North American bison adjust their diet seasonally in order to take full advantage of the growing season when grasses become less nutritious, a new study led by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder has discovered.
Urban environments struggle with contaminated water running off, causing pollution and algal blooms. In response, cities often use natural landscapes of soil, grasses, and trees. These biofiltration systems capture and filter the runoff. Australian researchers measured how well tree species grew when watered with stormwater, and how well they took extra nutrients out of the stormwater.
Scientists and computer engineers at the University of Southampton have developed an interactive climate app - CO2 Modeller – which can fit in your pocket and help you to gauge the future effects of carbon emissions around key sensitivities of the Earth’s climate. The new app, CO2 Modeller (www.co2modeller.info), provides an interactive tool to allow anyone - from members of the public to policy makers - to explore for themselves the implications of delaying emission reductions on their tablet or smartphone. Using an easy-to-follow touchscreen, users of the app can review how carbon emission targets and outcomes will impact four key areas of climate change - future global warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification and CO2 concentration - over the next 85 years.
The creation of a new kind of rice which gives off nearly zero greenhouse gas emissions during its growth has earned kudos for a team of scientists from three continents. The new kind of rice grows in a manner that nearly eliminates the production of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Eagles feasting on winterkill fish aren’t an inspiring sight to most young women, but they were to Anne Schaefer. The outing was fieldwork for an ornithology class at South Dakota State University that set Schaefer on the path to becoming an avian research assistant at the Prince William Sound Science Center in Cordova, Alaska.
Simply oscillating its fins is all a flounder, a flat fish, needs to do to resuspend sand and quickly disappear beneath it to hide. By discovering the physics at play, researchers in France are hoping to provide a new flounder-inspired solution to a common technological challenge: the resuspension of granular material within a fluid. They'll discuss their findings at the American Physical Society's 2015 DFD Meeting.
University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law Environmental Dispute Resolution Program is a driving force in encouraging collaboration to resolve some of the most hotly contested environmental cases in the region.
A UF/IFAS forest entomologist who – among other activities – is working to help stop pests that sicken trees, has been selected to receive the Richard L. Jones Award for promising research at UF/IFAS. The 2016 award goes to Jiri Hulcr. It is presented by the UF/IFAS dean for research and director of the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station to an outstanding early career scientist. Like previous winners, Hulcr will receive the award at the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station Annual Awards Reception in May 2016. Hulcr said he and his team are trying to protect the world’s forests and tree industries by understanding the biology of tree pests and pathogens.
More than half of all tree species in the world's most diverse forest--the Amazon--may be globally threatened, according to a new study.
Colorado State University’s Diana Wall and coauthors make the case to integrate soil biodiversity research into human health studies in a paper published online in Nature November 23.
Management of the world’s marine habitats needs to look beyond only Marine Protected Areas and put achieving ecosystem resilience at the top of the agenda, according to research by an international group of scientists led by Dr Richard Unsworth at Swansea University.
Due to the environmental effects of natural sand mining, the regulations discourage the use of natural sand for concrete manufacture. Research shows using crushed sand in self-consolidating concrete is a viable alternative.
Scientists conducting a series of biological surveys of Uganda’s Murchison Falls Protected Area on the banks of the Nile River have uncovered a noteworthy finding: the park is twice as rich in wildlife as previously thought and is one of the region’s foremost centers of biodiversity.
Scientists have launched an expedition to a remote volcano in the Galapagos Islands to search out rare giant tortoises, some of which were found to carry the genes of two species thought, until recently, to be extinct.
Fish have a remarkable way to hide from their predators using camouflage techniques. A new discovery shows that fish scales have evolved to not only reflect light, but to also scramble polarization. Scientists identified the tissue structure that fish evolved to do this, which could be an analog to develop new materials to help hide objects in the water.
Called after Tolkien's character from the "Lord of the Rings" series, a new eyeless harvestman species was found to crawl in a humid cave in southeastern Brazil. Never getting out of its subterranean home, the new daddy longlegs species is the most highly modified representative among its close relatives and only the second one with no eyes living in Brazil. Its introduction to science, made by the Brazilian research team of Dr. Ricardo Pinto-da-Rocha, Instituto de Biociências da Universidade de São Paulo together with Dr. Maria Elina Bichuette and MSc. Rafael Fonseca-ferreira from Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar), is published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.
Colorado State University students are helping the City of Fort Collins with market research on a mobile app, “Lose a Watt,” that encourages sustainable behaviors.
UK researchers have unearthed ancient fossil forests, thought to be partly responsible for one of the most dramatic shifts in the Earth’s climate in the past 400 million years.
A year ago, researchers discovered that fat helps coral survive heat stress over the short term—and now it seems that fat helps coral survive over the long term, too. The study offers important clues as to which coral species are most likely to withstand repeated bouts of heat stress, called “bleaching,” as climate change warms world oceans.
A new opportunity for improving the health and supply of lakes, waterways and groundwater has emerged from a recent study in the journal Ecosphere by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Water Sustainability and Climate Project.
The Delmarva fox squirrel (Sciurus niger cinereus) has recovered and will no longer need the protection of the Endangered Species Act. This rather large species of squirrel, spanning over 75cm in length, was one the first species to be protected under the Endangered Species Act of 1967. The massive squirrel was nearly wiped out by hunting and deforestation.
In the lead-up to 21st meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP 21), 10 countries have come from behind to make marked progress in their ability to withstand the shocks and stresses of climate change, while five are distinctly less resilient, according to data released Nov. 17 by the University of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index.
Results of new University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences research may help control some dangerous species of fungi, known as phytophthora -- or water molds -- that can cause millions of dollars in damage annually to ornamental plants and some fruit trees.
Human brains exhibit more plasticity, the tendency to be modeled by the environment, than chimpanzee brains, which may account for part of human evolution, according to researchers at Georgia State University, the George Washington University and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Global energy demand from developed nations has an adverse impact on freshwater resources in less developed nations according to a new study.
Paleontologists with the University of Washington's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture find that tiny organisms called foraminifera have a big story to tell about the health of Puget Sound.
A new report by the World Bank reveals that climate change could force more that 100 million into living under the poverty line by 2030, thusly eliminating any gains.
Ancient climates on Earth may have been more sensitive to carbon dioxide than was previously thought, according to new research from Binghamton University. A team of Binghamton University researchers including geology PhD student Elliot A. Jagniecki and professors Tim Lowenstein, David Jenkins and Robert Demicco examined nahcolite crystals found in Colorado’s Green River Formation, formed 50 million years old during a hothouse climate. They found that CO2 levels during this time may have been as low as 680 parts per million (ppm), nearly half the 1,125 ppm predicted by previous experiments. The new data suggests that past predictions significantly underestimate the impact of greenhouse warming and that Earth’s climate may be more sensitive to increased carbon dioxide than was once thought, said Lowenstein.
A new Kansas State University study finds that the over-tapping of the High Plains Aquifer's groundwater beyond the aquifer's recharge rate peaked in 2006. Its use is projected to decrease by roughly 50 percent in the next 100 years.
University of Florida researchers have found an algorithm to help them detect laurel wilt, the deadly pathogen that threatens Florida’s $100 million-a-year avocado industry.
Residents of the northeastern city of Shenyang in China donned gas masks and locked themselves indoors on Sunday after their city was enveloped by some of the worst levels of smog on record. Pollution readings were about 50 times higher than that considered safe by the World Health Organization.
Coffee rust has ravaged Latin American plantations for several years, leading to reductions in annual coffee production of up to 30 percent in some countries and threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers in the region.
Watch out ivory poachers – now you got The Terminator mad. WCS’s 96 Elephants campaign has received a powerful new ally: Arnold Schwarzenegger, who recently blew up an ivory tusk on camera in support of efforts to protect elephants from the ravages of poaching.
A new study published in Science offers clues as to why large large vertebrates disappear and take quite a lot time to come back, and return in much smaller size.
A glacier in northeast Greenland that holds enough water to raise global sea levels by more than 18 inches has come unmoored from a stabilizing sill and is crumbling into the North Atlantic Ocean. Losing mass at a rate of 5 billion tons per year, glacier Zachariae Isstrom entered a phase of accelerated retreat in 2012, according to findings published in the current issue of Science.
Historically when El Niño events occur, Hawai'i has experienced nearly six months of drought, from November to April. Conversely, during La Niña events rainfall has been greater than normal - building up Hawai'i's groundwater supply. New research published this month in the Journal of Climate by scientists at the University of Hawai'i - Mānoa, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, and NOAA's Honolulu National Weather Service (NWS) Office, determined that the relationship between La Niña and rainfall in Hawai'i has changed and recent La Niña years have brought less-than-normal rainfall.
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.
The hunting ability and growth of sharks will be dramatically impacted by increased CO2 levels and warmer oceans expected by the end of the century, a University of Adelaide study has found.
The sensitivity of marine communities to ocean warming rather than rising ocean temperatures will have strong short-term impacts on biodiversity changes associated with global warming, according to new research.
Urbanization is known to degrade the quality of soil. Researchers compared the soil under residential prairie gardens to the soil under the adjacent lawns to see if there were any differences.
Tiny plastic bits, collectively known as called microplastics, are showing up in bodies of water around the world, and are accumulating in aquatic creatures, including fish and shellfish. Now scientists, after testing a sampling of commercial products in China, have reported for the first time that they also could be contaminating something else we consume from the sea salt. Their study appears in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology.
A popular and well-used building on the Williams College campus will attempt to live for one year with only the electricity it can generate on its own and the water it can recycle on-site. This endeavor will earn it a Living Building Challenge certification, the highest environmental performance standard for a building.
Natural resource agencies have embraced an approach known as adaptive management to adjust and refine their management plans in the face of uncertainties. But a study finds that agencies often apply adaptive management in ways that fail to promote learning, an approach the authors call “AM Lite.”
A McGill University-led group of researchers are looking at whether progress is being made in designing policies and initiatives to reduce vulnerability to climate change across countries. Their aim is to contribute new ways of monitoring the global climate adaptation process. They report that between 2010 and 2014, the 41 Annex I Parties to the UNFCCC countries made progress on climate change adaptation in broad terms, but that more must be done to develop ways to measure what works and what doesn't.
Cornell University’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) announced four new research projects addressing pressing health and environmental issues Nov. 9. The projects mark the official launch of a new partnership between the two institutions made possible by a $1.7 million grant from Cornell alumnus and private investor David Atkinson and his wife, Patricia Atkinson.
The use of chemical dispersants meant to stimulate microbial crude oil degradation can in some cases inhibit the microorganisms that naturally degrade hydrocarbons, according to a new study led by University of Georgia marine scientists.
Kansas State University researchers are discovering more about how adding amino acids to swine feed helps the animal grow safely while reducing producer's costs and a farm's environmental impact.
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