WASHINGTON, DC, 23 February 2012 (ENS) – New Orleans, Houston, and Albuquerque are losing trees faster than any other U.S. cities, and across the country tree cover is declining at a rate of about four million trees per year, finds new U.S. Forest Service research published in the journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. Researchers […]
Contact: Qinfeng Guo, qguo@fs.fed.us, 828-257-4246, Pensoft Publishers23 February 2012(Pensoft Publishers) – Extensive ongoing research on biotic invasions around the world constantly increases data availability and improves data quality. New research in the United States shows how using improved data from previous studies on the establishment of exotic plant species changes the understanding of patterns of […]
Contact: Rachel Feldman, rfeldman@univ.haifa.ac.il, 972-482-88722, University of Haifa23 February 2012 A 28-year comparative study of wild emmer wheat and wild barley populations has revealed that these progenitors of cultivated wheat and barley, which are the best hope for crop improvement, have undergone changes over this period of global warming. The changes present a real concern […]
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent19 February 2012 Biologists at the University of Sussex have been analysing how effectively different species of flowers attract foraging insects. Preliminary results have revealed there is a 100-fold difference in the lure that some popular garden plants have for honey bees and bumblebees. The best plants are the Mexican giant […]
Between 2000 and 2010, the worst drought ever recorded since Euro-American settlement hit the Colorado River Basin. Water levels in Lake Mead dropped to record lows. The drought not only threatened the supply of water to cities like Las Vegas, it also harmed the ecosystems and riparian areas that support countless fish, plants, and animals […]
Prominent doom blogger Gail Zawacki, of Wit’s End fame, has succumbed to the demands of her high-school-aged kid and created a new website for her collection of photographs and scientific papers. Here’s how Gail describes the new site: I hadn’t paid much attention to climate change, even though I saw An Inconvenient Truth when it […]
By Mike Barrett, NaturalSociety12 January 2012 It has recently been reported that certain research was suppressed concerning the bee decline which has been occurring over the past few years. It seems that the large sum of money raked in by Bayer, a maker of pesticides, was enough to kick research under the carpet that linked […]
By FELICITY BARRINGER23 January 2012 To see how thoroughly the concept of ecosystem services — the economic analysis of the natural world’s intersection with human endeavors — is embedded in climate change research, check out this forecast from a group led by researchers at Duke University and the Environmental Defense Fund. It examines the future […]
Contact: David T. Eisenhauer (FWS), 703-358-2284 John Ewald (NOAA), 202-482-3978 Laura MacLean (AFWA), 202-624-7744 19 January 2012 WASHINGTON – In partnership with state, tribal, and federal agency partners, the Obama Administration today released the first draft national strategy to help decision makers and resource managers prepare for and help reduce the impacts of climate change […]
ISI Web of Science search of the trend in published reports of climate-related forest mortality in the scientific literature, for the years 1985–2009. Plotted bars show the percent of references using the topic words “forest AND mortality AND drought”, relative to all “forest” references. Line represents the linear regression model fitted to the data (R2 […]
