By Adam Voiland 15 August 2017 (NASA) – For more than a month, dozens of large fires have raged in British Columbia. Since early July 2017, wildfire has burned through coniferous forests stressed by heat, drought, and infestations of mountain pine beetles. In early August, another cluster of intense fires flared up in Northwest Territories […]
JUNEAU, Alaska, 3 July 2017 (The Associated Press) – Strange sea creatures that resemble large pink thimbles are showing up on the coast of southeast Alaska for the first time after making their way north along the West Coast for the last few years.Scientists say the creatures are pyrosomes, which are tropical, filter-feeding spineless creatures […]
By Lauren Frayer 20 June 2017 ELVAS, Portugal (Los Angeles Times) – Once shaded in canopies of leaves, the N-236-1 is a rural road that cuts through central Portugal, hugging hillsides pungent with eucalyptus and pine. Now it is littered with husks of burned cars. Along the shoulder, ashen wisps of tree trunks stand sentinel […]
By Maya L. Kapoor 2 June 2017 (High Country News) – U.S. Forest Service research ecologist Bob Keane has studied whitebark pine, a coniferous tree of the high country, for more than thirty years. Still, when asked to describe a whitebark to someone who’s never seen one, he takes a breath and pauses for a […]
By Peter Hannam 21 May 2017 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – Taking a dip at Sydney’s beaches remains an attractive option even this far into the autumn, and the projections of climate change mean you soon won’t have to be an ice-berger to swim year round. “Sydney will have tropical waters by between 2040-60,” Adriana […]
By Lynda V. Mapes13 May 2017 (The Seattle Times) – It saw the flight of Boeing’s first jet; the World’s Fair, the founding of Microsoft. It survived the eruption of Mount St. Helens, witnessed the state’s centennial, and the confession of the Green River Killer. But after 72 years, Pinus rigida 212-45-C, the state’s champion […]
By Adam Rogers9 May 2017 (Wired) – The polyphagous shot hole borer, a brown-black beetle from southeast Asia, never gets bigger than a tenth of an inch. It breeds inside trees; pregnant females drill into trunks to create networks of tunnels where they lay their eggs. The beetles also carry a fungus called Fusarium; it […]
By Henry Belot7 March 2017 (ABC News) – The Government has no comprehensive national plan to protect Australia’s landscape to the year 2050, according to a report, which also warns of the potentially irreversible impact of climate change and the threats of coal mining, invasive species, rubbish, urban growth and habitat destruction. The State of […]
By Lauren Markham16 February 2017 JUMAYTEPEQUE, Guatemala (Huffington Post) – Junior Dario “J.R.” Henriquez* started thinking about heading north on the long, hard migrant trail to the United States when the coffee plants started withering. Drought and a pernicious fungus called roya ― coffee rust ― were wreaking havoc on the plantation here, where […]
By Andrea Lucia 21 February 2017 NORTH TEXAS (CBS News) – Announcing the “feral hog apocalypse” is within reach, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller has approved of the first pesticide targeting wild pigs. The move has upset hunters, who’ve gathered more than 1,200 signatures in opposition within two days. “We don’t think poison is the […]
