By Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News British plants are flowering earlier now than at any time in the last 250 years, according to new analysis. Researchers stitched together nearly 400,000 first flowering records covering 405 species across the nation. Writing in the journal Proceedings B, they show that the average first flowering date has been […]
April 7, 2010 A leading bat expert with the USDA Forest Service’s Southern Research Station today identified nine bat species in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee that she believes are most threatened by white-nose syndrome (WNS), a fungus that kills bats and appears to be rapidly spreading south from the northeastern United […]
By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor posted: 07 April 2010 08:10 am ET Like scenes out of Gary Larson’s “Far Side” comic strip, scientists have discovered a tragicomedy playing out in deaths of Arctic seabirds. Some crash into each other in heavy fog. Others perish when heavy winds slam them into cliffs. Still others simply […]
(Oregon State University) The Swiss needle cast epidemic in Douglas-fir forests of the coastal Pacific Northwest is continuing to intensify, appears to be unprecedented over at least the past 100 years, and is probably linked to the extensive planting of Douglas-fir along the coast and a warmer climate, new research concludes. Scientists in the College […]
After increasing during much of the 20th century, forest cover in the eastern United States in recent decades has resumed its previous decline, according to an exhaustive new analysis published in the April 2010 issue of BioScience. The work is described in an article by Mark A. Drummond and Thomas R. Loveland of the US […]
By Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News Millions of marine turtles have been killed over the past two decades through entrapment in fishing gear, according to a global survey. Described as the first global synthesis of existing data, the study found especially high rates of “bycatch” in the Mediterranean and eastern Pacific. Six of the seven […]
By John Platt Traditional Ayurvedic medicine could face an uncertain future as 93 percent of the wild plants used in the practice are threatened with extinction due to overexploitation, the Times of India reports. The Botanical Survey of India recently prioritized 359 wild medicinal plant species and conducted an assessment throughout the country to determine […]
The decline of the central California breeding population cannot be attributed solely to any single threat listed below, but instead is the result of a combination of multiple threats. In some cases, exposure to one threat may make the animals more susceptible to the others (e.g., high level of contaminants may make an animal more […]
By Monica Konija, National Science Foundationlivescience.com – Sat Apr 3, 9:02 am ET Global warming is a hot topic, and it’s causing concern for scientists studying winter annuals in the Sonoran Desert. While desert winters have become warmer and drier over the years, climate changes have pushed the arrival of winter rains later in the […]
By Ken Ward Jr.Staff writer CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Federal government scientists say a “growing body of evidence” shows that mountaintop removal coal mining is destroying Appalachian forests and dangerously polluting vital headwater streams. In a new report, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency outlines the results of dozens of scientific papers published over the last decade […]
