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?…
As climate change impact dramatically alters the world we live in, the biodiversity around us is also experiencing rapid and alarming changes. For dragonflies and damselflies (odonates), having an amphibious…
The Brazilian savanna has always been a dry place, but the massive conversion of native vegetation to soy is making it far dryer, as is deepening, climate change-driven, drought.
An intensification in fires, coupled with increasing deforestation and worsening climate change, could rapidly shift the Amazon toward being a carbon source by 2050.
The Amazon worst-case scenario has arrived, say leading researchers, as predicted signs of a shift from rainforest-to-savanna begin to be seen in real time on the ground.
Scientists warn that escalating deforestation due to mining, agribusiness and other human disturbance is reducing the ability of intact tropical forests to sequester carbon.
New report reveals how both the Arctic and Antarctic are heating up and changing dramatically amid ongoing, but largely insufficient, UN climate negotiations.
Climate change could shift the calculus for reining in malaria, according to new research that suggests that infectious parasites can develop in mosquitoes more quickly at lower temperatures than scientists…
Life on this planet, in all its wide diversity, is disappearing more quickly now than it has at any time in human history, and some 1 million species of plants…
Tallying up the toll of our individual roles in fueling climate change is a daunting task. To make decisions simpler, we rely on the sorts of trade-off behaviors and cognitive…
The costs of acting now to adapt to a predicted, dramatic loss of Amazon rainforest would be at least one order of magnitude lower than the economic fallout if we…
Land-based options offer the best solutions to help nations meet their Paris carbon reduction goals and limit warming to 1.5 degrees C, says study in response to new IPCC climate report.
A 2007 study estimated that with 40% Amazon deforestation a tipping point could be reached, converting forest to savannah. New factors put that tipping point at 20-25%. Deforestation is now at 17%.
Forest fires are no longer driven mainly by deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, with climate change induced drought now taking a major role.
In May 2015, more than 200,000 saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica) suddenly died. Entire herds perished, their bodies littering the steppe grasslands of central Kazakhstan as if dropped from the sky.…
The normally idyllic resort island of Bali in Indonesia has hogged international headlines since last month, following the eruption of Mount Agung that has driven tens of thousands of residents…
With COP23 well underway, scientists warn that President Temer’s policies could doom the Amazon and Brazil’s Paris goals, while destabilizing the global climate.
In Paris, Brazil promised to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 37 percent by 2025. But the country’s emissions grew by 8.9 percent in 2016, largely due to deforestation.
As COP23 negotiators meet in Bonn, indigenous and rural leaders warn that time is running out to protect global forests — a crucial hedge against perilous global warming.
Scientists know that the carbon released by large-scale deforestation in the tropics inevitably helps boost global temperatures. Now, new research indicates that this conversion of land, often to farms and…
Three South American studies find that severe deforestation in one region can impact faraway forests and continent-wide climate, while intact forests offer more resilience.
A multi-national research team combined four diverse data sets to understand where migratory birds are most vulnerable to human activity and to identify priorities for protecting long-distance migrants in the…
As the planet warms, the soil underfoot could release more carbon than previously thought, a new study has found. “Previously, I think people thought that the surface is what matters,”…
JAKARTA – Ahead of the recent UN climate summit in the Moroccan capital of Marrakesh, Indonesia shifted the burden for cutting its greenhouse gas emissions from its energy sector to…
On this episode of the Newscast, Mongabay’s Indonesia-based editor Phil Jacobson makes an in-studio appearance to talk about a new series launched this week focusing on the Mekong Delta. No…
This is the first article of an in-depth, four-part series exploring threats facing the Mekong Delta and how they might be addressed. Read the second, third and fourth installments. t's a sad…
Clear-cut rainforests and homeless orangutans make for powerful images, but it's what you don't see — hidden just below the surface — that may be the most sinister threat from…
The current global coral bleaching event began in the Pacific Ocean in the middle of 2014. By October 2015, as the current El Niño event was just beginning to gain…
By the end of this century, as climate continues to warm, dry seasons could become longer and more intense in the Amazon region. Droughts could become more commonplace. But the…
Heat waves could get deadlier in the near future, warns a new study published Monday in Nature Climate Change. If greenhouse gas emissions are left unchecked, waves of extreme heat…
