Latest Biogeography Stories
Ian Jonsen, a research associate and adjunct professor in the Department of Biology at Dalhousie University and co-lead investigator of the Future of Marine Animal Populations Project (FMAP), has teamed up with Barbara Block at Stanford University and several other American researchers to conclude a two year study entitled, "Tracking apex marine predator movements in a dynamic ocean" published in the science journal Nature released June 22.The study summarized the results from a ten...
Forest fragmentation driven by demand for palm oil is having a catastrophic effect on multiple levels of biodiversity, scientists from Queen Mary, University of London have discovered.The researchers are worried that unless steps are taken to safeguard and manage the remaining forest, then certain species will struggle to survive.The study, which focused on bats as an indicator of environmental change, was published in one of the leading scientific journals, Ecology Letters.The team conducted...
The Earth may be able to recover from rising carbon dioxide emissions faster than previously thought, according to evidence from a prehistoric event analyzed by a Purdue University-led team.When faced with high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and rising temperatures 56 million years ago, the Earth increased its ability to pull carbon from the air. This led to a recovery that was quicker than anticipated by many models of the carbon cycle - though still on the order of tens of thousands...
First hectare-scale maps of canopy height, aboveground biomass and associated carbon stock for the forests and woodlands of the conterminous United StatesThe Woods Hole Research Center has released the first hectare-scale maps of canopy height, aboveground biomass, and associated carbon stock for the forests and woodlands of the conterminous United States. The multi-year project, referred to as the National Biomass and Carbon Dataset (NBCD), produced maps of these key forest attributes at an...
In the latest issue of 'Current Biology', researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have published an analysis of growth rates of a tiny sea animal. Samples of the bryozoan, (Cellarinella nutti) a sea-bed filter-feeding animal that looks like branching twigs, collected during Captain Scott's Antarctic trips, are yielding data that may prove valuable in projecting climate change, BBC News is reporting.The samples were collected in the Ross Sea, where Capt. Robert Falcon Scott moored...
Led by scientists at Woods Hole Research CenterA new study released today in the EarlyView of Ecology Letters addresses forest productivity trends in Alaska, highlighting a shift in biomes caused by a warming climate. The findings, conducted by scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center and three other institutions based in Alaska and France, linked satellite observations with an extensive and unique tree-ring data set. Patterns observed support current hypotheses regarding increased growth...
NEWS RELEASE WASHINGTON, Feb. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The President's Budget for fiscal year 2012 (FY12) includes $4.631 billion in gross discretionary funding for the Civil Works program of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), offset in part by a proposal to cancel $57 million of prior year funding, of which $35 million was provided through an emergency supplemental appropriation. The Honorable Jo-Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, said, "This...
A coupled-cycles framework is essential to balancing human needs with the health of the planetIf society wants to address big picture environmental problems, like global climate change, acid rain, and coastal dead zones, we need to pay closer attention to the Earth's coupled biogeochemical cycles. So reports a special issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, published this month by the Ecological Society of America."There are nearly seven billion people on the planet. And our...
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment issue examines the basic elements of lifeIn the search for life on Mars or any planet, there is much more than the presence of carbon and oxygen to consider. Using Earth's biogeochemical cycles as a reference point, elements like nitrogen, iron and sulfur are just as important for supporting life. As explored in studies published in February's open-access Special Issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, the most basic elements work together...
DNA evidence supports a coastal northeastern Atlantic glacial refugium for a boreal tree speciesCan a road-trip across eastern North America, ancient ice sheets, and DNA samples unlock the ancestral history of jack pine trees? Julie Godbout and colleagues from the Université Laval, Quebec, Canada, certainly hoped that driving across northeastern U.S. and Canada to collect samples from jack pine trees would shed some light on how glaciers may have impacted present-day pine genetics.About...
Latest Biogeography Reference Libraries
The Great Basin shrub steppe ecoregion, located within the Deserts and xeric shrublands Biome, incorporates a variety of xeric shrub-steppe sub-ecoregions in the area of the Great Basin in the Western United States. It’s within the North American Desert area, and includes a great deal of Nevada, northeastern and eastern California east of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range rain shadows, and some parts of Utah and Idaho. The Great Basin Desert and semi-arid non-desert xeric shrubland...
The Mulga Lands are an interim Australian bioregion out of eastern Australia made up of dry and sandy plains that are scattered with mulga trees. Located in inland New South Wales and Queensland these are level plains with some low hills and infertile sandy soil with a cover of shrubs and grasses with mulga and eucalyptus trees. The region incorporates regions of wetland, the majority of which are only seasonally flooded, these include Lake Numalla and Lake Wyara, the Currawinya Lakes,...
Taiga, or otherwise known as boreal forest, is a biome that is characterized by coniferous forests made up mostly of spruces, larches, and pines. The taiga is the world’s largest terrestrial biome. In North America, it covers most of inland Canada and Alaska as well as portions of the extreme northern continental United States and is known as the Northwoods. It covers most of Sweden, Finland, much of Norway, lowland/coastal areas of Iceland, much of Russia, northern Kazakhstan, northern...
The Central tall grasslands are a prairie ecoregion of the Midwestern United States, a portion of the North American Great Plains. It covers a large region of southern Minnesota, most of Iowa, and a small portion of eastern South Dakota and a narrow strip going through eastern Nebraska and northeastern Kansas. The rainfall here is 1,000 millimeters per year, which is higher than most of the Great Plains. The Northern tall grasslands are located to the north and have fewer and different...
The Central and Southern mixed grasslands are a prairie ecoregion of the central United States, a portion of the North American Great Plains. This is a vast grassland area with few trees running north to south from central Nebraska through central Kansas and western Oklahoma to north central Texas, covering about 282,000 square kilometers. This is a transition zone between the Central tall grasslands and Central forest-grasslands transition ecoregions towards the east and the Western short...
