Wildfire is transforming some forestlands into shrublands, a new study finds. The results suggest these forests, which are used to living with and even benefiting from fire, have not yet adapted to this newer regime of intense, high-severity fires.
Read moreScientists and engineers worked with state and local agencies to develop and test a long-lasting, environmentally benign fire-retarding material. If used on high-risk areas, the simple, affordable treatment could dramatically cut the number of fires that occur each year.
Read moreFaced with extreme weather events and unprecedented environmental change, animals and plants are scrambling to catch up — with mixed results. A new model helps to predict the types of changes that could drive a given species to extinction.
Read moreScientists propose a new method for calculating populations of the Antillean manatee, a marine mammal in danger of extinction, through underwater recordings.
Read moreA new study seeks to tease out some of the myriad pressures that drive adaptation in small, widely dispersed marine animals called copepods.
Read moreAn in-depth look at Australia's Great Barrier Reef over the past 91 years concludes that since 1928 intertidal communities have experienced major phase-shifts as a result of local and global environmental change, leaving few signs that reefs will return to their initial state in the near future. The long-term implications of these changes highlight the importance of avoiding phase shifts in coral reefs which may take many decades to repair, if at all.
Read moreBy connecting small, restored patches of savanna to one another via habitat corridors at an experimental landscape within the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, a nearly 20-year-long study has shown an annual increase in the number of plant species within fragments over time, and a drop in the number of species disappearing from them entirely.
Read moreThe living tissue on corals protects their skeleton from dissolving as a result of ocean acidification according to an in situ experiment on Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
Read moreScientists have seen for the first time how corals collaborate with other microscopic life to build and grow.
Read moreAn increase in the generation of wind energy is a key component of the U.S. strategy to reduce carbon emissions from the power sector. Approximately 97 gigawatts of wind energy production capacity are currently installed in the U.S., and in 2018, wind energy supplied about 6.5% of the nation's electricity. Scenarios developed by various groups, including U.S. Department of Energy, indicate that a four- to five-fold expansion over current levels of electricity produced by wind is needed by the year 2050 to help meet U.S. carbon emission reduction goals.
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