green
‘Beenome’ project aims to boost bee conservation with genetic mapping
From tiny, jewel-toned metallic bees to cartoonish and lumbering bumblebees, the United States is home to more than 4,000 native and 55 non-native bee species. Now, scientists have announced a plan to map the genomes of at least 100 of these species, representing each of the major bee taxonomic groups in the U.S. The project […]
Study: Regenerative farming boosts soil health, yielding more nutritious crops
Plants build themselves from sunlight, water, and soil. And, as it turns out, what crops “eat” can influence the nutrients on our own plates. A recent study, published in the journal PeerJ, compared the nutritional content of food crops grown using conventional versus regenerative farming practices — those that build the soil by using cover […]
Video: Indonesian villagers missing out on spoils from palm oil boom
One day in 2017, as a truck loaded with oil palm fruit drove down the main road in his village on the island of Borneo, Rita Dihales decided he’d had enough. He intercepted the truck, insisting that the company whose fruit it carried had failed to share the spoils of its plantation with the local […]
Conservation costs are rarely reported, making it difficult to prioritize funding
Conservation has a price tag, but the costs are rarely reported. This lack of transparency makes it difficult for people to decide on the most cost-effective methods to conserve wildlife and ecosystems, experts say. In a newly published study in the journal BioScience, researchers from the University of Cambridge’s Conservation Science Group looked into 1,987 […]
Trees and soil at the forest’s edge store more carbon than we thought, studies reveal
Trees and soils keep a lot of carbon trapped in the forest, pulling it from the atmosphere, where it can do more harm than good. In fact, roughly 30% of the carbon generated from fossil fuel burning is captured by forests. “That’s CO2 that’s not in the atmosphere,” said Boston University biogeochemist and ecologist Lucy […]
‘Giving up’: Amazon is losing its resilience under human pressure, study shows
The Amazon Rainforest is resilient: the largest rainforest on the planet has been around for at least 55 million years, surviving repeated ice ages and warming. But human impacts, combined with climate change, are decreasing that resiliency, causing the forest to lose its ability to bounce back from repeated disturbances, according to a new study published […]
World’s biggest tropical crop bank opens in Colombia, taking food research high tech
As more people are born onto this great green planet, the demand for food grows. Feeding the nearly 8 billion of us here today is a challenge, not only because of the amount of food required but because the climate crisis is making growing conditions more difficult and unpredictable. To withstand droughts, heat, floods, and […]
Spectacular new fish species is first to be named by Maldivian scientist
Out in the azure waters and colorful corals of the Maldives, a resplendent, rainbow-hued fish has become the first to be named and described by a Maldivian researcher. New to science, the rose-veiled fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa) is named in the local Dhivehi language. Finifenmaa means “rose” and is a tribute to the islands’ pink-hued […]
‘Comical’ bat not seen in 40 years is found again in a Rwandan park
“When we caught it, we all just looked at it and said, ‘You look ridiculous. Look how big your nose leaf is,’” Jon Flanders, director of endangered species interventions at Bat Conservation International, told Mongabay. The odd-looking creature in their net was a Hill’s horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hilli)—the first seen since 1981. “We feared the […]
Chocolate frog? New burrowing frog species unearthed in Amazon’s rare peatlands
A photo of an odd-looking amphibian drew attention on Twitter last week, where it was described as a “smooth lil fella”, compared to a melted tootsie roll candy, and likened to the chocolate frogs from Harry Potter. “I’m quite surprised at how fast the popularity of this frog is rising up,” Germán Chávez, a researcher […]