Many hundreds of years ago, the first Polynesian boats arrived on the shores of what is now known as New Zealand.  In the vast blue of the Pacific Ocean, the…

It’s hard to imagine how the oceans might operate without the sway of human activity. The recent assessment by the U.N. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found…

Just before Pope Francis released Laudato Si’, an encyclical, or formal letter from the pope, on the environment, on May 24, 2015, global concern for the environment seemed to be…

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — For Nataraja Kumar, 47, a fisherman from Guru Nagar, a sleepy coastal village in Sri Lanka’s north, it’s no longer possible to continue with his traditional…

Weeks after the deadly cyclone Idai tore through Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, the human toll is still being tallied. Entire communities remain submerged, more than a thousand people lost their…

Warmer temperatures are fanning the spread of a deadly disease in frogs, a new study has found. Teasing apart the complex dynamics of the effects of climate change on how…

New research finds that global warming has exacerbated global economic inequality, making already-wealthy nations even richer while slowing economic growth in poorer countries. According to the study, published in PNAS…

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…

In Niger, where agriculture is the main source of income, the message is simple: Losing your soil means losing your livelihood. The ability to grow food is inextricably linked to…

Hindu legend has it that the deity Rama built a bridge from the southern tip of India to the island of Sri Lanka, for his army of ape men to…

For more than three months, penguins living off the coast of Namibia have been battling an outbreak of bird flu. The worst of the disease seems to have passed, but…

The elephant poaching epidemic continues to tear across the African continent. It’s even reached remote refuges in recent years, like the Luangwa Valley in Zambia, where poaching deaths began surging…

Deforestation can reduce communities’ access to clean drinking water, according to a recent study conducted in Malawi. A lot of prior research on how deforestation impacts water dynamics has shown…

Countries should concentrate on outcomes instead of actions when they set aside areas for parks and reserves to shore up the loss of biodiversity, according to a group of scientists.…

Sea ice melt is nearly two weeks ahead of past records for early April, while a new study finds that the Arctic system is trending away from its 20th century state into an unprecedented state.

The puma family took biologist Mark Elbroch by surprise. They were supposed to be a ways off. But here they were, year-old kittens, bungling the final moments of a baby…

The iconic snow-capped Alpine peaks may be a thing of the past for future generations if average global temperatures keep rising unchecked, a new study warns. The study, in the…

On Dec. 17, 2010, a 26-year-old Tunisian fruit vendor named Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire to protest the confiscation of his produce. This act kicked off protests…

As rising sea surface temperatures drive more frequent and more intense coral bleaching episodes around the world, global models have often predicted that few healthy coral reefs will remain in…

Research over the past few years has shown that ocean acidification impacts Atlantic cod at the earliest stages of their lives, while they are still eggs and larvae. Scientists hoped…