Macrosystems ecology is a new and emerging science using large amounts of information that are analyzed by faster and smarter computers to not only create greater understanding of how habitats interact, but also make better predictions about how these systems may react in the face of global climate change.
Two image processing scientists found love in one of the most unlikely places—a salt lake in Turkey. Larry Leigh, an imaging engineering from South Dakota, agreed to spend four weeks in Turkey as part of an international calibration team during August 2010. As a research scientist for the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency in Thailand, Morakot Kaewmanee saw the CEOS mission as a chance to learn about satellite calibration from world experts.
A systematic patrol system called the “Smart” program has become a vital component in the protection of tigers, elephants, and other wildlife species in the forests of Thailand, according to scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society at a wildlife trafficking symposium in London this week.
“This symposium is less about political consensus and more about prioritizing the strategies and approaches."
The worst drought ever to hit California could rival the historic 2011 drought that devastated Texas, says a Texas A&M University professor.
WCS and Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) announced today an online tool that will allow law enforcement officials to access a database that tracks offenders of wildlife crime in real-time and across the country.
A recent study in the journal Nature finds that nearly 50,000 years ago during the ice age, the landscape was filled with colorful wildflowers, which helped sustain woolly mammoths and other giant grazing animals.
An international team of researchers has discovered that a process that turns on photosynthesis in plants likely developed on Earth in ancient microbes 2.5 billion years ago, long before oxygen became available.
Two University of Iowa researchers recently tested the ability of the world’s most advanced weather forecasting models to predict the Sept. 9-16, 2013 extreme rainfall that caused severe flooding in Boulder, Colo.
Global Temperature Report: January 2014
Before commercial whaling was outlawed in the 1980s, diplomats, scientists, bureaucrats, environmentalists, and sometimes even whalers themselves attempted to create an international regulatory framework that would allow for a sustainable whaling industry. In “Whales and Nations: Environmental Diplomacy on the High Seas,” (University of Washington Press, 2014) Kurkpatrick Dorsey, associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, tells the story of the international negotiation, scientific research, and industrial development behind these efforts - and their ultimate failure.
Scientists with the Wildlife Conservation Society, Oregon State University, Stanford University, Columbia University, and the American Museum of Natural History have found that humpback whales swimming off the coast of western Africa encounter more than warm waters for mating and bearing young; new studies show that the whales share these waters with offshore oil rigs, major shipping routes, and potentially harmful toxicants.
Humans living in densely populated urban areas have a profound impact not only on their physical environment, but also on the health and fitness of native wildlife. For the first time, scientists have found a direct link between the degree of urbanization and the prevalence and severity of two distinct parasites in wild house finches.
A team of Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) scientists created maps of habitat corridors connecting protected areas in the tropics to incorporate biodiversity co-benefits into climate change mitigation strategies. Drs. Patrick Jantz, Scott Goetz, and Nadine Laporte describe their findings in an article entitled, “Carbon stock corridors to mitigate climate change and promote biodiversity in the tropics,” available online in the journal Nature Climate Change on January 26.
Researchers from UT and the University of Arizona, Tucson, studied how forces such as volatile market conditions and technological substitutes affect the value of pest control services provided by Mexican free-tailed bats on cotton production in the U.S. They found the services are impacted by the forces to the tune of millions of dollars.
A new comprehensive modeling assessment of contamination in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region indicates that officially reported emissions of certain highly hazardous air pollutants have been greatly underestimated.
One of the biggest threats to critically endangered leatherback turtles is bycatch from industrial fishing in the open oceans. Now, a team of researchers has satellite-tracked 135 leatherbacks with transmitters to determine the turtles’ patterns of movement in the Pacific Ocean. Combined with fisheries data, the researchers entered the information into a computer model to predict bycatch hotspots in the Pacific.
Dialing in the accuracy of satellite weather forecasting is the goal behind basic research into raindrop size and shape being done at The University of Alabama in Huntsville by a UAH doctoral student who is also an atmospheric scientist in the NASA Pathways Intern Employment Program.
A research team led by Wayne State University, in collaboration with Michigan State University, has identified a single gene in honeybees that separates the queens from the workers. The scientists unraveled the gene’s inner workings and published the results in the current issue of Biology Letters. The gene, which is responsible for leg and wing development, plays a crucial role in the evolution of bees’ ability to carry pollen.
Honeybee health continues to be a serious concern for beekeepers, fruit and vegetable growers, almond producers, and researchers. As the debate about pesticide use continues, Mississippi farmers and beekeepers, along with other stakeholders, have developed a voluntary program of cooperative standards called the Mississippi Honey Bee Stewardship Program.
A team of researchers at the University of Delaware has developed a highly selective catalyst capable of electrochemically converting carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas — to carbon monoxide with 92 percent efficiency. The carbon monoxide then can be used to develop useful chemicals. The researchers recently reported their findings in Nature Communications.
Mollusk researchers at Virginia Tech in the United States and at the Freshwater Fisheries Research Center in Wuxi, China, are promoting freshwater mussel conservation and develop more robust and productive pearl-producing Chinese mussels.
A group of researchers focused on sustainable practices, geography and earth sciences found something unexpected during their work in Central America: the effects of drug trafficking are leaving deep scars on a sensitive landscape.
Add yet another threat to the list of problems facing the rapidly disappearing rainforests of Central America: drug trafficking.
A “one-size-fits-all” model to predict the effects of climate change on savanna vegetation isn’t as effective as examining individual savannas by continent, according to research published in Science this week.
An international research team has determined the distribution of species of vegetation over nearly half the world’s land area could be affected by predicted global warming.
A small, secretive creature with unlikely qualifications for defying gravity may hold the answer to an entirely new way of getting off the ground. Analysis of high-speed film reveals how salamanders—or at least several species of the Plethodontidae family—achieve vertical lift.
UofL has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by more than one-fourth in seven years, report shows
Some coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean can not only survive but thrive in waters that have high levels of acidification, according to a Texas A&M University researcher.
After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, invertebrates like shrimp, oysters and crabs were the subject of the majority of testing by federal and state agencies. One UAB expert analyzed fish caught a year after the spill to determine safety.
The Wildlife Conservation Society announced today the arrest of a wildlife trader in Indonesia who specialized in smuggling live animals including baby primates and komodo dragons.
Captive breeding and release program does not help save the federally endangered Key Largo woodrat, a new UF/IFAS study shows.
The gradual warming of the North and Tropical Atlantic Ocean is contributing to climate change in Antarctica, a team of New York University scientists has concluded. The findings, which rely on more than three decades of atmospheric data, show new ways in which distant regional conditions are contributing to Antarctic climate change.
Spraying fungicide to kill coffee rust disease, which has ravaged Latin American plantations since late 2012, is an approach that is "doomed to failure," according to University of Michigan ecologists.
WCS expresses its alarm at the new findings released yesterday by IUCN indicating the heightened threatened status of the world’s sharks, rays, skates and chimeras, the cartilaginous fishes.
Extreme air pollution in Asia is affecting the world’s weather and climate patterns, according to a study by Texas A&M University and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers.
The recent Arctic blast that gripped much of the nation will likely contribute to a healthy rise in Great Lakes water levels in 2014, new research shows. But the processes responsible for that welcome outcome are not as simple and straightforward as you might think.
A new paper details a collaboration between the National Park Service (NPS) and outside experts, including Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) scientists, in developing recommendations to conserve aerial, marine, and terrestrial populations of migrating wildlife that move in and out of U.S. national parks, often coming from distant regions of the globe.
ANDRILL team discovers new species while using camera-equipped robot to explore the waters beneath 250-meter thick Ross Ice Shelf.
Scientists studying grasslands in Oklahoma have discovered that an increase of 2 degrees Celsius in the air temperature above the soil creates significant changes to the microbial ecosystem underground. Compared to a control group with no warming, plants in the warmer plots grew faster and higher, which put more carbon into the soil as the plants senesce. The microbial ecosystem responded by altering its DNA to enhance the ability to handle the excess carbon.
Prehistoric shell mounds found on some of Florida’s most pristine beaches are at risk of washing away as the sea level rises, wiping away thousands of years of archaeological evidence.
University of Washington environmental engineers are launching a new study to try to understand how climate change will affect streamflow patterns in the Columbia River Basin. The team will look at the impact of glaciers on the river system, the range of possible streamflow changes and how much water will flow in the river at hundreds of locations in future years.
RSS
Medicine keyboard_arrow_right
Sciencekeyboard_arrow_right
Life keyboard_arrow_right
Business keyboard_arrow_right
Journal News keyboard_arrow_right
By Location keyboard_arrow_right
Meetings, Grants, and Events keyboard_arrow_right