Latest Natural environment Stories

National Science Foundation Grants Awarded for Research on Coupled Natural and Human Systems Water quality and environmental health in Botswana; wetlands in a working landscape; the collapse of the ancient Maya and what that has to tell us about society and environmental change today. These and other projects that address how humans and the environment interact are the focus of $21 million in National Science Foundation (NSF) grants to scientists, engineers and educators across the...

People who want to eat healthy and live sustainably have a new way to measure their impact on the environment: a Web-based tool that calculates an individual's "nitrogen footprint." The device was created by University of Virginia environmental scientist James N. Galloway; Allison Leach, a staff research assistant at U.Va.; and colleagues from the Netherlands and the University of Maryland.The calculator is a project of the International Nitrogen Initiative, a global network of...

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...

Scientists find excess nitrogen favors plants that respond poorly to rising CO2As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, so does the pressure on the plant kingdom. The hope among policymakers, scientists and concerned citizens is that plants will absorb some of the extra CO2 and mitigate the impacts of climate change. For a few decades now, researchers have hypothesized about one major roadblock: nitrogen.Plants build their tissue primarily with the CO2 they take up from the atmosphere. The...

Extraordinarily rare springs high above the rest of the world in the Arctic could serve as Earth's own little version of Europa, helping scientists picture what life might face on the mysterious Jovian moon.Europa is covered with sulfur-rich materials concentrated along cracks and ridges on its icy surface, which could hold the only clues we currently have about the composition of its hidden underground ocean. These compounds in the ice might even contain organic material that migrated upward...

Some regions of the deep ocean floor support abundant populations of organisms, despite being overlain by water that contains very little oxygen, according to an international study led by scientists at the United Kingdom's National Oceanography Center, Southampton. But global warming is likely to exacerbate oxygen depletion and thereby reduce biodiversity in these regions, they warn.The sunlit surface waters tend to be well oxygenated as a result of their connection with the atmosphere....

Ecologists outline necessary actions for mitigating and adapting to a changing climateGlobal warming may impair the ability of ecosystems to perform vital services -- such as providing food, clean water and carbon sequestration -- says the nation's largest organization of ecological scientists. In a statement released today, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) outlines strategies that focus on restoring and maintaining natural ecosystem functions to mitigate and adapt to climate...

Weizmann Institute scientists show that in one kind of forest, its 'energy budget' includes significant reserves of heatThe simple formula we've learned in recent years "“ forests remove the greenhouse gas CO2 from the atmosphere; therefore forests prevent global warming "“ may not be quite as simple as we thought. Forests can directly absorb and retain heat, and, in at least one type of forest, these effects may be strong enough to cancel out a good part of the benefit in lowered CO2....

Economists, assigning values to 'ecosystem services,' report staggering totals and rates of return on investmentExperts concluding the global DIVERSITAS biodiversity conference today in Cape Town described preliminary research revealing jaw-dropping dollar values of the "ecosystem services" of biomes like forests and coral reefs "“ including food, pollution treatment and climate regulation.Undertaken to help societies make better-informed choices, the economic research shows a single...