Latest Vegetation Stories

Heavy and prolonged snowfall can bring about unexpected conditions that encourage fungal growth, leading to the death of plants in the Arctic, according to experts.A new international study confirms that whilst snow has an insulating effect which helps plants to grow bigger, heavy and prolonged snow can, in certain circumstances, also encourage the rapid and extensive growth of killer fungal strains.The research results, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, show for the first time...

A PhD student at the University of Leeds has developed a fast, accurate and inexpensive method of creating detailed vegetation community maps over very large areas, by coupling aerial photographs with data from maps.Working in partnership with the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, Ute Bradter from Leeds' Faculty of Biological Sciences, has collated existing data (such as soil type, altitude, slope and aspect) and using a sophisticated statistical model, predicted the distribution of...

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...

Finnish study examines girls', boys' relationships with natureCould "interventions" bring children closer to nature? Researchers in Finland think so. A new study published in HortTechnology compares urban and rural children's relationships with plants and recommends horticultural interventions, especially for urban children.In Finland, a country famous for its forests and wilderness, researchers Taina Laaksoharju from the Department of Agricultural Sciences at the University of...

A new study funded by NASA has found that Amazon forests are losing their greenness due to last year's record-breaking drought. "The greenness levels of Amazonian vegetation -- a measure of its health -- decreased dramatically over an area more than three and one-half times the size of Texas and did not recover to normal levels, even after the drought ended in late October 2010," Liang Xu of Boston University and the study's lead author said in a statement.Researchers used computer...

A team of scientists from the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology and the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW) has developed new, more accurate methods for mapping carbon in Hawaii's forests. Their research appears in an online issue of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.The growing market for private and public entities to purchase carbon offsets has led to a need to find better monitoring techniques to accurately...

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...

Climate forecasts for the region predict an advance of the desert about 300 kilometers to the northThe fire disaster in the Carmel Mountains near Haifa is a typical example of climate change effect and a taste of the future, says Dr. Guy Pe'er, one of the authors of Israel's first report to the UN on climate change. Ten years ago, Dr. Pe'er and other Israeli scientists collated knowledge about the effects of climate change for Israel. They warned already in the year 2000 of expected climatic...

Unique open-air laboratory enables study of a complete ecosystem in the makingHow do ecosystems develop? No one really knows, yet. There is however one project, unique in the world, seeking to answer this question. In a former open-pit coal mining area in Brandenburg, Germany, a surface of six hectares was partitioned off and then left to its own resources. Scientists from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), in collaboration with researchers from other institutions, are studying the...

Swiss researchers studying the projected effects of climate change on alpine plant species have discovered that mountain ranges may represent a 'safer' place to live during changing climate conditions. The research, published in the Journal of Biogeography, finds that the habitat diversity of mountain ranges offer species 'refuge habitats' which may be important for conservation.The research, led by Daniel Scherrer and Christian Körner from the University of Basel, Switzerland, was carried...