After a 10,000-year absence, wildfires have returned to the Arctic tundra, and a University of Florida study shows that their impact could extend far beyond the areas blackened by flames.
A paper by noted WCS conservationist Elizabeth Bennett says that an immense, increasingly sophisticated illegal trade in wildlife parts conducted by organized crime, coupled with antiquated enforcement methods, are decimating the world’s most beloved species including rhinos, tigers, and elephants on a scale never before seen.
Can satellites attuned to curbing human rights violations become an instrument for stopping genocide here on Earth? This issue and others are considered in the Summer 2011 issue of Imaging Notes - a distinctive publication that is partnered with Secure World Foundation and focuses on Earth remote sensing for security, energy and the environment.
Research by UC Merced Professor Anthony Westerling shows large fires could become annual events by 2050, transforming the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in fundamental ways
Climate is changing fire patterns in the west in a way that could markedly change the face of Yellowstone National Park, according to new research.
A mathematical formula that describes predator-prey population dynamics has been used by the Weizmann Institute and NOAA to model the relationship between cloud systems, rain, and aerosols. This model may help climate scientists understand, among other things, how human-produced aerosols affect rainfall patterns.
New research from Ryerson University reveals that oceans and lakes could make an enormous contribution to global energy production.
Scientists study the effects of grazing management practices on sediment, phosphorus, and harmful bacteria deposits into pasture streams.
Darden School of Business Professor Andrea Larson's new textbook, Sustainability, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, is now available online at Flat World Knowledge.
The Texas Tech study found only 8 to 9 percent coverage of oil on the shells of fertilized mallard duck eggs resulted in a 50 percent mortality rate. However, scientists also reported the amount of time the oil remained at sea and exposed to weather had a significant effect on its toxicity to the fertilized duck eggs.
More than a year after leading a statewide academic task force to help the Gulf Coast region respond to the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Florida State University researchers are now working to understand the longer-term environmental and economic consequences of the disaster. Though the spill was officially contained one year ago, the story is far from over. About 4.9 million barrels of oil were dumped into the Gulf of Mexico, and FSU research faculty hope to better understand the repercussions. These experts are available to answer media questions and provide historical perspective on this ongoing story.
The wildfires currently raging in the southwestern United States bring issues of land management into the public eye. Land management actions, such as prescribed fire, grazing, herbicides, felling trees, and mowing, can restore native plants and reduce wildfire. However, the public’s view of land management and their trust in land management agencies can pose another obstacle.
A new Baylor University study has found that some bird species in the desert southwest are less affected, and in some cases positively influenced, by widespread fire through their habitat. In fact, the Baylor researchers say that fire actually helps some bird species because of the habitat that is formed after a fire is positive for the bird’s prey needs.
Quantum dots made from cadmium and selenium degrade in soil, unleashing toxic cadmium and selenium ions into their surroundings, a University at Buffalo study has found.
With a pull of the trigger, cleaning up at Ithaca College is getting a whole lot more environmentally friendly. Since the start of 2011, the college’s facilities maintenance staff has been terminating germs with the Ionator.
Six tips to combat hay fever misery.
Researchers from Texas A&M University have returned from a trip to examine the scope and size of this year’s “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico and have measured it currently to be about 3,300 square miles, or roughly the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, but some researchers anticipate it becoming much larger.
“Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth,” a review paper that will be published on July 15, 2011, in the journal Science, concludes that the decline of large predators and herbivores in all regions of the world is causing substantial changes to Earth’s terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems.
Large, marine-calving glaciers have the ability not only to shrink rapidly in response to global warming, but to grow at a remarkable pace during periods of global cooling, according to University at Buffalo geologists working in Greenland.
The amount of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere by forests could be quadrupled in 100 years by harvesting regularly and using the wood in place of steel and concrete that devour fossil fuels during manufacturing, producing carbon dioxide.
A Kansas State University geographer is part of a research team out to prove what environmental scientists have suspected for years: Increasing the production of soybean and biofuel crops in Brazil increases deforestation in the Amazon. Although this cause-and-effect finding seems fairly straightforward, the issue of deforestation in the Amazon is more complex and more devastating than previously believed.
Preliminary temperatures taken from satellite measurements of the Earth's atmosphere reveal that global temperatures continue to rise.
The Wildlife Conservation Society has discovered a surprisingly healthy population of rare snow leopards living in the mountainous reaches of northeastern Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor, according to a new study.
Although considered an environmentally sound disposal method, applying sewage sludge to agricultural lands may leave harmful metals in the soil.
Weed Science is a journal of the Weed Science Society of America, a non-profit professional society that promotes research, education, and extension outreach activities related to weeds; provides science-based information to the public and policy makers; and fosters awareness of weeds and their impacts on managed and natural ecosystems.
This month, scientists from 11 institutions will drill cores into the stratified layers of Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin to search for clues to a massive release of carbon dioxide from 55 million years ago. The pioneering study may yield a better understanding of current and future global climate change.
The continued growth of cropland and loss of natural habitat have increasingly simplified agricultural landscapes in the Midwest. A Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) study concluded that this simplification is associated with increased crop pest abundance and insecticide use, consequences that could be tempered by perennial bioenergy crops.
A link between chemicals called phthalates and thyroid hormone levels was confirmed by the University of Michigan in the first large-scale and nationally representative study of phthalates and BPA in relation to thyroid function in humans.
Research will test the ability to inject CO2 into coal seams that cannot be mined, as well as the potential to enhance the coalbed methane recovery.
Since the beginning of May, architecture students from Dalhousie University have been working away at a structure in Cheverie, Nova Scotia designed to accommodate a camera obscura which will make a projection of the tide moving the water in and out of the Bay of Fundy.
How deep is the ocean’s capacity to buffer against climate change? As one of the planet’s largest single carbon absorbers, the ocean takes up roughly one-third of all human carbon emissions, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and its associated global changes.
An estimated two billion people in the developing world heat and cook with a biomass fuel such as wood, but the practice exposes people – especially women – to large doses of small-particle air pollution, which can cause premature death and lung disease.
The University of Utah will be the first location in the U.S. to install a new solar power product called Solar Ivy, for its wall-climbing appearance, thanks to a student funded initiative to make the U a more sustainable campus.
Scientific evidence is mounting in support of a significant increase in cancer mortality and malformations occurring in specific areas of the Campania Region of Southern Italy, where improper waste management and illegal waste trafficking have been repeatedly documented, according to “Wasting lives: the effects of toxic waste exposure on health. The case of Campania, Southern Italy” published in Cancer Biology & Therapy.
Summers on the Great Plains are usually characterized by a lack of water. But flooding in several states has reversed that trend -- and it might not be the last of the high waters for 2011, according to a Kansas State University geography expert.
Research at SUNY-ESF tests the use of food waste to nourish fish in an urban food production system.
The Hoopa Valley Tribe, in cooperation with the Wildlife Conservation Society and the University of Massachusetts, reported a 73-percent decline in the density of fishers—a house-cat sized member of the weasel family and candidate for endangered species listing—on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in NW California between 1998 and 2005.
Long-term exposure to air pollution can lead to physical changes in the brain, as well as learning and memory problems and even depression, new research in mice suggests.
Scientists develop model to assess the impact agroforestry windbreaks have on farming operations.
The discovery that a bacterial species in the Australian Tammar wallaby gut is responsible for keeping the animal’s methane emissions relatively low suggests a potential new strategy may exist to try to reduce methane emissions from livestock, according to a new study.
Researchers have found that areas near commercial airports sometimes experience a small but measurable increase in rain and snow when aircraft take off and land under certain atmospheric conditions.
Advances in DNA 'fingerprinting' and other genetic techniques led by Adelaide researchers are making it harder for illegal loggers to get away with destroying protected rainforests.
In a study of 31 Boston offices, polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants now banned internationally by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants were detected in every office tested. The research, published online June 30 ahead of print in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), links concentrations of PBDEs in office dust with levels of the chemicals on the hands of the offices’ occupants.
Software shows where invaders are spreading from their point of origin.
Mukul Sharma, a professor in The University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering and an international expert on hydraulic fracturing, presented June 27 on the facts and myths, the knowns and unknowns and the concerns – both real and perceived – surrounding the gas extraction process.
Four Mid-Atlantic States will offer one of the nation’s most generous programs to replace old, polluting trucks – short-haul “drays”. It doubles an EPA cash-for-clunkers-style effort with public and private money. "We no longer want our ports to be the place where old trucks go to die," says University of Maryland’s Joanne Throwe, program coordinator.
Some areas of the southern United States are suffering from the longest dry spell since 1887 and a new Baylor University study shows that could prove problematic for aquatic organisms.
Agroforestry management can improve yields and reduce environmental costs.
A new survey conducted by WCS scientists, supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), reveals that large mammals, including Asiatic black bears, gray wolves, markhor goats, and leopard cats are surviving in parts of Afghanistan after years of conflict.
Development of disease resistance among Chesapeake Bay oysters calls for a shift in oyster-restoration strategies within the Bay and its tributaries. That’s according to a new study by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
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