Science and Development Network

'Disasters, as well as subsequent relief and recovery activities, have significant impacts on agro-biodiversity, including diversity of crops and their varieties that may exist in a farming system,' a researcher at the Nairobi-based International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and new study's lead author, told SciDevNet...

'We had hoped to come up with a global risk assessment for drought, but we found that the data was simply not available,' Andrew Maskrey, coordinator of the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2011, told SciDev.Net, at the recent United Kingdom launch...

'It is important for policymakers to note that, [..] a very limited network of well-placed telemetred seismic stations provide a great deal of value in hazard mitigation', said Andrew Lockhart, a geophysicist with the US Volcano Disaster Assistance Program. More on hazard mitigation at the Global Platform...

China will start building a test satellite later this month to detect electromagnetic anomalies in the atmosphere, as part of the country's proposed earthquake monitoring network, and hopes to launch it in 2014, reports Li Jiao for SciDevNet...

Humanitarian disasters resulting from natural hazards such as floods and earthquakes could in some cases be prevented if governments collected and shared hazard data internationally, according to a new World Bank/UN report, reports the Science and Development Network, SciDev...

Mangrove forests, common along tropical coasts, can provide a protective shield against destructive cyclones and reduce deaths, according to a new study...