Earth

Scientists from the Universities of Stirling, Oxford, Queensland and the Wildlife Conservation Society warn that current hunting trends in Central African forests could result in complete ecological collapse.

The authors maintain that the current rate of unsustainable hunting of forest elephants, gorillas and other seed-dispersing species threatens the ability of forest ecosystems to regenerate, and that landscape-wide hunting management plans are needed to avoid an environmental catastrophe.

Australian scientists have identified causes of a rapid warming in the upper subtropical oceans of the Southern Hemisphere.

They partly attribute the observed warming, and preceding cooling trends to ocean circulation changes induced by global greenhouse gas emissions and aerosols predominantly generated in the Northern Hemisphere from human activity.

The research, by scientists from CSIRO and the University of NSW, was published today in Scientific Reports.

Washington, DC—A team of researchers has for the first time mapped the above ground carbon density of an entire country in high fidelity. They integrated field data with satellite imagery and high-resolution airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data to map the vegetation and to quantify carbon stocks throughout the Republic of Panama. The results are the first maps that report carbon stocks locally in areas as small as a hectare (2.5 acres) and yet cover millions of hectares in a short time.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered a new chemical reaction that has the potential to lower the cost and streamline the manufacture of compounds ranging from agricultural chemicals to pharmaceutical drugs.

The reaction resolves a long-standing challenge in organic chemistry in creating phenolic compounds from aromatic hydrocarbons quickly and cheaply.

ANN ARBOR—In events that could exacerbate sea level rise over the coming decades, stretches of ice on the coasts of Antarctica and Greenland are at risk of rapidly cracking apart and falling into the ocean, according to new iceberg calving simulations from the University of Michigan.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study has found that heat waves are increasing in the western portions of the Pacific Northwest, but not the kind most people envision, with scorching hot days of temperatures reaching triple digits.

These heat waves occur at night.

The East Antarctic Ice Sheet repeatedly melted back several hundred miles inland during several warming periods 3 million to 5 million years ago in the Pliocene Epoch, according to a new study in the journal Nature Geoscience.

While most of the West Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets are thought to have melted during this time, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet was considered more stable due to its larger size and higher elevation. The study shows that the East Antarctic ice sheet is also vulnerable to substantial melting under warmer climates than today.

Global efforts to adapt staple foods like rice, wheat and potato to climate change have been given a major boost today as new research shows the whereabouts of their wild cousins –which could hold beneficial qualities to help improve crops and make them more productive and resilient.

Deforestation in parts of Africa could be reversed with changes to land use, a study suggests.

A more strategic approach to managing trees across the continent could have a positive impact on the changing climate, researchers say.

A pioneering study of African savannas by the University of Edinburgh has revealed deforestation in south-central Africa, driven by rising populations in the aftermath of war, and increasing demand for trees for agriculture and fuel.

Global warming five million years ago may have caused parts of Antarctica's large ice sheets to melt and sea levels to rise by approximately 20 metres, scientists report today in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The researchers, from Imperial College London, and their academic partners studied mud samples to learn about ancient melting of the East Antarctic ice sheet. They discovered that melting took place repeatedly between five and three million years ago, during a geological period called Pliocene Epoch, which may have caused sea levels to rise approximately ten metres.

Since Erwin Schroedinger's famous 1935 cat thought experiment, physicists around the globe have tried to create large scale systems to test how the rules of quantum mechanics apply to everyday objects.

Researchers at the University of Calgary recently made a significant step forward in this direction by creating a large system that is in two substantially different states at the same time. Until this point, scientists had only managed to recreate quantum effects on much smaller scales.

Almost 100 million euros has been spent so far on conservation efforts for the last 250 remaining Iberian lynxes in the wild. But the charismatic species is likely to go extinct within 50 years because the current management plans do not account for the effects of climate change. If they did, the population might increase instead concludes a new international study with participation from the Centre for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate at the University of Copenhagen. The study highlights the importance of integrating climate models in management plans for biodiversity.

Some geysers have predictable eruptions that make them ideal for study. Understanding geyser eruption dynamics can provide insight into other intermittent natural processes, such as volcanic eruptions, but most studies of geysers have focused on the processes that trigger geyser eruption.

The eruption jet dynamics are less well characterized.

In northern thermokarst lakes, which form in depressions left as permafrost thaws, methane, a greenhouse gas, can be released from lake sediments to the atmosphere through bubbling, or ebullition.

Constraining the amount of methane released through bubbling would help scientists understand the role of thawing permafrost in the carbon cycle and global climate change.

However, bubbling is highly variable in both space and time and thus difficult to measure accurately, so there are large uncertainties in estimates of methane emissions from northern ecosystems.

ARGONNE, Ill. – A protein found in the membranes of ancient microorganisms that live in desert salt flats could offer a new way of using sunlight to generate environmentally friendly hydrogen fuel, according to a new study by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory.

Argonne nanoscientist Elena Rozhkova and her colleagues combined a pigment called bacteriorhodopsin with semiconducting nanoparticles to create a system that uses light to spark a catalytic process that creates hydrogen fuel.