Feature Channels: Environmental Science

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An international team of researchers has uncovered “unprecedented” snake venom resistance in an unexpected species – the legless amphibian known as caecilians.

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In a new study published in JMIRx Bio, one of JMIR Publications’ new overlay journals, scientist Floe Foxon explores whether the Loch Ness Monster, a creature in Scottish folklore, could be a giant eel. Using previous estimates of the monster’s size to predict the probability of encountering a large eel of a similar size, the study found that giant eels could not account for sightings of larger animals in Loch Ness, a freshwater lake in the Scottish Highlands.

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Eating more planet-friendly foods could help you live a longer, healthier life, according to new research.

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Analysing satellite data spanning the past 20 years, the research team based at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge examined how vegetation has been changing along the Pacific coast of Peru and northern Chile.

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Can biosurfactants increase microbiological oil degradation in North Sea seawater? An international research team from the universities of Stuttgart und Tübingen, together with the China West Normal University and the University of Georgia, have been exploring this question and the results have revealed the potential for a more effective and environmentally friendly oil spill response.

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Peter Vikesland believes high-tech tools could help increase the flow of quality water in an equitable manner. Atop a new wave of support from the Fralin Life Sciences Institute, Vikesland, the Nick Prillaman Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is leading a research team in creating wireless sensor networks to survey microbial threats to water quality and to enable operational control and provide real-world feedback for public transparency.

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An exquisitely preserved fossil forest from Japan provides missing links and helps reconstruct a whole Eurasia plant from the late Miocene epoch.

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Bat activity falls as farms make the transition to organic agriculture, new research shows.

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From the thousands of feet of frozen glaciers to the rising seas off Savannah’s coast, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers are measuring, modeling, and predicting just how climate change is impacting our oceans.

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A large portion of Greenland was an ice-free tundra landscape—perhaps covered by trees and roaming woolly mammoths—in the recent geologic past (about 416,000 years ago).

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A large portion of Greenland was an ice-free tundra landscape — perhaps covered by trees and roaming wooly mammoths — in the recent geologic past (about 416,000 years ago), according to a new study in the journal Science. The results shed light on the stability of the Greenland ice sheet over the last two and a half million years. Instead, moderate warming (mean global temperatures of 1 to 1.5°C above pre-industrial values) that lasted 30, 000 years, from 420,000 to 390,000 years ago, led to significant melting (at least 20% of the total Greenland Ice sheet volume).

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Increasing human-wildlife conflict is a cause of significant concern, especially in the context of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Despite being controversial, lethal management of invasive wildlife species is often deemed necessary for the safety of human lives and livelihoods.

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Plant species become exotic after being accidentally or deliberately transported by humans to a new region outside their native range, where they establish self-perpetuating populations that quickly reproduce and spread.

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An international research team from Queen Mary University of London, UK and the Rovereto Civic Museum Foundation, Italy has made a groundbreaking discovery regarding reptiles and their ability to match visual and auditory information.

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Record-breaking high temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean combined with El Niño spell uncertainty for the Atlantic hurricane season. El Niño, known to reduce hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin, developed early this summer.  With the conflicting factors of El Nino in the Pacific leading to fewer hurricanes and warm Atlantic Ocean temperatures favoring hurricane development, seasonal forecasts are for near-normal activity with lower confidence than other years.

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Approximately 600 sessions featuring over 3,000 research papers are open to the press. From race and racism to mental health, from climate control and environmental policy issues to artificial intelligence, sociologists are investigating and reporting on the most sensitive problems confronting American society.

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Scientists study the role of pumped storage hydropower in Alaska’s clean energy future.

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Today's catalysts for removing unburnt methane from natural-gas engine emissions are either inefficient at low, start-up temperatures or break down at higher operating temperatures. A new single-atom catalyst solves both these problems and removes 90% of the methane.

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Plant geneticists have identified a mutation in a gene that causes the “weeping” architecture – branches growing downwards – in apple trees, a finding that could improve orchard fruit production.

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To learn more about the broadnose sevengill shark, Cal State Fullerton biological science student Ryan Le is using DNA to study its genetic diversity and breeding population throughout Southern California’s coast.

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IIASA recently launched the Climate Solutions Explorer – a comprehensive resource that visualizes and presents vital data about climate mitigation, climate impacts, vulnerabilities, and risks arising from development and climate change.

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New vehicles are responsible for around ten percent of plastic demand in the EU, and the automotive sector is the number one consumer of raw materials like aluminum, magnesium, platinum group metals, and rare earth elements. A new set of provisions, proposed by the European Commission last week to revise the EU End-of-Life Vehicles Directive, intends to enhance the circularity of the automotive sector. Empa researchers played a crucial role in defining the content of this new proposal.

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Higher levels of vitamin B-related amino acids may be linked to the risk of dementia associated with a certain type of air pollutants called particulate matter, according to a study published in the July 19, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study does not prove that pollution or amino acids cause dementia, but it suggests a possible link among them.

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Researchers led by a team at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have created the first tool to map and visualize the areas where human settlements and nature meet on a global scale. The tool, which was part of a study recently published in Nature, could improve responses to environmental conflicts like wildfires, the spread of zoonotic diseases and loss of ecosystem biodiversity.

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A team led by Prof. WANG Wei from the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IBCAS) has unraveled the evolutionary history of the Arctic flora. The study was published in Nature Communications.

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During the summer of 2018, the Mendocino Complex Fire ripped through UC’s Hopland Research and Extension Center (HREC), transforming the Northern California property’s grassy, oak-dotted hillsides into a smoldering, ash-covered wasteland.

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CABI joined an international team of researchers from 57 institutions around the world to share its expertise in a ground-breaking study which highlights the urgent need to protect the world’s forests from non-native pests amid climate change.

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A collaborative study found 800,000 tons of oil and gas waste with no records to match. Overall, poor records and a lack of monitoring are a barrier to truly understanding the local impact of immobilized waste disposal.

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Over half of forests in the United States are privately owned, especially in the Eastern part of the country. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign looks at how family forest landowners in Maine and New Hampshire approach invasive species management and what factors influence their decisions.

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Argonne and Chicago State University deployed instruments at the Chicago State University Campus to measure Chicago’s changing climate. These sensors are among the first for the Argonne-led Urban Integrated Field Laboratory called Community Research on Climate and Urban Science (CROCUS).

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Coastal forests are increasingly exposed to the effects of climate change and sea level rise. New experimental research examined how soils change when transplanted between parts of a tidal creek that differed in salinity. Scientists found that soils with a history of salinity and inundation by seawater were more resistant to changes in water conditions, suggesting that soils learn from their history of inundation.

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Two computer modeling and big data researchers at the Texas A&M AgriLife Blackland Research and Extension Center at Temple were part of a team award from a U.S. Department of Agriculture undersecretary recognizing contributions to farm production and conservation.

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Without intervention, the colorful but devastating Japanese beetle could make its way across the evergreen state within two decades, according to a study of their potential dispersion.

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Fertilizer restrictions along Florida’s 156-mile-long Indian River Lagoon were intended to reduce nutrient inputs from urban and agricultural land uses. The hope was that water quality would improve by reducing the nitrogen load. While these restrictions were well-intended, a study finds fertilizer use is not the root cause of the lagoon’s environmental issues. It’s sewage. For decades, fertilizer use was implicated for about 71 percent of the lagoon’s environmental impairments. In fact, current estimates show 79 percent of nitrogen loading is from septic systems; 21 percent is from residential fertilizer use.

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With less than 5% of native vegetation remaining on private properties and roadsides on the Yorke Peninsula of South Australia, University of South Australia researchers are calling for dramatic changes to land management measures in order to retain native ecosystems and prevent further biodiversity loss.

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The space laser GEDI has allowed researchers to 3D map Earth's rainforests for the first time ever, helping us understand the forest canopy and providing vital information about Earth’s carbon cycle and how it is changing.

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For approximately 3,000 years, generations of green sea turtles have returned to the same seagrass meadows to eat.