By Jeremy Hance18 September 2013 (mongabay.com) – One of the richest ecosystems on the planet may not survive a hotter climate without human help, according to a sobering new paper in the open source journal PLoS ONE. Although little-studied compared to lowland rainforests, the cloud forests of the Andes are known to harbor explosions of […]
By JULIE CART6 August 2013 RIO GRANDE VALLEY, N.M. (Los Angeles Times) – Scientists in the West have a particular way of walking a landscape and divining its secrets: They kick a toe into loamy soil or drag a boot heel across the desert’s crust, leaning down to squint at the tiny excavation. Try that […]
By Alexander Holmgren 1 August 2013 (mongabay.com) – Conservationist’s faced a crushing blow last month as two butterfly species native to Florida were declared extinct. “Occasionally, these types of butterflies disappear for long periods of time but are rediscovered in another location,” said Larry Williams, U.S. Fish and Wildlife state supervisor for ecological services. We […]
30 July 2013 (mongabay.com) – Oil palm plantations have extinguished the last habitat of a rainforest tree in Malaysia, reports the New Straits Times. Last week the Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM), a state agency, announced that the last stands of keruing paya (Dipterocarpus coriaceus) in Peninsular Malaysia were wiped out when Bikam Forest Reserve […]
Mutated tomato (left) from Mata-Hyun, compared with normal tomato (right). 15 July 2013 (MSN) – It might be wise to steer clear of vegetables from Japan’s Fukushima area for, oh, say a few hundred years. A Korean website assembled this image collection of produce from towns and villages surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. […]
By Terry Devitt 6 May 2013 (UW–Madison) – For plants and animals forced to tough out harsh winter weather, the coverlet of snow that blankets the north country is a refuge, a stable beneath-the-snow habitat that gives essential respite from biting winds and subzero temperatures. But in a warming world, winter and spring snow cover […]
By Joanna M. Foster 7 May 2013 (Takepart.com) – On the southern edge of Louisiana, there is almost as much water as land. You can’t drive to anyone’s house, you have to travel by boat, and sometimes there are hours of water between neighbors. It takes a special breed to make a home here, in […]
By Sonya Auer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst26 April 2013 (LiveScience) – Plants and animals in a given area form an ecological system of interacting species. Impacts on one, or just a few, species can ripple throughout the system and have indirect effects on other species within a larger community. Many plants and animals are sensitive […]
By MARTIN FACKLER24 April 2013 YAKUSHIMA, Japan (The New York Times) – A mysterious pestilence has befallen this island’s primeval forests, leaving behind the bleached, skeletal remains of dead trees that now dot the dark green mountainsides. Osamu Nagafuchi, an environmental engineer with a passion for the island and its rugged terrain, believes he […]
ORLANDO, Florida (MSN) – South Florida is fighting a growing infestation of one of the world’s most destructive invasive species: the giant African land snail, which can grow as big as a rat and gnaw through stucco and plaster. More than 1,000 of the mollusks are being caught each week in Miami-Dade and 117,000 in […]
