Research News

It's that time of year when many researchers are heading out into the field again, and for some it’s the first field season after a long hiatus due to the…

Leatherback sea turtles run a gantlet of fishing lines and other human impacts during their annual migratory loop from Caribbean nesting grounds to the eastern coast of North America and…

As climate change brings extreme conditions to more parts of the world, the requests to draw down the savings kept in crop genebanks are evolving. European countries facing rising temperatures…

Current pledges to cut emissions won’t be enough to slow climate change, according to a new report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). U.N. Secretary-General António…

Sharing sunscreen with family and friends is part and parcel of any trip to the seaside. Now, researchers have discovered that the seagrass Posidonia oceanica also partakes, accumulating ultraviolet filters…

Think of climate change, and you’ll probably picture devastating floods, raging wildfires, or parched earth. For the environmentally savvy, coral bleaching or masses of refugees may also make it to…

Over the past 20 years, more than $1 billion has been spent on orangutan conservation. Yet all three species of orangutan are currently classified as critically endangered and continue to…

What happens when there’s a dead whale on the beach? In many reported strandings, the next steps look quite similar: where possible, biologists and veterinarians examine the carcass and conduct…

It seems natural to assume that fish and other marine biodiversity live in a silent world; the idea that fish live in a noisy ecosystem seems bizarre. But a new…

The Amazon Rainforest is resilient: the largest rainforest on the planet has been around for at least 55 million years, surviving repeated ice ages and warming. But human impacts, combined…

A team of biologists has discovered a nesting stronghold for Africa’s rarest falcon in the granite domes that tower over Mozambique's Niassa Special Reserve. The team surveyed more than 30…

A nearly seven-decade-long experiment in South Africa’s largest national park is yielding surprising results about how fires mold savanna land. The analysis from Kruger National Park, published in the journal…

On May 25, 1946, the United States detonated the first underwater nuclear bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands to see what kind of damage it would cause. This…

Arctic sea ice extent continued its trending decline in winter 2022, while the Antarctic saw a record low summer minimum extent. Both regions also saw extraordinarily high temperatures for this time of year.

A recently published investigation finds U.S. chemical recycling facilities are making fuel and chemicals, but not new plastics, while generating air pollution and toxic waste. That ‘green tech’ could soon go global.

Electrical engineer Cristiano de Mello Gallep was working in a biophotonics laboratory in the city of Limeira, in Brazil’s São Paulo state, trying to measure self-luminescence in organisms — the…

It’s a long way from Kyiv to Itaituba, but Brazil’s busy wildcat gold prospectors don’t need a map. The war on Ukraine has sent international gold prices soaring and word…

Amazon Basin urban centers are contaminating the Amazon, Negro, Tapajós and Tocantins rivers with pharmaceuticals and wastewater, with still largely unknown impacts on aquatic ecosystems.

Even in the isolated, scrubby plains of the savanna, spotting the black ear tufts of a caracal prowling nearby remains a rare opportunity. The wild cat, sometimes known as the…

Tropical forests across the world are hurting. Climate change is intensifying drought and wildfires worldwide, and deforestation continues to challenge conservation efforts to save intact forests. This means scientists need…

COLOMBO — It took a tweet from Hollywood superstar Leonardo DiCaprio to bring the issue of trash-foraging elephants in Sri Lanka to global attention. But local conservationists have long been…

As more people are born onto this great green planet, the demand for food grows. Feeding the nearly 8 billion of us here today is a challenge, not only because…

JAKARTA — An eight-year effort by Indonesia to protect its remaining forests contributed just 4% of its emissions reduction target, yet still yielded carbon savings worth far more than it…

Technology-critical elements (TCEs) — vital for wind and solar power and electric cars — are contaminating land and water, impacting biodiversity and health. A circular economy may be the solution.

The rate at which carbon escaped from the deforestation of tropical forests more than doubled in the first two decades of the 21st century, according to new research. Earlier assessments…

The EU remains committed to burning forests to make energy, despite conclusive scientific evidence of its climate destabilizing impacts. In a new strategy, forest advocates plan to take the EU to court to fight that policy.

“Since I was a kid, I have always been fascinated by the diversity of living beings on our planet and I dreamed to work to explore Earth's unexplored places and…

Unlike boundaries on the land, the ocean is contiguous — fish move and transcend international waters as they please, without bothering about jurisdictions. As long as ocean temperatures remain generally…

High above sea level on the central Greek mountain of Oiti, the mythological place of Hercules’ funeral, snow melts in the springtime. As the soil becomes wet, grasses start growing…

175 nations have unanimously agreed to a landmark UN framework to fight global plastic pollution. Though this is a huge environmental win, the devil is in the details to be hammered out over the next two years.