Nitrogen in rain and snow falls to the ground where, in theory, it is used by forest plants and microbes. New research by a scientific collaboration led by the USDA Forest Service shows that more nitrogen from rain and snow is making it to more streams than previously believed and flowing downstream in forests of …
Marine microorganisms in the Southern Ocean may find themselves in a deadly vise grip by century’s end as ocean acidification creates a shallower horizon for life, new University of Colorado Boulder research finds. The modeling study, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, forecasts that at current carbon dioxide emission rates, the depth at which …
Two Canadian biologists are proposing a better way to assess the conservation value of old-growth forests in North America—using lichens, sensitive bioindicators of environmental change. Dr. Troy McMullin, lichenologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature, and Dr. Yolanda Wiersma, landscape ecologist at Memorial University of Newfoundland, propose their lichen-focussed system in a paper published today in …
The data showed that a seabird ingesting a single piece of plastic had a 20 per cent chance of mortality, rising to 50 per cent for nine items and 100 per cent for 93 items. Led by IMAS-CSIRO Ph.D. student Lauren Roman and published in the journal Scientific Reports, the study found that although hard plastic …
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have developed a recycling process that transforms single-use beverage bottles, clothing, and carpet made from the common polyester material polyethylene terephthalate (PET) into more valuable products with a longer lifespan. Their research, published February 27 in the journal Joule, could help protect oceans from …
Animals living in the deepest ocean trenches have been found with plastic fragments in their gut, according to new research published Wednesday showing how manmade pollution reaches into the bowels of the planet. More than 300 million tonnes of plastics are produced annually, and there are at least five trillion plastic pieces floating in our …
By tapping nutrients from bedrock, red alder trees play a key role in healthy forest ecosystems, according to a new study. The study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers from Oregon State University and the U.S. Geological Survey determined red alder, through its symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, …
Over the past 20 years, concentrations of pharmaceuticals have increased in freshwater sources all over the world, as research by environmental experts at Radboud University has revealed. Levels of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin have reached the point of potentially causing damaging ecological effects. The research is the first to examine the risks of two particular medicines …
The world’s oceans could harbor an unpleasant surprise for global warming, based on new research that shows how naturally occurring carbon gases trapped in reservoirs atop the seafloor escaped to superheat the planet in prehistory. Scientists say events that began on the ocean bottom thousands of years ago so disrupted the Earth’s atmosphere that it …
Curtin researchers believe that ancient supercontinents formed and then fell apart through alternating cycles spanning hundreds of millions of years that involved superoceans being swallowed and the restructuring of the Earth’s mantle. The research, published in science journal Precambrian Research, found the supercontinents assembled and broke up through alternating processes of ‘introversion’ and ‘extroversion.’ The …
