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Categories: Environmental: Ecosystems, Mathematics: Statistics

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Scientists found that some reefs in the tropical Pacific Ocean could maintain high coral cover into the second half of this century by shuffling the symbiotic algae they host. The findings offer a ray of hope in an often-dire picture of the future of coral reefs worldwide.

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The endangered Bahama Warbler may be surviving on just one island following Hurricane Dorian's devastation in 2019, according to researchers. A new study shows the bird's distribution and ecology on Grand Bahama before the hurricane struck. But the team says that the warbler may now only survive on neighboring Abaco island, after hurricane Dorian destroyed the bird's forest habitat on Grand Bahama. The research comes from the same team that found what is thought to have been the last living Bahama Nuthatch, previously thought to have been extinct.

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Researchers have found that carbon sequestration and plant resilience as well as forage pasture yield can be increased through key adjustments in agricultural management. The results provide a roadmap for reducing pesticide loads in soils and the first steps towards increasing climate change mitigation while improving crop yield in grasslands.

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The collapse of the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age has been blamed on various factors, from war with other territories to internal strife. Now, scientists have used tree ring and isotope records to pinpoint a more likely culprit: three straight years of severe drought.

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In the course of five years, citizens who went on sailing cruises to the Arctic surveyed and collected plastic debris that had washed up on the shores of Svalbard. This has now been analyzed. According to the findings, one third of the plastic debris which still bore imprints or labels allowing an analysis of their origin came from Europe, and much of that number from Germany.

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New research shows that degraded savanna ecosystems can reap lasting benefits from a single seeding of native understory plants. Once a diverse understory of savanna plants became established, its long-term persistence was relatively unaffected by environmental factors -- with one exception. Higher temperatures during the height of the growing season were associated with poorer long-term survival among some species, indicating one threat posed by a warming climate.

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The Arctic is rapidly losing sea ice, even during winter months when temperatures are below freezing and ice should be recovering from the summer melt. A new study found powerful storms called atmospheric rivers are increasingly reaching the Arctic in winter, slowing sea ice recovery and accounting for a third of all winter sea ice decline, according to a team led by Penn State scientists.

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Widespread tree scorch in the Pacific Northwest that became visible shortly after multiple days of record-setting, triple-digit temperatures in June 2021 was more attributable to heat than to drought conditions, researchers say.

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Trees living in conditions where the carbon dioxide (CO2) has been artificially elevated are likely to become more efficient in conserving water.

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A research team examined what happens to mountain snowpacks when sunny, midwinter dry spells occur in forests impacted by severe wildfire.

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Scientists discovered the first-ever Dickinsonia fossil in India two years ago, changing our understanding of how the continent came to be. Now, new research shows the 'fossil' was just a beehive all along, changing our understanding for a second time, and the original scientists now support the new findings.

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A study found that under more severe climate warming scenarios, the inventory of trees used for timber in the continental United States could decline by as much as 23% by 2100. The largest inventory losses would occur in two of the leading timber regions in the U.S., which are both in the South.

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As deserts expanded their range over the past 5-7 million years, many plants invaded the new biome and rapidly diversified, producing amazing adaptations to drought and heat. Can plants continue to adapt to increasing aridity caused by climate change? A new study that addressed the origins of desert adaptation concluded that one group of desert plants, rock daisies, came preadapted to aridity, likely helping them survive desert conditions. Not all plants may be so lucky.

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Populations of various species of aquatic insects and other invertebrates respond to flooding and waterway drying due to drought in different ways that can be anticipated, according to a new study that employed a novel method to assess the stability of stream ecosystems.

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In a new study, a research team discovered evidence that browsing by white-tailed deer had relatively little long-term impact on two tree species in a northern forest.

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Researchers tested a large sample of the major AI technologies available today and found that not only did they reproduce human biases in facial age recognition, but they exaggerated those biases.

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Desert bighorn sheep whose Southern California range is bisected by freeways may one day benefit from modeling designed to show where the animals would be most apt to use overpasses to safely cross the interstates.

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Researchers report that elephants play a key role in creating forests which store more atmospheric carbon and maintaining the biodiversity of forests in Africa. If the already critically endangered elephants become extinct, rainforest of central and west Africa, the second largest rainforest on earth, would lose between six and nine percent of their ability to capture atmospheric carbon, amplifying planetary warming.

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Seed dispersal is an essential process for the evolution and ecology of terrestrial plants, making discoveries of uncommon seed dispersal agents particularly interesting. Scientists now reveal that the Amami rabbit (Pentalagus furnessi) is a major seed dispersal agent for the non-photosynthetic plant Balanophora yuwanensis. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first known instance of rabbits serving as seed dispersal agents in Asia.

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High-severity wildfire in California's Sierra Nevada forests has nearly quintupled compared to before Euro-American settlement, rising from less than 10% per year then to up to 43% today, a new study finds.