Page-3 of Nature Current Affairs, GK & News

Forest Fires of Amazon

A slew of forest fires have appeared in the rainforests of the Amazon, which causing large parts of the forest to go up in flames and has destroyed biomass accumulated over  millions of years of accumulated biomass in an instance. While forest fires in the Amazon are not new, this year a record 73000 forest ..

Topics: Amazon rainforest • Biomass • Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere • Climate forcing • Climate forcing agents • deforestation • Forest • Nature • Old-growth forest • Rainforest • Rainforests • Wildfire

World Bank releases a report titled ‘Quality Unknown: The Invisible Water Crisis’

The World Bank (WB) has recently released a report titled ‘Quality Unknown: The Invisible Water Crisis’ to address human and environmental harm. The study evaluated how a combination of bacteria, sewage, chemicals and plastics suck oxygen from water supplies and transform water into poison for people and ecosystems. Both rich and poor countries are at ..

Topics: Chemistry • Environmental science • Nature • Nitrate • Nitrogen cycle • Physical sciences • Pollution • Water • Water quality

Researchers at IIT Hyderabad develop method to make biofuel with sugar and salt

By using sugar, sulphuric acid and salt, the researchers of IIT Hyderabad have developed a cheap and efficient nano-carbon catalyst to help in the production of biofuel precursors. The catalyst showed better efficiency and selectivity than the commercially available variants to produce the desired C15 oxygenated hydrocarbon — a precursor to diesel and jet fuel. ..

Topics: Aviation fuels • Biofuel • Catalysis • Climate change mitigation • Emerging technologies • Fuels • Jet fuel • Nature • Renewable fuels • Sustainable Development • Sustainable technologies

Organic Content in Soil

Owing to the efforts under the Green Revolution wherein farmers adopted modern inputs and technology to increase production, India successfully avoided the spectre of food shortages. But this came at a cost in the form of overexploitation of natural resources, especially soil and water. The crisis is so extreme that it has brought the issue ..

Topics: Agricultural soil science • Agriculture • Agronomy • Crop rotation • Improving Organic Content in Soils • Land management • Nature • No-till farming • Soil • Soil carbon • Soil management • Soil science • Sustainable agriculture

Water Crisis: Data from World Resources Institute

The new data from the World Resources Institute makes the following observations: About one-quarter of the world’s population is facing extremely high levels of baseline water stress (i.e. irrigated agriculture, industries, and municipalities withdraw more than 80% of their available supply on average every year). Water withdrawals have more than doubled globally since the 1960s due ..

Topics: Groundwater • Hydraulic engineering • Hydrology • Irrigation • Irrigation in viticulture • Natural environment • Nature • Water • Water Crisis • Water resources • water risk scores • Water scarcity • Water Stress • Water supply • Water treatment • World Resources Institute

ISRO to setup Space Situational Awareness Control Centre in Bengaluru

ISRO Chief, K Sivan has recently laid the foundation stone for Space Situational Awareness Control Centre (SSACC) at Peenya, Bengaluru. The aim of the control center is to monitor and protect high value space assets from space debris has been laid. The control centre will boost activities forecast for Space Situational Awareness and Management (SSAM), ..

Topics: Hazards • Indian Space Research Organisation • Nature • Radar networks • Satellite • Space Debris • Space Situational Awareness Programme