Devices worn by wild animals that record their location, and in some cases their behavior and environmental conditions, are known as biologgers. They have vastly increased our knowledge of animal…
Research on soft-bodied marine invertebrates such as squid and jellyfish has been slow in coming. Squid are keystone taxa and important food sources for myriad larger species, said T. Aran…
Researchers and forest managers working to record and reduce the rapid loss of forests are now armed with a new tool to monitor vegetation across the globe. In December 2018,…
Spatial data from satellites are now fine-scale enough to provide land use and vegetation cover information at the level of individual farms. An international team of researchers examined the potential…
CHENNAI, India — In a small fishing hamlet, one of thousands dotting India’s 7,500-kilometer (4,660-mile) coastline, a community leader opens his smartphone and searches his contacts for “Map Saravanan” to…
You can now speak into your mobile phone and have it produce written text. Then have Google translate your words into Japanese, or Hindi. In two seconds. These examples of…
After months of fasting as she traveled hundreds of kilometers across the ocean, a female loggerhead sea turtle hauls herself up onto the sand: the shoreline she has returned to…
Illegal mining has become an “epidemic” in the Amazon rainforest, destroying naturally protected areas and threatening indigenous territories, according to a new joint study by six Amazonian countries. The crux…
On a midsummer evening earlier this year, Tracy Pham was on a walk along Huntington Beach, California, an outing she usually made to photograph birds. This time, along the way,…
Poland climate meeting addressed some issues, including Paris rulebook, but fell far short. UN’s António Guterres to convene special September climate action meeting in New York.
Using drones for wildlife surveys isn’t new to marine wildlife research, but it’s been focused mainly on detecting the large mammals and sea turtles that break the ocean’s surface to…
Jair Bolsonaro pledged to leave the Paris accord during his presidential run. But his Amazon agribusiness and mining expansion plans may pose a far bigger threat to forests and global climate.
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Every other hour, Sonja Krüger logs onto her website and checks the birds’ status. Pharoah is taking a mud bath in the mountains, Jeremia is on…
Burning wood pellets, once deemed as carbon neutral, produces big CO2 emissions instead. But developed nations are cooking the books on bioenergy, toying with climate disaster.
Monitoring technology deployed in a remote rainforest over time subjects it to high heat, humidity, and rainfall, as well as potential damage by insects and other wildlife. When you add…
Flor Rumayna and Sara Hurtado arrived in Lima this past August from their homes in the Amazon headwaters to learn more about aerial monitoring of forests. They’d been researching new technologies…
Sharks shed bits of themselves into the ocean constantly. Scientists can now use DNA in these bits to monitor whether white sharks – commonly called great whites – are swimming…
Animal tracking has revolutionized our study of animal movements and behavior. Radio transmitter tags, followed by GPS and other satellite-based tags, placed on animals via a collar, harness, glue, or…
Technology users and tech developers don’t always talk directly to each other, but they should. The relatively small size of the scientific/conservation community and its need for a particular suite…
Forest monitoring has experienced a revolution in recent years, with vast improvements in satellite sensors, the emergence of drones, and growing ubiquity of on-the-ground technologies like smartphones and camera traps.…
KATHMANDU, Nepal — As dawn peeks through the morning mist on an early spring day in Nepal's Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve, a duck-sized bird flaps its wings and throws itself…
Of gaps and limitations Our knowledge about sea animals is riddled with holes. We may study and record sea lion colonies or sea turtle nesting and hatching events as they…
“It’s easy to quantify if insects are dead,” said Harvard post-doctoral fellow James Crall, lead author of the recent study “Neonicotinoid exposure disrupts bumblebee nest behavior, social networks, and thermoregulation.”…
NUSA DUA, Indonesia — In a bid to beef up fisheries security, Panama and Namibia have announced their intentions to make information on the location of fishing boats in their…
Botswana’s policy of zero tolerance for poaching and illegal hunting has given it the reputation of valuing wildlife conservation. But an increase in human-wildlife conflict in recent years appears to…
NYERI, Kenya - It took nine hours for Margaret Wanjugu and neighbors to put out a fire that razed Gathorongai forest near her home in central Kenya, in 2016. She…
An international team of scientists has developed a method to assess the detection area of acoustic monitoring devices. These instruments, which can record the calls and other sounds of animals…
African elephants use areas of grassland, bushland, and woodland, but how do they move through these different vegetation types in different seasons, especially where water becomes a seasonally scarce resource?…
JAKARTA — The developers of a new interactive map hope to shine a light on deforestation in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua, where industrial-scale agriculture threatens one of the world’s…
South American bats speak dialects different from those of their North American counterparts. In response, a group of scientists has developed the first artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm for acoustic identification…