Gallery: Shortlisted pictures of unsustainable living - earth - 21 October 2008 - New Scientist Environment

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn15002-gallery-shortlisted-pictures-of-unsustainable-living-.html?feedId=online-news_rss20 --- international photography award for images that focus on sustainability. It launched this year and is presided over by Kofi Annan, Nobel laureate and former secretary general of the United Nations. Shortlisted images will begin a global tour in November 2008.

Turf Wars: Sand And Corals Don't Mix

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081008095708.htm --- When reef fish get a mouthful of sand, coral reefs can drown.

That's the latest startling evidence to emerge from research into the likely fate of reefs under climate change and rising sea levels, at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS).

 "We've known for a while that having a lot of sediment in the water is bad for corals and can smother them.  What we didn't realize is how permanent this state of affairs can become, to the point where it may prevent the corals ever re-establishing," says Professor David Bellwood of CoECRS and James Cook University.

The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters. - By Rose George - Slate Magazine

http://www.slate.com/id/2201466/entry/0/ --- Of all the peoples of the world, the Chinese are probably the most at home with their excrement. They know its value. For 4,000 years they have used raw human feces to fertilize fields. China's use of "night soil," as the Chinese rightly call a manure that is collected after dark, is probably the reason that its soils are still healthy after four millennia of intensive agriculture, while other great civilizations—the Maya, for one—floundered when their soils turned to dust.