Feature Channels: Nature

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An international team of scientists has developed an accurate record of preindustrial sea level utilizing precisely dated phreatic overgrowths on speleothems that provide a detailed history of Late Holocene sea-level change in Mallorca, Spain, an island in the western Mediterranean Sea. The results provide an unprecedented picture of sea level over the past 4,000 years, putting the preindustrial and modern global mean sea level (GMSL) histories in context.

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What we thought we knew about carnivorous plants was swiftly called into question after scientists discovered a new species in the Indonesian province of North Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo.

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The evening grosbeak, a noisy and charismatic songbird, once arrived at Oregon State University in springtime flocks so vast an OSU statistics professor estimated there were up to a quarter million of the birds on campus daily.

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The way rivers function is significantly affected by how much sediment they transport and where it gets deposited. River sediment — mostly sand, silt, and clay — plays a critical ecological role, as it provides habitat for organisms downstream and in estuaries.

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New study renames a roo relic from outside Australia.

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KC Coryatt is passionate about environmental justice, though they haven't always known it. They knew in high school they loved the environment, and when they started applying for colleges, ESF became the only logical choice.

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A little oak tree that sprouted this spring in Newton, Massachusetts, is part of a rich history that links a postwar seventh-grade girl with ESF's first woman president.

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A major study into landscape changes in the Brazilian Amazon sheds new light on the many environmental threats the biome faces – but also offers encouraging opportunities for ecological sustainability in the world’s most biodiverse tropical forest.

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Researchers have identified a specific bacterial microbe that, when fed to honey bee larvae, can reduce the effects of nutritional stress on developing bees.

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Using light-capturing proteins in living microbes, scientists have reconstructed what life was like for some of Earth’s earliest organisms. These efforts could help us recognize signs of life on other planets, whose atmospheres may more closely resemble our pre-oxygen planet.

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The monumental global task to restore degraded ecosystems will need to include sophisticated technologies such as environmental DNA monitoring to understand and support the recovery of complex biospheres, international researchers say.

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Along with high blood pressure, diabetes, and smoking, environmental factors such as air pollution are highly predictive of people’s chances of dying, especially from heart attack and stroke, a new study shows.

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Researchers using monitoring data from Alaska permafrost found that vegetation and the snowpack that accumulates in winter control the temperatures below ground and thus the flow of water in the ground. By highlighting the link between above- and belowground properties and processes, these results will help improve scientists’ predictions of how the Arctic interacts with overall climate change.

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The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) - the most distinguished institution in the nation that focuses on the study of the environment-is proud to announce it is hosting the prestigious New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Forest Ranger Training Academy at the College's Ranger School and Newcomb campus in the Adirondack Park.

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A University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) student says his examination of the combined influence of dust and smoke on surface atmosphere temperatures in sub-Saharan Africa likely applies to conditions in the American West, now in its worst drought in over 1,200 years.

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University of Miami associate professor Kenneth Feeley conducted a lengthy study on forests in Jamaica and learned that hurricanes can magnify the effects of climate change, allowing species from warmer climates to replace those that prefer cooler temperatures.

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Residents of public housing throughout the United States experience higher levels of air pollution, according to an inter-institutional study led by a researcher from The University of Texas at El Paso that appeared in Scientific Reports, one of Nature’s portfolio of journals.

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A team led by the University of Washington has compiled and analyzed hundreds of these field observations to produce the first comprehensive report of the impacts of the 2021 heat wave on shellfish.

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Environmental chemical pollution threatens biodiversity. However, the complexity of this pollution remains insufficiently recognised by decision-makers - this is what international researchers led by Gabriel Sigmund from the University of Vienna and Ksenia Groh from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) argue in the most recent issue of “Science”. Their letter appears shortly before the international negotiations on the “post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework”. These will take place from 21st of June in Nairobi (Kenya).

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Several species of California bumble bees have gone missing in the first statewide census of the fuzzy pollinators in 40 years. If they can be found, a recent court ruling could help save them.

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A wasp that has already caused major damage in the Southern Hemisphere could spread throughout North America, although nature’s defenses are currently keeping the insect under control, according to a Dartmouth study.

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Here are some of the latest articles that have been added to the Aging channel on Newswise, a free source for journalists.

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To investigate what happens to snow intercepted by trees, UW researchers created a citizen science project called Snow Spotter.

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The rise in temperature before a rise in carbon dioxide has led some to conclude that carbon dioxide simply cannot be responsible for current global warming. We find this claim to be misleading because it fails to tell the whole story. Increasing CO2 levels can be the cause AND effect of further warming.

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For years, scientists have warned that monarch butterflies are dying off in droves because of diminishing winter colonies. But new research from the University of Georgia shows that the summer population of monarchs has remained relatively stable over the past 25 years.

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Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory discovered that certain bacteria increase the climate resilience of Sphagnum moss, the tiny plant responsible for storing a third of the world’s soil carbon in peat bogs.

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Princeton geneticist Stephen Gaughran recently confirmed that 'Fernanda' comes from the same species as a tortoise collected from Fernandina Island more than a century ago, and those two are genetically distinct from all other Galápagos tortoises.

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A deep dive into the 5,500 marine RNA virus species scientists recently identified has found that several may help drive carbon absorbed from the atmosphere to permanent storage on the ocean floor.

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Four projects led or co-led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists were named on World Ocean Day by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to receive Endorsed Action status as part of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030.

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In new work, scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison identified a way to release the brakes on plants’ production of aromatic amino acids by changing, or mutating, one set of genes. The genetic change also caused the plants to absorb 30% more carbon dioxide than normal, without any ill effect on the plants.

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As the cherished rainforest in South America’s Amazon River region continues to shrink, the river itself now presents evidence of other dangers: the overexploitation of freshwater fish.

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Machine learning enables largest study to date on aesthetic preferences and fish ecology.

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Initiatives using non-native tree species can impact tropical insects in neighbouring forests, according to an international study.

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Shinnecock Bay on the south shore of Long Island, New York, is being named a new “Hope Spot” by Mission Blue, an international organization that supports the protection of oceans worldwide. This distinction is the result of a decade of restorative work led by Stony Brook University scientists.

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New research published in the June 3, 2022 journal Science reveals that 44 percent of Earth’s land area – some 64 million square kilometers (24.7 million square miles) requires conservation to safeguard biodiversity.

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Tree beta diversity — a measure of site-to-site variation in the composition of species present within a given area — matters more for ecosystem functioning than other components of biodiversity at larger scales. The finding has implications for conservation planning.

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When an offshore wind farm pops up, there is a period of noisy but well-studied and in most cases regulated construction. Once the turbines are operational, they provide a valuable source of renewable energy while emitting a constant lower level of sound.

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Machine learning tool estimates extinction risk for species previously unprioritized for conservation.

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A new study has highlighted the potential threat of pet fish to biodiversity.

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Coral reef fish breed more successfully if motorboat noise is reduced, new research shows.