Restoring and preserving dryland forests and planting more trees to provide food, fodder and fertilizer on small farms are critical steps toward preventing the recurrence of the famine now threatening millions of people in the Horn of Africa, according to forestry experts from the CGIAR Consortium.
The past decade has seen 77,951 fires burn about 6.7 million acres in the United States. One condition that facilitates the spread of wildfires is invasive plant species. Nonnative weeds can modify the vegetation of a landscape and provide a source of fuel that did not previously exist.
Scientists have long debated about the impact on global climate of water evaporated from vegetation. New research from Carnegie's Global Ecology department concludes that evaporated water helps cool the earth as a whole, not just the local area of evaporation, demonstrating that evaporation of water from trees and lakes could have a cooling effect on the entire atmosphere.
Stanford researchers have gotten a glimpse into an uncertain future where increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere will lead to higher levels in the ocean as well, leaving the water more acidic and altering underwater ecosystems.
La Niña, which contributed to extreme weather around the globe during the first half of 2011, has re-emerged in the tropical Pacific Ocean and is forecast to gradually strengthen and continue into winter.
University of Iowa researchers have found high levels of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the deep sediments lining the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal (IHSC) in East Chicago, Ind.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission recently partnered with Fishing for Energy to remove derelict stone crab traps from the marine environment near Everglades City, Fla., making it the second location in Florida to join the unique partnership.
Boston University researchers have estimated that even if international efforts to limit temperature increases to 2 degrees Celcius, mean global temperatures will continue to be extreme.
Restoring prairies to their native vegetation can be approached from several directions. Managers might eliminate invasive plants through use of herbicides, encourage growth of native species through seeding, or manipulate conditions to favor native species.
Trees can reveal key information about fire events, and some trees have a lot to tell — one tree researchers examined endured 14 separate fires through its lifetime.
New research suggests that ancient sharks bred in the shallows of freshwater lakes, forming nurseries for their hatchlings.
The research, conducted by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), focused primarily on the gathering of root characterization and site conditions through fieldwork, and modeling of single, living trees for both slope stability analyses and seepage analyses.
The percent of land area experiencing exceptional drought reached record levels in August in three U.S. states – Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas – amid new concerns about how long the conditions may persist, an official with the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said.
Recent heavy rain and flooding has increased the danger of landslides on moderate to steep slopes, according to scientists in the Bureau of Topographic and Geologic Survey in the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR).
Each year, more than 170 million people visit national forests for recreation. And the physical activity associated with these visits burns 290 billion food calories. That equals enough french fries laid end to end to reach the Moon and back -- twice -- according to a recent study in the Journal of Forestry.
A new report offers insight into public opinion about the environment, including the need to conserve and safeguard the health of our ocean.
The USGS has released an online, interactive decision support system that provides easy access to six newly-developed regional models describing how rivers receive and transport nutrients from natural and human sources to sensitive waters, such as the Gulf of Mexico.
Clouds only amplify climate change, says a Texas A&M University professor in a study that rebuts recent claims that clouds are actually the root cause of climate change.
At Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham), a team led by Malene Hansen, Ph.D., uses a type of worm called Caenorhabditis elegans to work out the molecular underpinnings of the aging process. In a study appearing online Sept. 8 in Current Biology, they found that two cellular processes—lipid metabolism and autophagy -- work together to influence worms' lifespan.
A new form of resistance to fungal disease has been discovered in oilseed rape, one of the world’s most important crops, which could hold the key to developing disease resistant crops.