Menu Close

Articles on Tropics

Displaying 21 - 40 of 48 articles

Cairns Lagoon: as a good response to the tropical climate, it’s a very active place but with little business activity. Silvia Tavares

City temperatures and city economics, a hidden relationship between sun and wind and profits

Good urban design and walkability boost local economic activity by increasing public activity, but cities need to pay more attention to the effects of microclimates on streets and public spaces.
Marine Drive in Mumbai, viewed here from across Chowpatty Beach, is an ‘accidental’ planning legacy that’s now one of the most popular places in the city. Dirk Ott/Shutterstock

Healthy, happy and tropical – world’s fastest-growing cities demand our attention

When we plan a better future for an increasingly urbanised world, we need to be aware that more than half of all children now live in the tropics. That calls for solutions with a tropical character.
A regenerating stand of rainforest in northern Costa Rica. Matthew Fagan

Restoring tropical forests isn’t meaningful if those forests only stand for 10 or 20 years

Many nations are restoring degraded tropical forests to slow climate change, protect endangered species and improve rural life. But those forests often are cleared again soon afterward.
Cairns has lots of hard grey infrastructure but much less green infrastructure that would reduce the impacts of the city’s growth. Karine Dupré

Cities can grow without wrecking reefs and oceans. Here’s how

Urbanisation is the main reason for rising temperatures and water pollution, but receives little attention in discussions about the health of water streams, reefs and oceans.
Idiospermum is otherwise known as “idiot fruit” or ribbonwood. via Wikimedia Commons

It’s hard to spread the idiot fruit

In a few idyllic parts of Queensland grows the idiot fruit, a tall tree with intricate flowers and some of the largest seeds in Australia.
Planning and design for healthy, liveable communities in the Australian tropics can involve quite different considerations from those that apply down south. Silvia Tavares

Making a global agenda work locally for healthy, sustainable living in tropical Australia

There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all plan for sustainable, healthy urban living. Urban diaries help identify what works – and doesn’t work – for tropical cities like Cairns or Townsville.
The southern Great Barrier Reef escaped both of the recent mass bleaching events. But time is running out. AAP Image/ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, Tory Chase

The world’s coral reefs are in trouble, but don’t give up on them yet

Tropical coral reefs can be saved from climate change and other pressures, but the window of opportunity is closing. And reefs are guaranteed to be markedly different in the future.
In Darwin the wet season usually arrives around Christmas Day. Storm image from www.shutterstock.com

Explainer: what is the Australian monsoon?

The Australian monsoon delivers most of northern Australia’s rainfall and is a vital feature of life in the region. But why does it occur?
The Tropic of Capricorn sign in Namibia. Expansion of the tropics will have huge implications for people and nature. Shutterstock

Africa should be worried about the expanding tropics

The tropics are expanding at an unprecedented rate. This will have massive implications for societies, economies and the natural world.
The earth’s missing ‘fingerprint’ sits somewhere in the upper atmosphere, but for some reason eludes climatologists. Shutterstock

Explainer: the search for Earth’s ‘missing fingerprint’

Without understanding why the ‘fingerprint’ has failed to appear our predictions about global warming - as carbon dioxide concentrations increase - are uncertain.

Top contributors

More