

ENVIRONMENT - August 2019

Aug 2019

Aug 12, 2019

Govt To Try a New Method To Cut Down Mountains Of Waste

Delhi government officials hold talks with Ahmedabad civic agency officials to introduce bio-remediation, a method by which the latter will be able to clear a massive 35-year-old landfill.
The Delhi government is taking help of the civic agency in Gujarat's Ahmedabad for removal of around 28 million tonnes of waste from the three gigantic landfills in the city — Ghazipur, Bhalswa and Okhla — in adherence to the National Green Tribunal's (NGT) directions.
The three mountain-like landfills in Ghazipur, Bhalswa and Okhla are made of around 14 million tonnes, 8.5 million tonnes and 5.5 million tonnes of waste, as pegged by civic agencies till June 30, 2019. The Ghazipur landfill, last measured as 65m high, is the tallest of them, only 8m less that Qutub Minar's height ( 73m).
To clear the three landfills, the Delhi government will adopt bioremediation method, which refers to deliberate introduction of microorganisms to consume and break down environmental pollutants in order to clear a polluted site.

Aug 11, 2019

Centre Grants Tungareshwar, Tansa Reserves 'Eco-Sensitive Zone' Status

The Centre declared two wildlife sanctuaries near Mumbai as 'Eco-Sensitive Zones' (ESZs). There are 11 more such zones in Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh.
Tungareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary (TWLS) and Tansa Wildlife Santuary (TWS) are lush green areas spread across several hundred square kilometres in Palghar and Thane districts adjoining Mumbai.
They also serve as the catchment areas for lakes and reservoirs that supply water to the city.
The total protected area of TWLS is around 86 sq km and will have the ESZ of 67 sq km. For TWS, the total area is around 305 sq km with ESZ of around 490 sq km, which will include 150 villages. TWLS and TWS are ranked as major habitats for wildlife.
The Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Borivali, sprawled across Mumbai's north-east and north-western suburbs, is home to around 45 leopards, different varieties of deer, four-horned antelopes, monkeys, Indian Flying Foxes, spot-Striped Hyena and a large number of birds and insects.
Leopards often stray into residential areas like Dahisar, Borivali, Kandivali, Malad, Goregaon, Andheri, Powai, Bhandup, Kanjurmarg and Mulund, and other green areas in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.
Experts said declaring an ESZ, or a buffer zone, around a wildlife reserve will help conserve the ecosystem since only agriculture, a few small scale industries and minor infra-works are permitted within the ESZ. Maharashtra had proposed the ESZ around TWLS and TWS forests in August 2016.

Aug 10, 2019

Researchers Solve 'Hot Spot' Debate

Volcanic hot spots such as the ones that created the Hawaiian Islands have long been considered stationary points, created by processes deep within the earth's interior.
Volcanic hot spots such as the ones that created the Hawaiian Islands have long been considered stationary points, created by processes deep within the earth's interior.
Using new paleomagnetic data and analyses, researchers John Tarduno, a professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester; Richard Bono, a former post-doctoral research associate in Tarduno's lab and now a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Liverpool; and Hans-Peter Bunge, a geophysicist at Munich University, provide conclusive evidence that hot spots are not fixed but are moving.
The research, published in Nature Communications, solves a major debate about the origin of the large-scale structure of the earth's surface and deep interior.

Scientists Discover Why Some Sharks Glow In The Dark

It may not sound like the best way to go incognito, but some species of shark that lurk on the ocean floor glow a bright green hue visible to others of their kind.
Scientists said they identified the molecules responsible for the predators' biofluorescence, and that it might perform other functions too like fighting microbial infection.
The research, published in the journal iScience, pinpoints a previously unknown family of small-molecule metabolites.
"It's very different from all the other forms of marine biofluorescence" such as the processes seen in jellyfish and corals, David Gruber, a senior professor at City University of New York and co-author of the study said.
"This is a small molecule and it shows that in the blue ocean, animals are evolving this ability to absorb blue light and transform it into other colours."
The paper focused on two species, the swell shark and chain catshark, that Gruber studied during scuba trips in Scripps Canyon.
They dwell at depths of 30 metres or more, where only light at the blue end of the spectrum penetrates: if you were bitten there and started bleeding, it would look inky black.

Aug 09, 2019

UN Body Makes Pitch For Vegetarian Diets

The report by a UN body on environment has made a strong pitch for vegetarianism.
Global warming cannot be tackled by cutting fossil fuel emissions alone, the UN body on climate change (IPCC) warned in a special report, adding that changing climate was threatening the world's food production and calling for vegetarian food habits as well as sustainable farm practices
Average land temperature has already crossed a redline mentioned in the Paris Agreement according to the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Climate Change and Land report's summary for policy makers that also warned that measures to tackle global warming will be found wanting unless they focus on land-use, agriculture, and food.
Average land temperature has increased by 1.53 degree C since the pre-industrial period and the global mean temperature, which includes land and ocean, is higher by 0.87 degree C, according to the summary of the IPCC report released in Geneva.

9-Year-Old Now Face Of Manipur Green Mission

A nine-year-old Manipuri girl, Valentina Elangbam who shed copious tears after two trees she planted were cut down has been named brand ambassador of the chief minister's Green Manipur Mission.
The chief minister of the state, N Biren Singh and H Balkrishna, director, public relations department, released an order appointing her ambassador of the green mission
The chief minister's Green Manipur Mission is a move to restore greenery across Manipur.

Less Plastic, More Jute Bags At Van Mahotsav

Polythene bags, which are used to grow saplings from nurseries, will this year see a reduction in their numbers, for more eco-friendly jute bags during the government's Van Mahotsav drive that will be launched on 09th august,2019.
The drive will be launched by Kailash Gahlot, forest minister of Delhi, from Isapur forest in west Delhi. More than 1,000 schools, both government and government-aided, would be participating in the initiative.
Forest officials said some saplings will still come wrapped in plastic cover. However, these polythene pouches will be collected and sent to waste-to-energy plants for disposing them in an environment-friendly manner.
The forest department and other greening agencies would be undertaking their mass plantation drive during which more than 3.1 lakh saplings would be planted across 128 locations. Citizens and RWAs can collect free saplings from 14 forest department nurseries across Delhi.

Aug 08, 2019

Rapid and disturbing increase in deforestation across Amazon jungle in Brazil

New data from the Brazilian space institute published point to a surge in deforestation in the Amazon, fuelling fears that President Jair Bolsonaro's pro-agrobusiness policies will accelerate deforestation.
Figures of the National Institute for Space Research, a federal agency, show that more forest was lost between May and July in 2019 than during the same period in 2018, 2017 and 2016.
In July,2019 alone, the rainforest lost 2,254 square kilometres of vegetation, between three and five times the surfaces lost the same month in the past four years.
This is the biggest surge in deforestation rates since the institute adopted its current methodology in 2014.
Brazil contains about 60% of the Amazon rainforest, a key regulator in the planet's living systems. Its trees take in as much as 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year and release 20% of the planet's oxygen.

Ancient Bird That Stood a Metre Tall

Scientists have discovered fossils of the world's largest parrot, standing up to one metre tall and weighing 7kg with a massive beak able to crack most food sources.
The new bird, described in the journal Biology Letters, has been named 'Heracles Inexpectatus' to reflect its Herculean myth-like size and strength - and the unexpected nature of the discovery.
New Zealand is well known for its giant birds.
The fossil is about the size of the giant 'dodo' pigeon of the Mascarenes and twice the size of the critically endangered flightless
New Zealand kakapo, was previously the largest known parrot.
The new parrot was found in fossils up to 19 million years old from near St. Bathans in Central Otago, New Zealand, in an area well known for a rich assemblage of fossil birds from the Miocene period.

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