Feature Channels: Environmental Science

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Two research centers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) will provide expertise to a newly formed, $360 million university alliance led by the University of Alabama (UA) to better predict water-related hazards and manage the nation’s water resources.

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PNNL researchers have uncovered a plant-derived process that leads to the formation of aerosol particles over the Amazon rainforest and potentially other forested parts of the world. 

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Weaver birds that eat seeds flock together and nest in colonies more commonly than those species that eat insects, suggests new research by an international team of scientists led by the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath.

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Experts from around the world are coming together this week to discuss the success of policies designed to tackle the global plastic pollution crisis.

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Researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology have observed that earthworms actually prefer soil with some types of microplastics but digest the polymers differently, which the team suggests could impact the animals’ health and the ecosystem.

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Like diseases affecting humans, parasites can wage a deadly evolutionary “arms race” against their hosts. But can hosts and parasites upgrade their weapons at the same rate?

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An assistant biology professor at the University of Oregon has high hopes that a pilot study could change how forestlands in the Northwest are managed, particularly post-harvest and post-fire, to the benefit of the humble, and troubled, wild bee.

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The conclusion that climate change is natural, therefore humans have nothing to do with it, or that we shouldn't do anything about it, is misleading.

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A new study, “Global field observations of tree die-off reveal hotter-drought fingerprint for Earth’s forests,” compiled a global database of the published locations of climate-induced forest die-off events, from 1970-2018, across 675 locations. After analyzing the climate conditions at each location during each event, researchers found a common ‘hotter-drought fingerprint’ for Earth’s forests, a term that describes the combination of higher temperatures and more frequent droughts for a lethal set of climate conditions.

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An international team of researchers, including several from the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa, has quantified five critical ecological processes on more than 500 coral reefs worldwide to understand how these processes relate to each other, what may distinguish the most functional reefs, and what that means for our management of reef functioning.

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Changing the way fruit is gathered from a “tree of life” could have hugely positive environmental and financial impacts in Amazonia, according to a new study.

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You can’t see it, but different substances in the petals of flowers create a “bulls-eye” for pollinating insects, according to a Clemson University scientist whose research sheds light on chemical changes in flowers which helps them respond to environmental changes, including climate change, that might threaten their survival.

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To further investigate and track kelp growth and survival over time, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, The Nature Conservancy, University of California Los Angeles, and the University of California Santa Barbara have launched the world’s largest map of kelp forest canopies extending from Baja California, Mexico to the Oregon-Washington border.

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To combat forest loss in the tropics, a new study uses crowdsourcing to identify the drivers of deforestation. The resulting dataset can be used to create high-resolution maps and help policymakers apply the best protection measures.

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Virginia Tech researchers, in collaboration with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, have discovered that key parts of the global carbon cycle used to track movement of carbon dioxide in the environment are not correct, which could significantly alter conventional carbon cycle models. This finding has the potential to change predictions for climate change, though it is unclear at this juncture if the mismatch will result in more or less carbon dioxide being accounted for in the environment.

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A network of West African Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) covers key sites used by green turtles, new research shows.

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A first-of-its-kind study looking at surface meltwater lakes around the East Antarctic Ice Sheet across a seven-year period has found that the area and volume of these lakes is highly variable year-to-year, and offers new insights into the potential impact of recent climatic change on the ‘Frozen Continent’.