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Categories: Environmental: Ecosystems, Paleontology: Climate

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Ice sheets can retreat up to 600 meters a day during periods of climate warming, 20 times faster than the highest rate of retreat previously measured. An international team of researchers used high-resolution imagery of the seafloor to reveal just how quickly a former ice sheet that extended from Norway retreated at the end of the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago.

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By observing the night sky, medieval monks unwittingly recorded some of history's largest volcanic eruptions. An international team of researchers drew on readings of 12th and 13th century European and Middle Eastern chronicles, along with ice core and tree ring data, to accurately date some of the biggest volcanic eruptions the world has ever seen. Their results uncover new information about one of the most volcanically active periods in Earth's history, which some think helped to trigger the Little Ice Age, a long interval of cooling that saw the advance of European glaciers.

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Researchers created a new way to estimate the abundance of invasive 'sleeper' species in freshwater ecosystems and help guide management strategies.

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A previously underestimated risk lurks in the frozen soil of the Arctic. When the ground thaws and becomes unstable in response to climate change, it can lead to the collapse of industrial infrastructure, and in turn to the increased release of pollutants. Moreover, contaminations already present will be able to more easily spread throughout ecosystems. According to new findings, there are at least 13,000 to 20,000 contaminated sites in the Arctic that could pose a serious risk in the future.

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The number of insects has been declining for years. This has already been well documented for agricultural areas. In forests, however, temporal trends are mostly studied for insect species that are considered pests. Now, a research team has studied the trends of very many insect species in German forests. Contrary to what the researchers had suspected, the results showed that the majority of the studied species are declining.

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Marine predators have expanded their ranges into the Arctic waters over the last twenty years, driven by climate change and associated increases in productivity.

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A groundbreaking three-year study in the South Pacific has found evidence that ocean warming can trigger outbreaks of 'dinoflagellate-infecting RNA viruses' that attack symbiotic algae inside corals. Coral reef viruses have gained greater attention since being implicated in 2021 as a possible cause of stony coral tissue loss disease that has decimated Florida and Caribbean reefs for almost a decade.

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In the face of a warming climate that is having a profound effect on global biodiversity and will change the distribution and abundance of many animals, a research team has developed a statistical model that improves estimates of habitat suitability and extinction probability for cold-blooded animals as temperatures climb.

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Researchers show that rising temperatures in northern regions may damage peatlands: critical ecosystems for storing carbon from the atmosphere -- and could decouple vital processes in microbial support systems.

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Researchers are deploying the latest mapping techniques to identify the most important suburban habitat for North America's largest woodpecker. Wildlife habitat in congested places is becoming increasingly fragmented as forests give way to new construction. Eventually, this could spell trouble to an animal with specific habitat needs like the pileated woodpecker.

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For tiny salamanders squirming skin-to-soil, big-picture weather patterns may seem as far away as outer space. But for decades, scientists have mostly relied on free-air temperature data at large spatial scales to predict future salamander distributions under climate change. The outlook was dire for the mini ecosystem engineers, suggesting near elimination of habitat in crucial areas.

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Today, ants are pretty much everywhere. To learn more about how these insects conquered the world, scientists used a combination of fossils, DNA, and data on the habitat preferences of modern species to piece together how ants and plants have been evolving together over the past 60 million years. They found that when flowering plants spread out from forests, the ants followed, kicking off the evolution of the thousands of ant species alive today.

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End-of-dry-season CO2 pulses recur each year in the atmosphere above the Australian continent, a discovery made by an international research team led by an environmental physicist. To investigate the carbon fluxes over Australia, the researchers studied atmospheric CO2 measurements. Their analyses show that CO2 emissions spike when heavy rain falls on dried-out soil, thus activating microorganisms in that soil.

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European forests are increasingly turning brown in the course of hot, dry summers. In the scorching summer of 2022, Europe experienced more trees turning brown than ever, with 37% of temperate and Mediterranean forest regions affected. In the three-year meteorological history of low-?greenness events, characteristic weather signals can be found as precursors of the events.

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The Indo-West Pacific is the largest marine ecosystem on Earth, but scientists who study its diversity have to contend with a problem so well-known it was remarked upon by Charles Darwin: related species in the IWP have similar appearances, making it difficult to assess just how many there are. A new study reveals that nearly identical crab species have one consistently distinguishing feature, which only evolves when their ranges overlap.

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Antarctic circulation could slow by more than 40 per cent over the next three decades, with significant implications for the oceans and the climate.

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Life comes in all shapes in sizes, but some sizes are more popular than others, new research has found. A survey of body sizes of all Earth's living organisms has uncovered an unexpected pattern. Contrary to what current theories can explain, our planet's biomass -- the material that makes up all living organisms -- is concentrated in organisms at either end of the size spectrum.

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Moths are more efficient pollinators at night than day-flying pollinators such as bees, finds new research.

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Salt marshes are some of the most biologically productive ecosystems on Earth. They play an outsized role in nitrogen cycling, act as carbon sinks, protect coastal development from storm surge, and provide critical habitats and nurseries for many fish, shellfish, and coastal birds. According to new research, more than 90 percent of the world's salt marshes are likely to be underwater by the end of the century. These findings come from a 50-year study of ecosystem changes in Great Sippewissett Marsh in Falmouth, Mass.

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Scientists often look to the past for clues about how Earth's landscapes might shift under a changing climate, and for insight into the migrations of human communities through time. A new study offers both by providing, for the first time, a reconstruction of prehistoric temperatures for some of the first known North American settlements.