ollowing your News story 'Putting China's wetlands on the map' (Nature 458, 134; 2009) and the related Correspondence 'Time for China to restore its natural wetlands' (Nature 459, 321; 2009), we also wish to stress the need to manage and protect China's existing wetlands, and to remind delegates to the International Congress for Conservation Biology, starting in Beijing on 11 July, of these global

Explosion of animal life could have been triggered by blanket of vegetation.

Emissions targets, clean-energy projects and calls for justice are multiplying, reports Jeff Tollefson.

President Barack Obama should be applauded for his decision to scrap commercial reprocessing. (Editorial)

Many aspects of the carbon cycle can be assessed from temporal changes in the 13C/12C ratio of oceanic bicarbonate. 13C/12C can temporarily rise when large amounts of 13C-depleted photosynthetic organic matter are buried at enhanced rates, and can decrease if phytomass is rapidly oxidized2 or if low 13C is rapidly released from methane clathrates.

Environmental conditions during the past 24 million years are thought to have been favourable for enhanced rates of atmospheric carbon dioxide drawdown by silicate chemical weathering. Proxy records indicate, however, that the Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations did not fall below about 200

Levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide constrain vegetation types and thus also non-biological uptake during rock weathering. That's the reasoning used to explain why CO2 levels did not fall below a certain point in the Miocene.

In 2002 the World Summit on Sustainable Development assigned to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) a target for 2010 of significantly reducing the rate of biodiversity loss. If we hope to chart positive trends in biodiversity conservation, then cities must now make a pivotal contribution. (Correspondence)

With their focus on greenhouse gases, atmospheric scientists have largely overlooked lowly soot particles. But black carbon is now a hot topic among researchers and politicians. Jeff Tollefson investigates.

Indian universities are likely to find themselves under a new oversight body, human resource development minister Kapil Sibal announced last week. Physicist Yash Pal led the committee that recommended setting up a six-member National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) to reform higher education.