Feature Channels: Environmental Science

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Most people are fed up with winter, but Guy Meadows loves it. Ice and snow give the director of Michigan Technological University’s Great Lakes Research Center (GLRC) in the frigid Upper Peninsula of Michigan a chance to do something few others can: study the Great Lakes under a cover of ice.

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In a paper in the journal Science, published today, April 4th, 2014, WCS and ZSL scientists review the ‘pros and cons’ of large scale fencing and argue that fencing should often be a last resort

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The Wildlife Conservation Society applauds the Afghanistan Government’s recent declaration establishing the entire Wakhan District, one of the most remote areas of Afghanistan, as the nation's second national park.

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An inscription on a 3,500-year-old stone block from Egypt may be one of the world’s oldest weather reports—and could provide new evidence about the chronology of events in the ancient Middle East.

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Science for Nature and People (SNAP) is pioneering a new model for using science to help solve the world’s most pressing conservation and human development challenges. Today, SNAP announces the selection of six new working group projects that bring science to solving some of the planet’s toughest challenges involving nature and human well-being.

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Extreme weather events in the Amazon Basin are giving NASA-funded scientists an opportunity to predict the impacts of climate change and deforestation on ecological processes and ecosystem services of the Amazon River wetlands.

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A team of Arizona State University researchers developed new simulations that depict the dynamics of deep Earth, which could be used to explain the complex geochemistry of lava from hotspots such as Hawaii.

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The Wildlife Conservation Society announced today that Karukinka – the Rhode Island-sized wilderness it manages on the Island of Tierra del Fuego in Chile – has been selected for a competition as one of the world's most "breathtaking" places. If it wins, Karukinka will receive 23,000 Euros ($31,000) in funding. The competition is organized by the European Outdoor Conservation Association (EOCA), which offers funding to implement conservation projects.

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— Sea turtles—a group of seven species thought to have evolved more than 200 million years ago—are currently under significant stress, especially in the Gulf of Mexico, primarily as a result of human negligence and industrialization. A group of more than 600 scientists, conservationists, students and others will meet in New Orleans April 10-17 to discuss this and a wide range of other topics at the 34th Annual Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation, the main meeting of the International Sea Turtle Society

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The Vietnam CITES Management Authority of the Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development today hosted a meeting marking the nation’s first step toward minimizing transnational wildlife crime affecting this nation.

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Wellesley scientists find that the teeth of the nerpa seal may hold the strongest evidence of the effects of decades of environmental pollution, nuclear testing, and climate change on Russia's Lake Baikal.

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During Pleistocene era climate changes, neotropical orchid bees that relied on year-round warmth and wet weather found their habitats reduced by 30 to 50 percent, according to a Cornell University study that used computer models and genetic data to understand bee distributions during past climate changes.

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Results from a new study co-authored by Netra Chhetri, a faculty member at the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes at Arizona State University, show global warming of only two degrees Celsius will be detrimental to three essential food crops in temperate and tropical regions. And beginning in the 2030s, yields from those crops will start to decline significantly.

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Climatologist predicts that climate change may increase the severity of storms this spring.

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A new study in Nature Geoscience shows that dust in the air in North Africa and West Asia absorbs sunlight west of India, warming the air and strengthening the winds carrying moisture eastward, raining down in India about a week later. The results explain one way that dust can affect the climate, filling in previously unknown details about the Earth system.

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An international team of scientists has discovered that the last remaining stable portion of the Greenland ice sheet is stable no more. The finding will likely boost estimates of expected global sea level rise in the future.