Making Global Connections at the International Student Science Fair
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA)IMSA connects students from across the world to collaborate on making the world a better place
IMSA connects students from across the world to collaborate on making the world a better place
A strong and diverse pipeline of innovative leaders is preparing to solve the world’s most complex social problems through STEM education.
IMSA hosts ISSF to promote global collaboration and cooperation in STEM research
El Niño was long considered a reliable tool for predicting future precipitation in the southwestern United States, but its forecasting power has diminished in recent cycles, possibly due to global climate change. In a study published today in Nature Communications, scientists and engineers at the University of California, Irvine demonstrate a new method for projecting wet or dry weather in the winter ahead.
What does it take for plants and animals to evolve in response to climate change? Researchers have found a “tipping point” at which species, under pressure from dwindling food supplies, evolve to take advantage of new resources.
A research team at Virginia Tech has improved the traditional design of fog nets to increase their collection capacity by threefold
The face of American forests is changing, thanks to climate change-induced shifts in rainfall and temperature that are causing shifts in the abundance of numerous tree species, according to a new paper by University of Florida researchers.
Certain species of trees retain stored water, limit root growth to survive three months without water.
Ancient trees in Mongolia dating back more than 2,000 years are helping place current and future climate change in context, according to a new West Virginia University-led study.
From U.S. Navy laboratories to battlefields in Afghanistan, researchers are lining up to explore the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to detect unexploded landmines. At Missouri University of Science and Technology, civil engineering doctoral student Paul Manley is enlisting a third variable —plant health — to see if drones can be used to more safely locate such weapons of destruction.
To help untangle fact from speculation, Cornell climate scientists and their colleagues have developed a “robust null hypothesis” to assess the odds of a megadrought – one that lasts more than 30 years – occurring in the western and southwestern United States. The research was published online in the Journal of Climate.
A Brazilian-American research group has just published an unusual study outlining data needs for monitoring the survival of monkeys called muriquis that live in patches of forest in Brazil.
Just in time for the holidays, researchers at the University of California, Irvine and other institutions are rolling out a new satellite-based drought severity index for climate watchers worldwide.
Arctic sea ice loss of the magnitude expected in the next few decades could impact California’s rainfall and exacerbate future droughts, according to new research led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have identified a common set of genes that enable different drought-resistant plants to survive in semi-arid conditions, which could play a significant role in bioengineering and creating energy crops that are tolerant to water deficits.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison wanted to know whether the last 100 years of selecting for corn that is acclimated to particular locations has changed its ability to adapt to new or stressful environments. By measuring populations of corn plants planted across North America, they could test how the corn genomes responded to different growing conditions.
Rural counties continue to rank lowest among counties across the U.S., in terms of health outcomes. A group of national organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National 4-H Council are leading the way to close the rural health gap.
The California State University’s Water Resources and Policy Initiatives (WRPI) has launched a grant-funded program this fall that gives students hands-on internship experience while helping to solve water problems impacting Southern California.
A Michigan State University scientist is leading a federally funded effort to create a better system for predicting droughts, which cause billions of dollars in direct losses to the U.S. economy every year.
Soil fungi that help promote drought tolerance in pinyon pine (Pinus edulis), a dominant tree in the Southwest, are passed from mother trees to their offspring, according to research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Satellite data shows underground water reserves in California’s Silicon Valley rebounded quickly after the recent severe drought. The research points to the success of aggressive conservation measures and lays the groundwork for low-cost monitoring of subterranean water reserves around the world.
An international consortium under the lead of the non-profit organization "International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics" (ICRISAT) and participation of a research team around the system biologist Wolfram Weckwerth has published the genome sequence of Pearl millet, a drought resistant crop plant most important in aride regions in Africa and Asia. This so-called C4 plant is especially important to small and medium farmers who grow the plant without larger irrigation. Pearl millet delivers a good harvest index under drought and heat conditions when rice, maize or wheat already have no grains anymore.
A decrease in Great Plains streams, fed by decreasing ground water, is changing fish assembles according to research published Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Extension experts can provide an irrigation audit, which will help you troubleshoot spots where perhaps the sprinklers are not wetting the soil uniformly. It may be tempting to run the sprinklers more often when we see dry spots in the lawn, but the problem may be more related to how uniformly the sprinkler heads are covering the lawn than to the amount of time they run.
Upper atmosphere pattern may open window to long-term prediction
A letter in Science magazine from a Mississippi State faculty member is examining lessons gleaned from the recent Oroville dam incident in California.
Aerial tree mortality surveys show patterns of tree death during extreme drought.
Lake Lanier in Georgia is the primary water reservoir serving suburban and metropolitan Atlanta. When the lake’s water level drops below a certain point, calls go out for water conservation and news reports show images of the red mud shoreline. In some affected counties, water restrictions are imposed. The combination of usage restrictions and changes in precipitation eventually averts the crisis. But, when the crisis ends, water usage rebounds – until the next shortage.
Severe 2012 drought could have been predicted months in advance.
Researchers at UC Riverside have developed an economic model that demonstrates how flexible wastewater treatment processes which blend varying levels of treated effluent can create a water supply that benefits crops and is affordable.
Nitrogen-rich agricultural runoff into the Chesapeake Bay presents an ongoing environmental and economic concern for the bay's massive watershed. Pollution from fertilizer application feeds algal blooms that poison humans and marine life, and devastate fisheries.
A new study by an international team of scientists reveals the exact timing of the onset of the modern monsoon pattern in the Maldives 12.9 million years ago, and its connection to past climate changes and coral reefs in the region. The analysis of sediment cores provides direct physical evidence of the environmental conditions that sparked the monsoon conditions that exist today around the low-lying island nation and the Indian subcontinent.
Effective warnings are a growing need as expanding global populations confront a wide range of hazards, such as a hurricane, wildfire, toxic chemical spill or any other environmental hazard threatens safety.
A recent drought completely shut down the Amazon Basin's carbon sink, by killing trees and slowing their growth, a ground-breaking study led by researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Leeds has found. Previous research has suggested that the Amazon -the most extensive tropical forest on Earth and one of the "green lungs" of the planet -- may be gradually losing its capacity to take carbon from the atmosphere. This new study, the most extensive land-based study of the effect of drought on Amazonian rainforests to date, paints a more complex picture, with forests responding dynamically to an increasingly variable climate.
Environmental scientists from the University of Stirling have found beech forests across western Europe are increasingly at risk from drought - with areas of southern England worst affected.
In 2012, the United States experienced the warmest spring on record followed by the most severe drought since the Dust Bowl. A team of scientists used a network of Ameriflux sites to map the carbon flux across the United States during the drought.
A team of Nevada scientists and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) engineers have successfully flight tested the first-ever autonomous cloud seeding aircraft platform. Cloud seeding flare tests were deployed from Drone America’s DAx8 UAS aircraft flown in Reno in late January.
A changing climate is altering the ability of Rocky Mountain forests to recover from wildfire, according to a new study published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography. When warm, dry conditions lead to drought in the years following fires, it impedes the growth and establishment of vulnerable new post-fire seedlings. The study also shows that forest recovery has been negatively affected by increased distances between burned areas and the sources of seeds that typically replace trees lost to fire.
Drought and extreme heat events slashed cereal harvests in recent decades by 9% to 10% on average in affected countries – and the impact of these weather disasters was greatest in the developed nations of North America, Europe and Australasia, according to a new study.
Gradual melting of winter snow helps feed water to farms, cities and ecosystems across much of the world, but this resource may soon be critically imperiled. In a new study, scientists have identified snow-dependent drainage basins across the northern hemisphere currently serving 2 billion people that run the risk of declining supplies in the coming century. The basins take in large parts of the American West, southern Europe, the Mideast and central Asia. They range from productive U.S. farm land to war-torn regions already in the grip of long-term water shortages.
A study published in Nature Communications suggests that the weather patterns known as El Nino and La Nina could lead to at least a doubling of extreme droughts and floods in California later this century.
Regrowth of trees explains why grasslands in western Africa known as the Sahel have recovered after devastating droughts in the 1970s and 1980s, according to South Dakota State University professor Niall Hanan. “Studies in the past have suggested that the Sahara Desert was marching southward,” noted Niall, but the study refutes this notion. “Our results show the resilience of the Sahel, with much of the area getting greener and responding better to rainfall.”