By Roberta Attanasio, IEAM Blog Editor

A feral swine sounder causing erosion by using a wallow on Havasu National Wildlife Refuge property. Removal of these invasive feral swine supports the refuge’s mission of conservation and recovery of native wildlife. .

Wild pigs—also known as wild hogs, wild boars, feral swine, or razorbacks— are wreaking havoc around the world, from European cities to invading the mystical Malaysian island of by crossing coastal waters. In the US, wild pigs, aptly an “infestation machine,” are considered to be the most damaging invasive species. Continue reading →

A guest post by Ester Papa and Elena Semenzin

The following post is one of a series previewing the research that will be presented at the in Rome, Italy (13-17 May 2018).

“What is sustainable? How can chemicals be Greener? What is safe?” are questions of great importance nowadays. Continue reading →

By Roberta Attanasio, Blog Editor

It’s celebration time for the iconic polar bear, the poster child of climate change. Or better, it’s a different type of celebration. Every year, February 27——highlights the challenges that this big, charismatic creature faces in a warming Arctic, and becomes a day of action to reduce carbon emissions. The nineteen subpopulations of polar bears spend their winter on sheets of frozen ocean water, which melt and retreat in warmer months, to then advance again in the fall. As ice keeps melting because of higher temperatures, their natural habitat shrinks, to travel, hunt, and breed. In other words, their lives are tied to the annual spread and shrinkage of Arctic sea ice.

Polar bear silently stepping from an ice floe by Andreas Weith [Wikimedia Commons – Creative Commons Attribution–Share Alike 4.0]

By Roberta Attanasio, IEAM Blog Editor

Lewd Pointing by Quinn Dombrowski/Flickr/CC-BY-SA 2.0

In a recent tell-all to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology tackled the issue of sexual harassment of women in the academic scientific community. The committee defined the issue as a “pernicious problem,” and stated that “sexual harassment is not outside the norm for women in academia.” Continue reading →

By Roberta Attanasio, IEAM Blog Editor

Credit: ,

We live in the world of , which defines as low-cost clothing collections based on current, high-cost luxury fashion trends—it is a system that encourages disposability and is based on the rapid production of a large variety of clothing items that are not made to last and are used only a few times before being thrown away.  Not surprisingly, the global production of clothing between 2000 and 2014.  the Environmental Protection Agency, 15.1 million tons of textile waste was generated in 2013 in the United States and, of these, only 2.3 million tons were recovered through recycling.  Sustainability that consumers typically associate with fashion—the result is a general lack of awareness of the environmental impact of clothes manufacturing.  With the increased rapid production of large amounts of newly generated textiles, it’s time to examine on the extent of this impact.  Continue reading →

Dryland forest, Queensland, Australia. CSIRO, CC BY 3.0, via .

By Roberta Attanasio, IEAM Blog Editor

We face a steady, sobering news stream about the deforestation of the humid tropics, the warming of the Arctic, and more recently, the greening of Antarctica.  In contrast, we hear very little about drylands, the arid regions that cover more than 40% of Earth’s land surface.  Although the United Nations has periodically focused on drylands, the popular and scientific media have given little coverage to them, partly the absence of a focused international program.  However, in the past few years, we have been hearing more about drylands, including the recent unveiling of what has been touted as a secret—they are home to large forests, much larger than previously thought. Continue reading →