By Rosemary Brandt 2 October 2019 (UA News) – As the Earth’s temperature warms, its hydrological cycle kicks into overdrive – wet years get wetter, and dry years get drier. According to a new University of Arizona-led study, these increased rainfall extremes could have dire consequences for the semi-arid forests of the western U.S. “In […]
By Graham Readfearn 3 October 2019 (The Guardian) – A cascade of impacts including rising sea levels, heatwaves and back-to-back tropical cyclones has created 400 kilometers [249 miles] of dead and badly damaged mangroves in the Gulf of Carpentaria, a scientific monitoring trip has discovered. Prof Norman Duke, of James Cook University, spent 10 days […]
GLAND, Switzerland, 27 September 2019 (IUCN) – Over half (58 percent) of Europe’s endemic trees are threatened with extinction, according to assessments of the state of the continent’s biodiversity published today by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The introduction of invasive species, unsustainable logging and urban development are key threats causing the […]
By Bob Yirka 15 August 2019 (Phys.org) – A large international team of researchers has found evidence of a connection between an increase in the atmospheric vapor deficit and worldwide vegetation loss. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their analysis of climate datasets and the correlation of an increase in […]
By Hayley Dunning 30 April 2019 (Imperial College London) – Bees exposed to a neonicotinoid pesticide fly only a third of the distance that unexposed bees are able to achieve. Flight behaviour is crucial for determining how bees forage, so reduced flight performance from pesticide exposure could lead to colonies going hungry and pollination services […]
By Adriana Brasileiro 19 June 2019 MIAMI (Miami Herald) – Activists fighting to preserve a slice of one of the world’s rarest forests lost what was likely the last legal battle to stop the imperiled ecosystem from turning into a Walmart-anchored development. One of the last remnants in Miami-Dade of pine rockland, a forest that […]
By Amanda Gonzalez Bengtsson 11 June 2019 (Stockholm University) – For the first time ever, scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Stockholm University, have compiled a global analysis of all plant extinction records documented from across the world. This unique dataset published today in leading journal, Nature Ecology & Evolution, brings together data […]
6 May 2019 (IPBES) – Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history — and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the summary of which was […]
By Hannah Hoag 11 April 2019 (Science News) – The Chugach people of southern Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula have picked berries for generations. Tart blueberries and sweet, raspberry-like salmonberries — an Alaska favorite — are baked into pies and boiled into jams. But in the summer of 2009, the bushes stayed brown and the berries never […]
By Sarah Lazarus 27 March 2019 (CNN) – In 2014, Mark Sabbatini noticed cracks in his apartment walls. Then a mysterious bulge appeared in his bedroom and the apartment block’s communal staircase became crooked. “Doors and windows weren’t shutting properly,” he says. Sabbatini, the editor of a local newspaper, was living in Longyearbyen, the world’s […]
