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Glaciers in Central Asia Experience Considerable Loss in Glacier Mass and Area

Glaciers in Central Asia experience substantial losses in glacier mass and area. Along the Tien Shan, Central Asia's largest mountain range, glaciers have lost 27% of their mass and 18% of their area during the last 50 years.

18 Aug 2015

CWRU Researchers Suggest Early Salt Exposure May Weaken Immunity of Juvenile Frogs

Millions of tons of road salt are applied to streets and highways across the United States each winter to melt ice and snow and make travel safer, but the effects of salt on wildlife are poorly understood.

18 Aug 2015

New Discovery by IU Paleobotanist Raises Questions About Early Evolutionary History of Flowering Plants

Indiana University paleobotanist David Dilcher and colleagues in Europe have identified a 125 million- to 130 million-year-old freshwater plant as one of earliest flowering plants on Earth.

18 Aug 2015

WHOI Researchers Design and Test Innovative System for Studying Planktonic Larvae in Coastal Ocean Waters

A group of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers and engineers have developed and tested an innovative new system for sampling small planktonic larvae in coastal ocean waters and understanding their distribution.

18 Aug 2015

Variation in Color Artwork Affects Dynamics of Moth Populations

Kalmar/Halle(Saale). Why some species of plants and animals vary more in number than others is a central issue in ecology. Now researchers at Linnaeus University in Sweden and from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) have found an important finding to answer this question: Individual differences have a positive and stabilizing effect on the number of moths.

14 Aug 2015

Researchers Observe Leapfrog Migration Pattern in Eastern Golden Eagles

Eastern North America is home to a small population of Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos), but despite their potential vulnerability to habitat loss and other threats, little information has been available on the patterns of their annual migration.

14 Aug 2015

Gravel-Nesting Birds Raise More Successful Offspring

When it comes to reproduction, not every individual equally pulls his or her weight. Dana Herman and Mark Colwell of Humboldt State University spent 13 years tracking the successes and failures of almost 200 individual Snowy Plovers (Charadrius nivosus) nesting at a variety of sites in Humboldt County, California, to identify the factors that could be influencing reproductive success for birds in this threatened population.

14 Aug 2015

Climate Change Favors Wild Boar Population Growth in Europe

The wild boar population in Europe has been constantly growing since the 1980s. This is more and more becoming a problem for agriculture when animals raid the fields, looking for feed. “It is not so easy to determine the number of wild boars in Europe,” says wildlife biologist and first author of the study, Sebastian Vetter. “Therefore we analysed data on hunting bags and road accidents involving wild boar. Doing this we were able to depict the growth of the wild boar population.”

14 Aug 2015

Lack of Baseline Data Challenge Evaluation of Environmental Impacts of 2010 Deepwater Horizon Blowout

In the spring of 2010, the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded, initiating an uncontrolled deep-water oil and gas blowout from the Macondo wellhead. The uncontrolled hydrocarbon discharge continued for 85 days and the environmental impacts were substantial.

10 Aug 2015

Biodiversity in Herb Layer has not Changed in Recent Decades

Climate change, environmental pollution or land use changes - there are numerous influences threatening biodiversity in forests around the globe. The resulting decrease in biodiversity is a matter of common knowledge today - amongst scientists as well as amongst the general public.

29 Jul 2015