ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

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• Birth control at the zoo: vets meet the elusive goal of hippo castration
• An earthquake or a snow avalanche has its own shape
• Moa or less: Extinct 'robust' birds of New Zealand might not have been so robust after all
• Tropical forests mitigate extreme weather events
• Describing biodiversity on tight budgets: Three new Andean lizards discovered

Birth control at the zoo: vets meet the elusive goal of hippo castration Posted: 20 Dec 2013 08:33 AM PST One method for controlling zoo animal populations is male castration. For hippopotami, however, this is notoriously difficult, as the pertinent male reproductive anatomy proves singularly elusive. Veterinarians have now demonstrated a successful method for castrating male hippos.

An earthquake or a snow avalanche has its own shape Posted: 20 Dec 2013 08:33 AM PST Predicting earthquakes or snow avalanches is difficult, but to for instance reduce the related risks it is of high importance to know if an avalanche event is big or small. Researchers found that such events or say the acoustic sound bursts coming from the tearing of paper have a typical form independent of whether they are big or small.

Moa or less: Extinct 'robust' birds of New Zealand might not have been so robust after all Posted: 18 Dec 2013 02:08 PM PST Giant moa bird (Dinornis robustus, literally meaning 'robust strange bird') may not have actually had robust bones, according to new research. The leg bones of one of the tallest birds that ever existed were actually rather like those of its modern (but distant) relatives, such as ostrich, emu and rhea, the study shows.

Tropical forests mitigate extreme weather events Posted: 18 Dec 2013 08:29 AM PST Tropical forests reduce peak runoff during storms and release stored water during droughts, according to researchers in Panama. Their results lend credence to a controversial phenomenon known as the sponge effect, which is at the center of a debate about how to minimize flood damage and maximize water availability in the tropics.

Describing biodiversity on tight budgets: Three new Andean lizards discovered Posted: 18 Dec 2013 08:29 AM PST Three new Andean lizards discovered by Peruvian and American biologists establish an improved way to describe biodiversity based on different lines of evidence. The research article is a midpoint between the use of large expensive molecular data sets, vs. the use of morphological data alone to delimit species and document biodiversity.

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