Archive for the ‘Ecology’ Category

All your personal efforts to live more sustainably do not make any difference to the world’s environment. That’s the assertion environmental writer Derrick Jensen makes in his recent article “Forget Shorter Showers,” published in Orion magazine. The industrial economy is so large, and so much the source of our planet’s environmental woes, Jensen argues, that even if all individuals reduced their carbon footprint to zero, ... Full story

The Amazon rain forest houses the Amazon River and rich ecological biodiversity. Taking up the majority of Brazil, the Amazon's biology and ecology is truly unique. No place on Earth is as full of diverse life and landscape as the Amazon Rainforest. It spreads its tall trees and rich ... Full story

Costa Rica has one of the most diverse plant ecologies in the world; from cloud and rain forests to mangrove swamps, Costa Rica has a rich and varied plant life. Costa Rica, 51,000 square kilometers of land situated between Panama and Nicaragua in Central America, is a small country with a huge biodiversity of plant life. It has remarkably different climates on each of its coastlines, ... Full story

One of the most controversial questions in biology is whether behaviour is determined by nature or nurture. A new program has been launched to shed light on this question by analyzing all sources of information relating to the complex society of Apis mellifera, the Western honeybee. The debate raises ethical questions about the the determination of behaviour in social animals, including humans. The nature side suggests ... Full story

Earth Day -- April 22 -- each year marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. Among other things, 1970 in the United States brought with it the Kent State shootings, the advent of fiber optics, "Bridge Over Troubled Water," Apollo 13, the Beatles' last album, the death of Jimi Hendrix, the birth of Mariah Carey, and the meltdown of ... Full story

Despite greatly increasing food production for humans, the growing use of nitrogen as a nutrient is affecting people's health far beyond just the benefits of growing more crops, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder-led study. Study leader Alan Townsend of CU-Boulder's Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research said changes in the global nitrogen ... Full story

Forests provide humans with economically important and often irreplaceable products and services, and affect global climate by acting as sources and sinks of heat-trapping carbon dioxide. Yet the possible responses of forests to ongoing environmental changes are poorly understood. In the most recent issue of Ecology Letters, Stephenson and van Mantgem show that birth and death ... Full story

As Rebecca Brown kayaked down the Nolichucky River in North Carolina one summer, she followed a path similar to many of her own study subjects. Seeds and other propagules often float downstream before settling along riverbanks. Rampant with change, these areas offer a nutrient-rich location for new plants, yet pose the danger of sweeping vegetation away in a flood. It ... Full story

By Eric McLamb Not only is the Arctic ice cap shrinking, it is shrinking at a pace that places its disappearance two to three decades ahead of the gloomiest previous forecasts. It is now generally predicted that the Arctic ice cap will totally disappear in 20 - 25 years, leaving the Arctic Ocean totally free of summer ice as early as the summer of 2030. Some ... Full story