Socotra: The Isle of The Dragonsblood

Situated 250 miles off the coast of Yemen, Socotra is the largest member of an archipelago of the same name, a four-island ellipsis that trails off the Horn of Africa into the Gulf of Aden. Of stunning natural beauty and described as the most alien-looking place on Earth, Socotra, land of the rare Dragon Blood Trees, is of universal importance due to its unique biodiversity with rich and distinct flora and fauna.

Is Protecting the Environment Incompatible with Social Justice?

Humanity’s challenge in the 21st century is to eradicate poverty and achieve prosperity for all within the means of the planet’s limited natural resources. Oxfam investigates the question of whether environment conflicts with development and social justice.

Battling The Plastic Bottle: Students And Industry Face Off

Bottled water is trickling away from college campuses nationwide, thanks to the efforts of student activists and non-profit groups that support them with campaigns like “Ban the Bottle” pushing schools to ban the sale of plastic water bottles. But that’s not going over too well with the International Bottled Water Association.

The Eddy and the Plankton

The ocean has storms and weather that rival the size and scale of tropical cyclones. But rather than destruction, these storms, better known as eddies, are more likely to bring life to the sea.

How Earth’s Next Supercontinent Will Form

The Earth has been covered by giant combinations of continents, called supercontinents, many times in its past, and it will be again one day in the distant future. The next predicted supercontinent, dubbed Amasia, may form when the Americas and Asia both drift northward to merge, closing off the Arctic Ocean, researchers suggest.

Clues to Tokyo’s Great Quakes Uncovered

Japan’s Kanto region, which includes the city of Tokyo on the main island of Honshu, is one of the most seismically active areas on Earth. Situated near the triple junction of the Pacific, Philippine and Eurasian plates, the Kanto region lies along the famed Pacific Ring of Fire and has experienced more than its fair share of earthquakes and tsunamis.

EPA Bans Sewage Discharge From Cruise Ships

Federal environmental regulators have given final approval to a rule that bans cruise ships and large cargo vessels from releasing all sewage into the state marine waters along California’s 1,624 mile coast from Mexico to Oregon and surrounding major islands, creating the largest Coastal No-Discharge Zone in the Nation. 77 percent of the State’s population lives on or near the coast and annually, over 150 million visitor-days are spent at California beaches.

Fish Farms at Sea: The Ground Truth from Google Earth

The fishing industry is notorious for underreporting the number of organisms that are being fished out of the world’s oceans every year. A study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, is the first to estimate seafood production using satellite imagery. Researchers used Google Earth to count and measure the number of coastal fish farms in 16 countries on the Mediterranean Sea.