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Changes in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) are considered to be the main cause of past and future climate change.

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Dams are conventionally regarded as emitters of GHGs in large rivers. A team from Peking University of China, however, has disrupted this perception, based on whole system thinking applied to the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) on the Yangtze River in China.

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For more than 20 years, Brent Seales, University of Kentucky Alumni Professor in the Department of Computer Science, has been working to create and use high-tech, non-invasive tools to rescue hidden texts and restore them to humanity. Dubbed “the man who can read the unreadable,” he has garnered international recognition for his “virtual unwrapping” work to read damaged ancient artifacts — such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and Herculaneum papyrus rolls — without ever physically opening them.

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Efficient management of soil moisture and the monitoring of soil moisture status are very important areas of study

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A Cornell University study describes a breakthrough in the quest to improve photosynthesis in certain crops, a step toward adapting plants to rapid climate changes and increasing yields to feed a projected 9 billion people by 2050.

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At the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, biogeochemist Elizabeth Herndon is working with colleagues to investigate a piece of the global carbon cycle puzzle that has received little attention thus far: the role of manganese in soils.

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A new UC Riverside study shows it’s not how much extra water you give your plants, but when you give it that counts.

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Taylor Swift, U.S. singer-songwriter known for hits such as “Shake It Off” and “You Belong With Me”, has earned a new accolade—she now has a new species of millipede named in her honor.

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University of Miami associate professor Kenneth Feeley and graduate student Riley Fortier were part of a research group that rediscovered a plant called Gasteranthus extinctus, named to anticipate its extinction.

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Follow the pollen. Warmer temperatures brought plants -- and then came even warmer temperatures, according to new model simulations published April 15 in Science Advances.

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New, highly detailed and rigorous maps of bird biodiversity could help protect rare or threatened species. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison developed the maps at a fine-enough resolution to help conservation managers focus their efforts where they are most likely to help birds — in individual counties or forests, rather than across whole states or regions.

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By: Bill Wellock | Published: April 15, 2022 | 11:02 am | SHARE: Earth Day marks a time to consider the environmental challenges facing humanity, including our changing climate. Through the efforts of scientists around the planet, the understanding of those changes is constantly being refined.A wealth of our knowledge about how the climate works is due to the interest of the U.

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An international team of environmental scientists have published a series of significant recommendations to protect, conserve and study the world’s coral reefs – the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ of climate change.

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Scientific names get chosen for lots of reasons-- they can honor an important person, or hint at what an organism looks like or where it’s from. For a tropical wildflower first described by scientists in 2000, the scientific name “extinctus” was a warning.

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he first large-scale study of its kind has uncovered more than 4,000 years’ worth of distinctive foraging behaviour in a species once driven to the brink of extinction.

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Including the splintering of ice inside clouds around Antarctica improves high-resolution global models’ ability to simulate clouds over the Southern Ocean – and thus the models’ ability to simulate Earth’s climate.

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New research from The University of Manchester, in collaboration with Kenyan conservationists and scientists, has examined data from the Critically Endangered Kenyan black rhino populations which suggest that individuals really matter when assessing the impact of poaching on species’ survival chances.

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Spatially isolated “hot spots” and brief “hot moments” shape methane emissions from tropical forest soils. In this research, scientists used model simulation to understand how microbes and soil variables contribute to the soil’s methane production and consumption. The models indicate that drought alters the diffusion of oxygen and microbes into and out of soil, leading to increased methane release from the entire hillslope during drought recovery. This finding is important for understanding sources of methane, an important greenhouse gas.

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Irvine, Calif., April 12, 2022 – In a paper published today in Nature Communications, a team led by scientists from the University of California, Irvine, using climate models and satellite data, reveal for the first time how protecting tropical forests can yield climate benefits that enhance carbon storage in nearby areas. Many climate scientists use computer simulations to mimic the planet’s climate as it exists today and how it may exist in the future as humanity keeps emitting greenhouse gases.

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A Stony Brook University-led study that analyzed the entire 2020 North Atlantic hurricane season, in conjunction with human activity that affects climate change, found that hourly hurricane rainfall totals were up to 10 percent higher compared to hurricanes that took place in the pre-industrial (1850) era.

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Helping green sea turtles suffering with large debilitating tumors may be a simple as sunlight. Turtles with fibropapillomatosis are treated at rehab facilities where the tumors are surgically removed. Many do not survive or the tumors regrow. Researchers compared vitamin D levels in green sea turtles with and without evident tumors to see if sunlight exposure would influence vitamin D levels and other health parameters. Turtles receiving treatment were housed in tanks exposed to higher or lower levels of sunlight. Results showed that turtles exposed to greater sunlight showed greater increases in plasma vitamin D and a more successful recovery. Turtles kept in the sun tanks also experienced less regrowth of tumors compared to those exposed to low UV light conditions.

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The University of Miami will launch a new Climate Resilience Academy, a functional research and coordinating hub supporting the University’s academic units and pursuing an interdisciplinary approach that links with private and public partners to solve impacts of climate change and other complex global issues.

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Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), one of the world’s leading independent ocean research organizations, and Pangaea Logistics Solutions (Pangaea), a U.S. based, international maritime and logistics transportation company, today announced the launch of a new science program aboard Pangaea’s fleet of ships. Science RoCS (Science Research on Commercial Ships) is an innovative program pairing scientists with commercial vessels to regularly monitor the vast and open ocean, particularly along repeat routes in hard-to-reach areas where critical gaps in monitoring exist.

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When it comes to solving Earth’s climate crisis, the agricultural and forestry sectors are some of the hardest areas to change, yet a new report suggests that these areas will play a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

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Chemists at Cornell University have discovered a way to use light and oxygen to upcycle polystyrene – a type of plastic found in many common items – into benzoic acid, a product stocked in undergraduate and high school chemistry labs and also used in fragrances, food preservatives, and other ubiquitous products.

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Most simulations of our climate’s future may be overly sensitive to Arctic ice melt as a cause of abrupt changes in ocean circulation, according to new research led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Climate scientists count the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (or AMOC) among the biggest tipping points on the way to a planetary climate disaster.

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EVENT: The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, in collaboration with the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), is celebrating Earth Day at the Jones Beach Energy & Nature Center with a day full of educational talks and activities. People of all ages are invited to come explore the science behind Earth’s climate and our energy resources, both in-person and virtually.

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The study found that while a combination of factors contributes to red tide blooms, human activity has played a consistent role in intensifying them during the past decade.

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The new Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology, or CIROH, will be headquartered at the Alabama Water Institute. It is a consortium of 28 academic institutions, non-profit organizations and government and industry partners — including the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System (GCOOS) — bringing together a powerful team of hydrologic researchers across the United States and Canada to develop and deliver national hydrological analyses, forecast information, data, guidance and equitable decision-support services to inform essential emergency management and water resources decisions.

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The world’s largest International Dark Sky Reserve is coming to Texas and Mexico, thanks to a partnership between The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory, The Nature Conservancy, the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) and many others.

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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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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.