“The study highlights the importance of plant science for society by laying out myriad questions and technical challenges that, if solved, could sustainably support the increasing human population on a planet under climate change,” said Sanna Sevanto, a plant physiologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-author of the study recently published in the journal …
How can we tackle the biggest challenges? Ask a plant Read More »
Nearly half a gigaton of carbon (or 1.76 billion tons of CO2) was released from burning boreal forests in North America and Eurasia in 2021, 150 percent higher than annual mean CO2 emissions between 2000 and 2020, the scientists reported in a paper in Science. “According to our measurements, boreal fires in 2021 shattered previous …
Wildfires in 2021 emitted a record-breaking amount of carbon dioxide Read More »
Over the past 200 years, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere has more than doubled. This is mainly due to human meat consumption: For one thing, cows and other ruminants produce methane during digestion. Another important source is the excrement of the animals. “One-third of the world’s human-made methane comes from livestock,” explains Felix …
Livestock farming: Additive to make slurry more climate-friendly Read More »
Rainfall in the US-Mexico border region causes complications for wastewater treatment and results in untreated sewage being diverted into the Tijuana River and flowing into the ocean in south Imperial Beach. This input of contaminated water has caused chronic coastal water pollution in Imperial Beach for decades. New research shows that sewage-polluted coastal waters transfer …
Dr Anran Cheng (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford), lead author of the study, said: ‘Our model shows the importance of factoring in the high diffusivity of helium and the long timescales needed to accumulate significant gas quantities, and the fact that the entire geological system acts dynamically to affect the process. This model …
A newly published study of a stalagmite found in a cave in southern Wisconsin reveals previously undetected history of the local climate going back thousands of years. The new findings provide strong evidence that a series of massive and abrupt warming events that punctuated the most recent ice age likely enveloped vast swaths of the …
Wisconsin cave holds tantalizing clues to ancient climate changes, future shifts Read More »
A new study from Tulane University which compared popular diets on both nutritional quality and environmental impact found that the keto and paleo diets, as eaten by American adults, scored among the lowest on overall nutrition quality and were among the highest on carbon emissions. The keto diet, which prioritizes high amounts of fat and …
“Our model explains what’s going on across 83 watersheds in the Midwest, providing a quantitative understanding of why certain watersheds differ in terms of nutrient loss. But the most important contribution is our scenario prediction, which hasn’t been done before. If you increase tile drainage or the corn fraction, how much does the nitrogen load …
Study forecasts tile drainage and crop rotation changes for nitrogen loss Read More »
People living in tropical forest communities have often complained that the climate gets hotter and drier once trees are cleared but until now, scientists have not been able to identify a clear link between the loss of tree cover and a decline in rainfall. A research team at the University of Leeds combined satellite data …
Deforestation in the tropics linked to a reduction in rainfall Read More »
Like all animal species, seabirds must be well adapted to their ecological niche in order to survive. Environmental conditions such as temperature, vegetation, precipitation and many other factors influence natural selection: whoever is best adapted survives. Previous research has focused a lot on how the animals can cope with the rising temperatures. However, seabirds are …
