Disasters News

When historians look back at the fight to combat climate change—not to mention the struggle to overcome our global addiction to fossil fuels—will 2011 be considered a watershed moment? Maybe.…

China's response to large-scale erosion with reforestation is paying off according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). The 10-year program, known as Sloping…

Megafires are likely both worsened by and contributing to global climate change, according to a new United Nations report. In the tropics, deforestation is playing a major role in creating…

The short answer to the question of whether or not on-going floods in the US Midwest and fires in Texas are linked to a warming Earth is: maybe. The long…

Nightingale Island as viewed from Google Earth. One of the world remotest communities, the UK's Tristan da Cunha archipelago, has come together to save 4,000 endangered penguins following a devastating…

The tragic earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan last month is likely to boost wood imports into the recovering nation, adding increased pressure on the already imperiled rainforests of Southeast…

Mangroves may be the world's most carbon rich forests, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience. Measuring the carbon stored in 25 mangrove forests in the Indo-Pacific region, researchers…

US agriculture stands to lose billions in free ecosystem services from the often-feared and rarely respected humble bat. According to a recent study in Science bats in North America provide…

Google Earth has updated satellite imagery for areas most affected by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The images reveal large-scale devastation of coastal areas in the Sendai region…

A new study on its way to being published shows that the Amazon rainforest suffered greatly from last year's drought. Employing satellite data and supercomputing technology, researchers have found that…

An African land snail Limicolaria flammea has been discovered by researchers in six locations in Singapore, perhaps heralding a new invasion of alien land snails in Southeast Asia. Although snails…

Northern rockhopper penguins covered in oil. Photo by: Tristan Conservation Team of Simon Glass, Wayne Swain and Matthew Green. Courtesy of: The Tristan da Cunha Website. Disturbing photos show northern…

Yesterday the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement awarded Royal Dutch Shell PLC the first deep-water exploration permit since the BP disaster last year, which sent some…

Nightingale Island as viewed from Google Earth. Conservation workers have found hundreds of oiled northern rockhopper penguins (Eudyptes moseleyi) after a cargo vessel wrecked on Nightingale Island, apart of the…

A Japanese home is seen adrift in the Pacific Ocean. Ships and aircraft from the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group are searching for survivors in the coastal waters near Sendai,…

The U.S. Navy released shocking pictures showing widespread devastation in Japan following last week's 9.0-magnitude earthquake and accompanying tsunami. The photos include a house floating in the open ocean, scenes…

Google released satellite images revealing the devastation caused by the March 11 tsunami in Japan. The satellite images, which are available on Google Earth and Google Maps, show dramatically changed…

Could the earthquake that triggered Japan's devastating tsunami be linked to climate change? The short answer is probably not, but recent research suggests that changing climate has the potential to…

Anne Hallum is founder of the Alliance for International Reforestation and for her work was recently named a "CNN Hero." Her daughter, Rachel Hallum-Montes has been planting trees with her…

Every year a few baby dolphins in the Gulf don't make it and are found on the shores of the Gulf, but this year something is different. To date, 24…

Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia has seen the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and the view wasn't pretty. Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of…

It was the environmental legal battle that some believed would never end (and they may still be right). But today in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, after 18 years of an often-dramatic…

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned that a drought in China could devastate the nation's winter wheat crop and further inflate food prices worldwide. Already, food prices…

Food prices hit a record high in January according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), threatening the world's poor. Rising 3.4% since December, the FAO stated that prices…

The floods ransacking the Queensland coast have cost 31 lives and $30 billion worth of property damage. Now, huge volumes of water are pouring into the ocean, threatening the Great…

Erosion caused by hurricanes and large-scale deforestation may have contributed to last year's devastating earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people in Haiti, according to a geologist at the University…

A tsunami has killed more than 100 people in Indonesia following an earthquake on the same fault line that triggered the massive 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The 7.7-magnitude earthquake sent…

The worst drought since 1963 has created a regional disaster in the Brazilian Amazon. Severely low water levels have isolated communities dependent on river transport. Given a worsening situation, Brazil…

The death toll from flash floods in Wasior, West Papua has now topped 120, reports the Jakarta Post. 110 people are confirmed dead and over 100 are still missing after…

Toxic red sludge, a waste product of aluminum production, has reached Europe's Danube River after a spill at a Hungarian factory drowned four people and left over a hundred injured,…