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Categories: Energy: Fossil Fuels, Environmental: Ecosystems

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Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

New insights into survival of ancient Western Desert peoples      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers have used more than two decades of satellite-derived environmental data to form hypotheses about the possible foraging habitats of pre-contact Aboriginal peoples living in Australia's Western Desert.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Sick bats also employ 'social distancing' which prevents the outbreak of epidemics, study suggests      (via sciencedaily.com) 

In a new study, researchers demonstrate that sick bats, just like ill humans, prefer to stay away from their communities, probably as a means for recovery, and possibly also as a measure for protecting others.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Using fossil plant molecules to track down the Green Sahara      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers have developed a new concept to explain the phenomenon known as Green Sahara. They demonstrate that a permanent vegetation cover in the Sahara was only possible under two overlapping rainy seasons.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Does cold wildfire smoke contribute to water repellent soils in burned areas?      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

After a wildfire, soils in burned areas often become water repellent, leading to increased erosion and flooding after rainfall events - a phenomenon that many scientists have attributed to smoke and heat-induced changes in soil chemistry. But this post-fire water repellency may also be caused by wildfire smoke in the absence of heat, according to a new article.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Road verges provide opportunity for wildflowers, bees and trees      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Road verges cover 1.2% of land in Great Britain - an area the size of Dorset - and could be managed to help wildlife, new research shows.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Prehistoric horses, bison shared diet      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers found that a broader diversity of plants in the Arctic 40,000 years ago supported both more -- and more diverse -- big animals like horses, bison and ground sloths. The research could inform conservation of wood bison in Alaska.

Environmental: Ecosystems Geoscience: Landslides
Published

Nature has enormous potential to fight climate change and biodiversity loss in the UK      (via sciencedaily.com) 

A new report details how nature can be a powerful ally in responding to the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Cryptic sense of orientation of bats localized: the sixth sense of mammals lies in the eye      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Mammals see with their eyes, hear with their ears and smell with their nose. But which sense or organ allows them to orient themselves on their migrations, which sometimes go far beyond their local foraging areas and therefore require an extended ability to navigate? Scientific experiments now show that the cornea of the eyes is the location of such an important sense in migrating bats.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Cave deposits reveal Pleistocene permafrost thaw, absent predicted levels of CO2 release      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Expanding the study of prehistoric permafrost thawing to North America, researchers found evidence in mineral deposits from caves in Canada that permafrost thawing took place as recently as 400,000 years ago, in temperatures not much warmer than today. But they did not find evidence the thawing caused the release of predicted levels of carbon dioxide stored in the frozen terrain.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Spring forest flowers likely key to bumblebee survival      (via sciencedaily.com) 

For more than a decade, ecologists have been warning of a downward trend in bumble bee populations across North America, with habitat destruction a primary culprit in those losses. While efforts to preserve wild bees in the Midwest often focus on restoring native flowers to prairies, a new study finds evidence of a steady decline in the availability of springtime flowers in wooded landscapes.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Climate change is making Indian monsoon seasons more chaotic      (via sciencedaily.com) 

If global warming continues unchecked, summer monsoon rainfall in India will become stronger and more erratic. This is the central finding of an analysis by a team of researchers that compared more than 30 state-of-the-art climate models from all around the world. The study predicts more extremely wet years in the future - with potentially grave consequences for more than one billion people's well-being, economy, food systems and agriculture.

Environmental: Ecosystems Geoscience: Environmental Issues
Published

Ozone pollution harms maize crops, study finds      (via sciencedaily.com) 

A new study has shown that ozone in the lower layers of the atmosphere decreases crop yields in maize and changes the types of chemicals that are found inside the leaves.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Low risk of researchers passing coronavirus to North American bats      (via sciencedaily.com) 

A new study finds that the risk is low that scientists could pass coronavirus to North American bats during winter research.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Study finds microbial-plant interactions affect the microbial response to climate change      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Biologists have discovered that plants influence how their bacterial and fungal neighbors react to climate change. This finding contributes crucial new information to a hot topic in environmental science: in what manner will climate change alter the diversity of both plants and microbiomes on the landscape?

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

The persistent danger after landscape fires      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Every year, an estimated four percent of the world's vegetated land surface burns, leaving more than 250 megatons of carbonized plants behind. A study has now recorded elevated concentrations of environmentally persistent free radicals (EPFR) in these charcoals - in some cases even up to five years after the fire. These EPFR may generate reactive substances, which in turn harm plants and living organisms.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Ancient megafaunal mutualisms and extinctions as factors in plant domestication      (via sciencedaily.com) 

The development of agriculture is often thought of as a human innovation in response to climate change or population pressure. A new manuscript challenges that concept, suggesting that plants that had already evolved adaptive traits for life among large-bodied grazing and browsing animals were more likely to prosper on a highly disturbed anthropogenic landscape.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Greenland caves: Time travel to a warm Arctic      (via sciencedaily.com) 

An international team of scientists presents an analysis of sediments from a cave in northeast Greenland, that cover a time period between about 588,000 to 549,000 years ago. This interval was warmer and wetter than today, the cave deposits provide an outlook in a possible future warmer world due to climate change.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

How grasslands respond to climate change      (via sciencedaily.com) 

The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and concurrent climate change has led to yield reductions of grass-rich grassland vegetation in the past century.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Last Ice Age: Precipitation caused maximum advance of Alpine Glaciers      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Geologists unexpectedly found mineral deposits in former ice caves in the Austrian Alps dating back to the peak of the last ice age. These special calcite crystals demonstrate that intensive snowfall during the second half of the year triggered a massive glacier advance leading to the climax of the last ice age.

Environmental: Ecosystems
Published

Whooping cranes steer clear of wind turbines when selecting stopover sites      (via sciencedaily.com) 

An article reports that whooping cranes migrating through the U.S. Great Plains avoid 'rest stop' sites that are within 5 km of wind-energy infrastructure.