Can mussels hang on as oceans become more acidic?

6 July 2016 (Society for Experimental Biology) – Scientists from the University of Washington have found evidence that ocean acidification caused by carbon emissions can prevent mussels attaching themselves to rocks and other substrates, making them easy targets for predators and threatening the mussel farming industry. “A strong attachment is literally a mussel’s lifeline,” said […]

Vanishing Act: Why insects are declining and why it matters – ‘The decline is dramatic and depressing and it affects all kinds of insects, including butterflies, wild bees, and hoverflies’

By Christian Schwägerl6 July 2016 (e360) – Every spring since 1989, entomologists have set up tents in the meadows and woodlands of the Orbroicher Bruch nature reserve and 87 other areas in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The tents act as insect traps and enable the scientists to calculate how many bugs live […]

Firefly populations are blinking out globally – ‘Everyone is reporting declines’

By John R. Platt 7 July 2016 (TakePart) – Blink and you’ll miss them this summer. Around the world, people are reporting that local firefly populations are shrinking or even disappearing. The insect’s dilemma first came to the world’s attention at the 2010 International Firefly Symposium, where researchers from 13 nations presented evidence of firefly […]

China has been killing turtles, coral, and giant clams in the South China Sea – ‘There is no hope for many of these reefs to recover in the coming decades or centuries’

By Julie Makinen13 July 2016 (Los Angeles Times) – China struck back loudly and forcefully Wednesday after an international tribunal invalidated many of its claims in the South China Sea. But Beijing has largely been silent about some of the tribunal’s most damning findings: that its activities there have “caused devastating and long-lasting damage to […]

Drought stalls tree growth and shuts down Amazon carbon sink

6 July 2016 (University of Exeter) – 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 […]

Kelp forests in the Great Southern Reef wiped out by marine heatwave – ‘When we went up to the northern regions and saw that everything was gone, it was devastating’

8 July 2016 (University of Western Australia) – A team of marine scientists led by The University of Western Australia have uncovered the extinction of a kelp forest ecosystem along 100 kilometres of Western Australia’s coastline, following a heatwave that occurred in 2011. Kelp forests in Western Australia have not experienced a heatwave of this […]

California drought killing trees by the millions, NASA scientist says – Tree mortality in the Sierra Nevada range ‘is far greater than previously observed’

By Michael Edison Hayden3 July 2016 (ABC News) – The devastation the California drought has caused to conifer trees in the Sierra Nevadas over the last couple of years “is far greater than previously observed,” NASA scientists said in announcement of the publication of new map of the region. David Schimel, a senior research scientist […]

Industrial pollutants found in Earth’s deepest ocean trenches – Crustaceans at depths of 10,000 meters have higher concentrations of chemicals than animals in the most polluted rivers

By Jane Qiu 20 June 2016 (Nature) – Toxic chemicals are accumulating in marine creatures in Earth’s deepest oceanic trenches, the first measurements of organic pollutants in these regions have revealed. “We often think deep-sea trenches are remote and pristine, untouched by humans,” says Alan Jamieson, a deep-ocean researcher at the University of Aberdeen, UK. […]

Amazon forest degradation increased by 5,785 percent over May 2015 estimate

[Translation by Bing Translator.] By Antônio Fonseca, Marcelo Justino, Carlos Souza Jr., and Adalberto Veríssimo16 June 2016 (Imazon) – In May 2016, 34% of the forested area of the Amazon rainforest was covered by clouds, less coverage than May 2015 (39%). States with larger cloud coverage were Amapá (70%) and Roraima (61%). In the analyzed […]

Another Amazon oil spill puts Peruvian communities at risk – ‘We don’t drink river water any more. It gives us diarrhea and stomachaches’

By Barbara Fraser and Milton López Tarabochia26 June 2016 (mongabay.com) – A new oil spill from the pipeline that carries crude oil from the northern Peruvian Amazon across the Andes Mountains to the Pacific coast has raised fears of yet more pollution of the water and fish on which indigenous villages and riverside communities depend. […]

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