A NASA-Department of Energy jointly funded study concludes the Earth has been greening over the past 20 years. As climate changed, plants found it easier to grow.

The globally comprehensive, multi-discipline study appears in this week’s Science magazine. The article states climate changes have provided extra doses of water, heat and sunlight in areas where one or more of those ingredients may have been lacking. Plants flourished in places where climatic conditions previously limited gro

Technology is bringing precision agriculture one-step closer to widespread use

USDA-Agricultural Research Service scientists at the George E. Brown, Jr. Salinity Laboratory, Riverside, California, have developed general guidelines for soil mapping using mobile equipment. This advanced technology is valuable for looking at changes in soil quality over time; including the presence of pollutants such as salts, pesticides, and fertilizers; and for use in precision agriculture to determine

By analyzing data on tree pollen extracted from ancient lake sediments, ecologists have sharpened the understanding of how forests can maintain a diversity of species. Their findings indicate that stabilizing processes have been more important than previously thought, and that the human-caused loss of species could upset that stability in ways that remain poorly understood.

“Quantifying the link between stability and diversity, and identifying the factors that promote species diversity, ha

Exhaust from the main engines of NASA’s space shuttle, which is about 97 percent water vapor, can travel to the Arctic in the Earth’s thermosphere where it forms ice to create some of the Earth’s highest clouds that literally shine at night, according to a new study led by the Naval Research Laboratory and jointly funded by NASA and the Office of Naval Research.

The thermosphere is the highest layer in our atmosphere, occupying the region above about 55 miles (88 kilometers) altitude. The c

Engineers at Cardiff University, UK, are using the latest technology to update a time-honoured practice – and turn a serious environmental problem into a valuable resource.

Modern industrial societies generate vast quantities of waste – the UK alone produces more than a million tonnes every day. A large proportion of it has traditionally been put into “landfill” – literally dumped into large holes in the land, but space is running out and the damage to the environment from landfill sites is

Defying ocean’s end offers global perspective on eve of pew report

For the first time ever, the world’s largest environmental organizations, working with scientists, the business community and international governments, met specifically to develop a comprehensive and achievable agenda to reverse the decline in health of the world’s ocean.

The five-day Defying Ocean’s End (DOE) conference marked the launch of a new, science-based international effort to restore and maintain

Fishy noises could be the answer for improved reef fisheries management according to an international team of researchers.

Some juvenile coral reef fish are attracted by sounds they would have heard while they were in the egg. By using these sounds, the fish can be led to artificial reefs where they will start new colonies. It may be possible in the future to lead young fish into overfished areas, and super-stock Marine Protected Areas.

Marine biologist Stephen Simpson of the Unive

Research led by scientists at the U of T and Caprion Pharmaceuticals have uncovered the basis for a diagnostic, immunotherapy and vaccine, providing a way to detect and treat the brain-wasting damage of infectious prions like those found in mad cow disease and its human version, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

Dr. Neil Cashman, a principal investigator at U of T’s Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases and professor in the Department of Medicine (neurology) and a Caprion founder,

The EU examines ways to reverse damage in the Mediterranean and Black Seas

Fifty years of intense development and exploitation have resulted in significant change to the fragile natural resources of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and their coastal areas. Agreeing ways to prevent further environmental degradation will be the focus of the “International Conference on the Sustainable Development of the Mediterranean and Black Sea Environment” (IASON), to be held from 28 May to 1June i

The old song, asking rain to “go away” and “come again another day,” may get even older for people who live in large coastal cities, according to new NASA-funded research. According to the study, urban heat islands, created from pavement and buildings in big coastal cities like Houston, cause warm air to rise and interact with sea breezes to create heavier and more frequent rainfall in and downwind of the cities. Analysis of Houston-area rain-gauge data, both prior to and since urbanization,

If an asteroid crashes into the Earth, it is likely to splash down somewhere in the oceans that cover 70 percent of the planet’s surface. Huge tsunami waves, spreading out from the impact site like the ripples from a rock tossed into a pond, would inundate heavily populated coastal areas. A computer simulation of an asteroid impact tsunami developed by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows waves as high as 400 feet sweeping onto the Atlantic Coast of the United States.

390 million hectares (circa 80% of the total land area) in Europe is currently laid to waste by acid soil toxicity. Now EUREKA project CEREALSTRESSOL is developing new varieties of crops that can cope with adverse due to natural stresses such as drought and due to abiotic, non-living stresses such as acid soil toxicity.

Acid soil toxicity is caused by the leaching of aluminum, manganese and other toxins into the soil through acid rain, acid forming fertilizers as well as the decay of

One barrier to protecting biodiversity is that there are no good ways of figuring out how many species there are in large areas. Now we may finally be able to find out: a new method accurately predicts the total number of North American butterfly species even when only a tenth of the ecoregions are sampled.

This could “at last enable ecology to estimate worldwide species diversity,” say Michael Rosenzweig, Will Turner and Jonathan Cox of the University of Arizona, Tucson, and Taylor Rickett

New research reveals a surprising risk factor for extinction: monogamy. Large mammals that live in pairs or have small harems are far more likely to die out than those with big harems in reserves in Ghana.

“In avoiding extinction, it pays to be promiscuous,” says Justin Brashares of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who presents this work in the June issue of Conservation Biology. “This study is the first to show a strong link between social behavior and risk of extinction in

As concerns rise about the ecological impacts of genetically modified crops, a new Indiana University study urges a pragmatic approach to dealing with “transgenes” that escape from crop plants into the wild. Use of transgenic crops is becoming more common as farmers reap benefits from the plants’ decreased susceptibility to disease and increased marketplace value.

IU biologist Loren Rieseberg and former postdoctoral fellow John Burke (now at Vanderbilt University) reported in the May 2

Hydrothermal vents and cold seeps were discovered more than 20 years ago, yet remarkably little is known about the biodiversity of these chemosynthetic ecosystems. Deep-sea vents and seeps occur in very different geological settings, yet in both types of systems, microbial primary production supports an abundance of large invertebrates, such as giant tubeworms, clams, and mussels.

These animals in turn provide refuge for a diverse invertebrate fauna. Because seeps are considered to be more