[Follow #SOTWP on Twitter for live updates during the State of the World’s Plants Symposium (11-12 May 2016).] By Damian Carrington9 May 2016 (The Guardian) – One in five of the world’s plant species is threatened with extinction, according to the first global assessment of flora, putting supplies of food and medicines at risk. But […]
By Rob Jordan5 April 2016 (Stanford Report) – Bustling cities, sprawling suburbs and blossoming agricultural regions might seem strong evidence that people have always dominated the environment. A Stanford study of South America’s colonization shows that human populations did not always grow unchecked, but were at one time limited by local resources – just like […]
By Chris Mooney 21 March 2016 (Washington Post) – If you dig deep enough into the Earth’s climate change archives, you hear about the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM. And then you get scared. This is a time period, about 56 million years ago, when something mysterious happened — there are many ideas as to […]
By Claire Marshall23 March 2016 (BBC News) – The ash tree is likely to be wiped out in Europe, according to a review of the evidence. The trees are being killed off by the fungal disease ash-dieback along with an invasive beetle called the emerald ash borer. According to the research, published in the Journal […]
By Shreya Dasgupta 8 February 2016 (mongabay.com) – In Where Have All the Animals Gone?: My Travels with Karl Ammann, author and natural historian Dale Peterson recounts his adventures with Karl Ammann, an eccentric award-winning wildlife photographer, as they travel across several countries in Africa and Asia. Peterson’s book is a witty, humorous, and sometimes […]
By Mike Gaworecki30 December 2015 (mongabay.com) – As 2015 comes to a close, Mongabay is looking back at the year that was. This year saw President Obama reject the Keystone pipeline as historic droughts and a vicious wildfire season wracked the western US and Canada. The world committed to climate action in Paris as Southeast […]
By Yadigar Sekerci and Sergei Petrovskii12 November 2015 (Bulletin of Mathematical Biology) – We have studied the oxygen–plankton dynamics using a mathematical model that takes into account oxygen production in photosynthesis, plankton respiration, and the effect of zooplankton predation on phytoplankton. The model is described by a system of three coupled ODEs in the nonspatial […]
By Damian Carrington20 November 2015 (The Guardian) – More than half the myriad tree species in the Amazon could be heading for extinction, according to a study that makes the first comprehensive estimate of threatened species in the world’s largest rainforest. Among the species expected to suffer significant falls in numbers are the Brazil nut, […]
By Joel Connelly15 September 2015 (Seattle PI) – Poaching and slaughter of wild creatures, from Africa’s great elephants to manta rays in the Pacific Ocean, has become the Earth’s fourth-largest illegal criminal activity, creating what conservationists call an “extinction economy.” As one watches the new film, Racing Extinction, by Academy Award-winning documentary maker Louie Psihoyos, […]
20 August 2015 (UVic) – You need not look far to find the world’s “super predator,” a term used by UVic scientists to describe how human dominance has bred an unrelenting predacious global culture that threatens nature’s balance. Research published in the Aug. 21 edition of the journal Science by a team led by Dr. […]
