Climate Change And Conservation News

1. The ocean in a worldwide pandemic As the year that challenged the world with a widespread pandemic draws to a close, COVID-19 has affected almost every aspect of life…

South America’s French Guiana, a French overseas department, is slated for major new liquid biofuel power stations, fueled by soy plantations that will cause largescale Amazon deforestation, say environmentalists.

AKLAN, Philippines — In December 1989, Elizabeth Ramos, now 63, heard from a neighbor that a mangrove reforestation project was underway near her home in the province of Aklan in…

Catching a caribou isn’t easy. In some locations, it involves flying around in helicopters, shooting the animal with a tranquilizer dart, making it safely to the ground, and placing a…

Shifting rainfall patterns, especially those exacerbated by climate change, could drive large parts of the Amazon rainforest to become drier savanna, a new study has found. Rainfall acts like a…

The world’s protected areas are largely a jumble of disjointed refuges, separated from each other by the encroachment of human impacts, a recent study has found. Fewer than 10% of…

ALBAY, Philippines — Josefina Dayta is among the fortunate Filipinos who haven’t had to experience job insecurity amid one of the harshest lockdowns imposed by any government during the COVID-19…

On the island of Siquijor in the central Philippines, groups of women risk their lives for a cause: to manage and protect their marine sanctuaries. Communities in the central Philippines…

California is burning with a ferocity never seen before in the Golden State. So far this year, fires have burned through more than 1.4 million hectares (3.4 million acres) of…

By 2070, rising soil temperatures could cause germination failure in 20% of tropical plants, and reduced rates in more than 50%, with the potential to disrupt and alter tropical ecosystems.

Investing in forests to fight climate change seems like a sure bet. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, pump out oxygen, and live for decades. What could go wrong?…

With its groves of pockmarked white bark and trembling green medallion leaves, Pando looks like any other aspen forest. But the approximately 47,000 stems that form its giant body share…

Scraping sounds fill the nights at Mapungubwe, a national park at the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers, where the borders of Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa meet. Families…

A few hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle, the small town of Boguchany in Siberia, Russia, had its hottest April on record. On April 25, the temperature soared to…

Life can’t function without insects. At least, not for long. Dutifully, they pollinate, break down waste, cycle nutrients, move seeds, and touch every web of life, filling endless functional niches…

MANILA — When reports came out that the microsatellite Diwata-1 of the Philippines had re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere on April 6, ending its mission, it made headlines for being the…

Large biomes, like the Amazon rainforest, have closely linked habitats and species, which could lead to a domino effect and a rapid ecosystem collapse; even small effects can cause a crash over time.

In March, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef suffered its most widespread bleaching event to date. Sixty percent of the reef underwent moderate to severe bleaching, and some corals may never recover.…

MISAMIS ORIENTAL, Philippines — For hundreds of years, the lives of fisherfolk along the sleepy coastal villages in the town of Candiis in the Philippines’ Misamis Oriental province have been…

It’s a beguiling proposition: pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by supercharging populations of microscopic, carbon-munching marine phytoplankton through the relatively simple and inexpensive process of adding iron to…

Patagonia’s huemul is an agile herbivore of which only about 1,500 may remain at 100 or so scattered sites between sea level and the Andes; it is being buffeted by complex interrelated stressors.

A 4-year bioacoustic study of marine mammals in the northern Bering Sea will help scientists track the impacts of global climate change on Arctic ecosystems. Researchers with WCS (Wildlife Conservation…

Fish stocks around the world are doing better, in general, where science guides their management, according to a recent study. Publishing their findings Jan. 13 online in the journal Proceedings…

A degraded secondary forest in Brazil stores carbon at only twice the rate of primary forest, compared to up to 11 times elsewhere; scientists could be overestimating Amazon carbon storage capacity.

Tech giant Microsoft says it will go “carbon negative” by 2030; to get there, it will rely on Pachama, a startup using LIDAR and artificial intelligence to truthfully track forest carbon storage projects.

Scientists know from a bevy of studies that the inclusion of indigenous peoples and local communities is critical to holding deforestation at bay across the tropics, even as a tide…

A proposed update to the global treaty governing plant and animal life on Earth calls for nearly a third of the planet to be designated as protected by 2030. That…

1. Climate change and oceans Climate change impacts on land made almost daily headlines this year: fires, floods, more extreme storms. Equally intense effects are being realized in our seas.…

A company attending the COP25 climate summit says its dam will reduce Indonesia’s carbon emissions, but current science says tropical dams are greenhouse gas emitters.

For seabirds, an Arctic Ocean with less sea ice could provide some tantalizing alternatives to the long-haul flights that some undertake each year. In a recent study, ecologist Manon Clairbaux…