Does the human species have mammoth blood on its hands? Scientists have long debated the relative importance of hunting by our ancestors and change in global climate in consigning the mammoth to the history books. A new paper uses climate models and fossil distribution to establish that the woolly mammoth went extinct primarily because of […]
Warming of the sea surface by as little as several tenths of a degree can pose a serious threat to King penguins. This was shown in a new report by the team of Yvon Le Maho, CNRS senior researcher at the Institut pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien (IPHC, CNRS / University of Strasbourg 1) and a member […]
More than two million trees belonging to nearly 5000 species, growing in tropical forests spread over 12 sites and three continents, have been monitored since the 1980s. The aims of this major study were to analyze the carbon storage capacity of tropical forests and measure the effects of climate change on how they function. This […]
A recent study at the University of Illinois created a bit of a mystery for soil scientist Michelle Wander — increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was expected to increase plant growth, increase plant biomass and ultimately beef up the organic matter in the soil — but it didn’t. What researchers found instead was that […]
Earth’s land cover has been charted from space before, but this map, which will be made available to the public upon its completion in July, has a resolution 10 times sharper than any of its predecessors.
Scientists, who will use the data to plot worldwide land-cover trends, study natural and managed ecosystems and to model climate […]