Feature Channels: Environmental Science

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

The Wildlife Conservation Society Canada and Alberta Environment and Parks announced today the discovery last month of the largest Alberta bat hibernation site (based on estimated bat count) ever recorded outside of the Rocky Mountains.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers with expertise in a wide range of water-related issues will converge this month for the SEC Academic Conference to discuss the often complex issues related to the earth’s most life-giving resource.

• share
• favorite_border

With the first day of spring around the corner, temperatures are beginning to rise, ice is melting, and the world around us is starting to blossom. Scientists sometimes refer to this transition from winter to the growing season as the “vernal window,” and a new study led by the University of New Hampshire shows this window may be opening earlier and possibly for longer.

• share
• favorite_border

A corn gene identified in a new study resists a virus that has led to steep yield losses in most corn-cultivating countries. An Iowa State University agronomists said the research could lead to corn varieties that can fight off sugarcane mosaic virus.

• share
• favorite_border

Forest fires can be frightening, destructive events. The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) March 15 Soils Matter blog post explains the effects of forest fires on soil ecosystems—and how they bounce back.

• share
• favorite_border

A new analysis shows a properly-managed subsistence harvest of polar bears can continue under climate change.

• share
• favorite_border

More than 50 million years ago, when the Earth experienced a series of extreme global warming events, early mammals responded by shrinking in size. While this mammalian dwarfism has previously been linked to the largest of these events, research led by the University of New Hampshire has found that this evolutionary process can happen in smaller, so-called hyperthermals, indicating an important pattern that could help shape an understanding of underlying effects of current human-caused climate change.

• share
• favorite_border

China's severe winter air pollution problems may be worsened by changes in atmospheric circulation prompted by Arctic sea ice loss and increased Eurasian snowfall – both caused by global climate change.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Annually, diseases, weeds, and insects are estimated to cause more than $1.3 billion in losses for sunflower growers. To combat this, researchers are preserving the genetic diversity of wild sunflowers. Wild plants retain the genes needed to resist pests and survive in different environments.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

A number of volcanoes around the world continuously exhale gases. Of these, sulfur dioxide is the easiest to detect from space and now researchers have created the first global map of SO2 plumes from volcanoes.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Michigan State University and Indian media company Ramoji Film City are partnering to help farmers better produce food for India. The project involves the university’s communication and agriculture experts and the Ramoji Media Group, a multi-media giant that reaches some 620 million Indians with television stations, films, newspapers and online media.

• share
• favorite_border

For decades, phosphorous has accumulated in Wisconsin soils. Though farmers have taken steps to reduce the quantity of the agricultural nutrient applied to and running off their fields, a new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison reveals that a "legacy" of abundant soil phosphorus in the Yahara watershed of Southern Wisconsin has a large, direct and long-lasting impact on water quality.

• share
• favorite_border

A research team reports that fully grown Galapagos penguins who have fledged -- or left the nest -- continue to beg their parents for food. And sometimes, probably when the bounty of the sea is plentiful, parents oblige and feed their adult offspring.

• share
• favorite_border

Hungry honey bees appear to favor flowers in agricultural areas over those in neighboring urban areas. The discovery has implications for urban beekeepers and challenges assumptions that farmland and honey bees are incompatible.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Ocean observing tools play a key role in helping to lessen the impacts from many risks, according to a Congressional briefing provided by representatives of private foundations, the scientific community, industry and academia that was focused on sustained observations for the Gulf of Mexico and the role that the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) and the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System (GCOOS) play in supporting the economy, public health and safety in the Gulf.

• share
• favorite_border

The success of ecological restoration projects around the world could be boosted using a potential new tool that monitors soil microbes.

• share
• favorite_border

North Dakota State University entomology doctoral student Eduardo Faundez is nearing the rare and remarkable milestone of 100 scientific publications.

• share
• favorite_border

A new report out today (14 March) calls for a significant change to laws governing the sale of ivory in the UK.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Using solar energy, Technion researchers have developed a new method for safely and efficiently producing hydrogen in a centralized manner, miles away from the solar farm. It could greatly reduce the cost of producing hydrogen and shipping it to customers.

• share
• favorite_border

Natural carbon dioxide production from deep subsurface soils contributes significantly to emissions, even in a semiarid floodplain.

• share
• favorite_border

Study models soil-pore features that hold or release carbon dioxide.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists use LIDAR and radar data to study bird migration patterns, thanks to the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility.

• share
• favorite_border

Even after an insecticide bait weakens Formosan subterranean termites, a neighboring colony will invade the same area and meet the identical lethal fate, new University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences research shows. The research finding is key for a pest that accounts for much of the $32 billion annual cost caused by subterranean termites worldwide.

• share
• favorite_border

Jim McClintock, Ph.D., author of Lost Antarctica and endowed university professor of polar and marine biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, provides thoughts on the visible signs of glaciers disintegrating in real-time in Antarctica.

• share
• favorite_border

Regular, unleaded or algae? That's a choice drivers could make at the pump one day. But for algal biofuels to compete with petroleum, farming algae has to become less expensive. Toward that goal, Sandia National Laboratories is testing strains of algae for resistance to a host of predators and diseases, and learning to detect when an algae pond is about to crash. These experiments are part of the new, $6 million Development of Integrated Screening, Cultivar Optimization and Validation Research (DISCOVR) project, whose goal is to determine which algae strains are the toughest and most commercially viable.

• share
• favorite_border

El fin de semana del Día de la Tierra, el Smithsonian convocará a la primera Cumbre de Optimismo por la Tierra, un evento de tres días de duración que contará con más de 150 científicos, líderes de opinión, filántropos, conservacionistas y líderes civiles, que destacarán qué está funcionando en términos de conservación y cómo aumentar su alcance y replicarlo.

• share
• favorite_border

They are known as gloomy scales, and these insects can make a red maple tree’s life downright dreary. This is because the arthropods feed and thrive on them, especially in warm and dry urban landscapes.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Soils could release much more CO2 than expected into the atmosphere as the climate warms, according to new research by Berkeley Lab scientists. Their findings are based on a field experiment that, for the first time, explored what happens to organic carbon trapped in soil when all soil layers are warmed, which in this case extend to a depth of 100 centimeters.

• share
• favorite_border

Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have released a new global, centralized database of plant root traits, or identifying characteristics, that can advance our understanding of how the hidden structure of plants belowground may interact with and relate to life aboveground.

• share
• favorite_border

Better storm surge prediction capabilities could help reduce the impacts of extreme weather events, such as hurricanes.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists find that water-related energy consumption is increasing across the globe, with pronounced differences across regions and sectors.

• share
• favorite_border

• share
• favorite_border

Nearly 5,000 years ago, long before the vast east-west trade routes of the Silk Road were traversed by Marco Polo, the foundations for these trans-Asian interaction networks were being carved by nomads moving herds to lush mountain pastures, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

• share
• favorite_border

Montrealers have cultivated not only a love for food, but also a love for food grown locally. The city’s growth in this field yields lessons for urban agriculture elsewhere.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study from an ISU scientists shows the indirect impacts invasive species can have in an ecosystem. The study focused on the brown treesnake, whose introduction to the forests of Guam has led to difficulties for local tree species to reproduce.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at Argonne have invented a new foam, called Oleo Sponge, that not only easily adsorbs spilled oil from water, but is also reusable and can pull dispersed oil from the entire water column—not just the surface.

• share
• favorite_border

The Earth has known several mass extinctions over the course of its history. One of the most important happened at the Permian-Triassic boundary 250 million years ago. But researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, working alongside the University of Zurich, discovered that this extinction took place during a short ice age which preceded the global climate warming.

• share
• favorite_border

New Mexico State University has recently been awarded a patent on a type of Bigtooth maple tree, the Mesa Glow maple. Its scientific name is Acer grandidentatum “JFS-NuMex 3,” and its leaves turn a brilliant crimson color in the fall.

• share
• favorite_border

Chemists at the University of California, Irvine have developed a way to neutralize deadly snake venom more cheaply and effectively than with traditional anti-venom – an innovation that could spare millions of people the loss of life or limbs each year.In the U.S., human snakebite deaths are rare – about five a year – but the treatment could prove useful for dog owners, mountain bikers and other outdoor enthusiasts brushing up against nature at ankle level.

• share
• favorite_border

A new analysis by the University of Washington and Simon Fraser University is the first to document that "black swan" events also occur in animal populations and usually manifest as massive, unexpected die-offs.

• share
• favorite_border

Carbonate, bicarbonate, and carbonic acid emerge when atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in the oceans, which is the largest sink for this greenhouse gas. Researchers are interested in better understanding the carbonate system to potentially help facilitate carbon sequestration schemes, to help mitigate climate change. Recently, researchers made breakthrough discoveries about the carbonate species’ behavior at saltwater surfaces, like that of the ocean. They report their findings this week in The Journal of Chemical Physics.