Environment

The 2022 summer was a further illustration of how climate is becoming more extreme year after year. Sticking to business-as-usual and counting on adaptation alone will not work. Only a rapid phase out of fossil fuels will prevent the worst, says Sonia Seneviratne.  

Nature conservation pays off: amphibians benefit from new ponds - despite many causes of endangerment that still affect them. This is what researchers from WSL and Eawag found in a joint study using data from amphibian monitoring in the canton of Aargau. The study was published in the scientific journal PNAS.

A high fraction of the endemic biodiversity of the Alps is very old. The endemics – species found only in a confined area – have developed over the past millions of years during the cycles of glacial and interglacial periods or even before these cycles began. Fish, however, are an exception: most endemic fish species emerged only after the end of the last ice age about 15,000 years ago.

At a conference the international ice core science community discusses the latest developments in their field.

For his Master’s project, architecture student Jeremy Morris assessed the life cycle of building materials in Vaud Canton. His research shows that the construction industry could shrink its carbon footprint by making more regular use of soil. Morris proposes three courses of action, which he will present at the Quinzaine de l’Urbanisme.