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Categories: Environmental: Ecosystems, Environmental: Wildfires

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Scientists have discovered that an extreme weather event that resulted in rapid sea temperature drops of up to 10 degrees was the primary cause of a catastrophic coral die-off event off the coast of Costa Rica.

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Rates of traumatic injury among workers in the Oregon agricultural and construction sectors are significantly higher during periods of high heat compared with periods of more moderate weather, a recent study found.

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Millions more people across the globe are relying on our endangered coral reefs than 20 years ago, according to new figures into population growth in coastal areas.

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The use of virtual fencing to manage cattle grazing on sagebrush rangelands has the potential to create fuel breaks needed to help fight wildfires, a recent study found.

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When you're cooking or cleaning inside your home, what chemicals are you breathing, and are they potentially harmful? Chemists have given us a solid start on the answer. A large, collaborative research experiment recently attempted to map the airborne chemistry of a typical home. Researchers performed typical home activities like cooking and cleaning and used sophisticated instrumentation to document the chemistry that resulted.

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Shallow reefs and the creatures that inhabit them are changing due to rising ocean temperatures, but these impacts have been obscured by a lack of comprehensive local data. A team of researchers has been tracking changes in the country's reefs for over a decade, and they now describe how they used fine-scale data to illustrate how warming waters impact tropical and temperate reef fish communities differently.

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At the beginning of the year, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the Middle East ranks among the regions with the worst air quality. There is a common misconception that desert dust is the most significant cause of air pollution from particulate matter in this region, but a new study has shown that more than 90 percent of the particulate matter that is detrimental to health originates from anthropogenic sources. This human-made fine particulate matter differs from the less harmful desert dust particles. Scientists determined this through ship borne measurements and verified it in elaborate modeling calculations. The anthropogenic particles are primarily caused by the production and use of fossil fuels such as oil and gas. They are generally smaller than desert dust and can penetrate deep into the lungs.

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Coral reefs can adapt to climate change if given the chance to evolve, according to a study.

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Scientists have developed a way to forecast which of the Great Basin's more than 60 million acres have the highest probability of a large rangeland fire. The forecasts come from a model developed by the researchers that combines measures of accumulated annual and perennial grass vegetation that is potential fire fuel with recent weather and climate data. When integrated, this information can be translated into maps showing the likelihood of a large wildfire -- greater than 1,000 acres--across the Great Basin. These forecasts also can be scaled down to predict fire risk for counties or even single pastures.

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Feeding honey to hibernating bears helped researchers find the potential genetic keys to the bears' insulin control, an advance that could ultimately lead to a treatment for human diabetes. Every year, bears gain an enormous amount of weight, then barely move for months, behavior that would spell diabetes in humans, but not for bears whose bodies can turn insulin resistance on and off almost like a switch. In the hunt for the bears' secret, scientists observed thousands of changes in gene expression during hibernation, but now a research team has narrowed that down to eight proteins.

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As the frequency of wildfires has increased, so have pollutants in the waters from burned watersheds, say researchers in a review paper that highlights the need for more research in the area.

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Researchers have studied the emergence of hypoxia -- low oxygen levels -- in the Gulf over three decades, a stressor on the health of marine life in the region and the larger ecosystem.

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Refreezing the poles by reducing incoming sunlight would be both feasible and remarkably cheap, according to new research.

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A new method has been developed for identifying and prioritizing research activities related to maritime safety and security issues for the Arctic and the North-Atlantic (ANA) region.

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Coral reef islands and their reefs -- found across in the Indo-Pacific -- naturally grow and shrink due to complex biological and physical processes that have yet to be fully understood. Now, climate change is disrupting them further, leading to new uncertainties for legal maritime zones and small island states. Rising sea levels, coupled with the natural variability of atoll islands and coral reefs, is creating new uncertainty in international law, with geopolitical implications.

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A machine learning model can evaluate the effectiveness of different management strategies.

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A new study finds that climate models are unreliable when it comes to predicting the damage that tropical cyclones will do to sensitive coral reefs.

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Eight ice caves in four Austrian federal states: A team of geologists has comprehensively documented the loss and gain of ice in Alpine ice caves over the last 2000 years for the first time. The geologists warn: The ice of smaller caves especially is in danger of disappearing in the near future and with it a valuable climate archive.

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The 2019/20 wildfires in Australia transported more smoke into the atmosphere than observed ever before anywhere in the world. In the so-called Black Summer, three times as many particles reached high air layers as in the previous record wildfires in Canada during summer 2017. Research now reveals the climate impact of these huge fires: Smoke particles with a total mass of around one million tonnes spread across the southern hemisphere and affected the climate for about one and a half years by warming the upper atmosphere and cooling the lower atmosphere close to Earth's surface.

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New research has mapped the DNA from more than 150 species of native rodents from across Australia, New Guinea and Melanesian islands, painting a clearer picture of how they're related and how they ended up spreading across the Pacific.