The survey looked easy on paper. All they had to do was to go the Babai Valley in western Nepal and fly a drone (or unmanned aerial vehicle, UAV) along…
As early as 2009-10, researchers were looking at Twitter data mining as a way to predict the incidence of flu. At the time, the H1N1 virus, or “swine flu,” had…
Small animals form the majority of animal diversity on Earth, but there are fundamental gaps in our knowledge of how animals too small to wear GPS or satellite tracking tags…
Every year, millions of baby birds leave the security of their nests, flying off into the uncertainty of the outside world. A single chick’s fledging takes just a moment, and…
Data from satellite tracking tags deployed on elephants in Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and along the border of Angola and Zimbabwe have revealed that the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA…
In December 2015, officials from Nepal's Central Investigation Bureau had a hunch that something was amiss with the country’s tigers. The bureau, in the past few months, had seized more…
NAIROBI, Kenya - Burkina Faso and Tanzania announced at the just-concluded 2018 Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) Africa Conference that they are committed to restoring 5 million and 5.2 million hectares…
At the start of August, for the second time this year, a corridor of open water developed along the north shore of Greenland, this one more than 100 kilometers (over…
What do you call seaweed that grows in ponds? Pondweed, of course. This diverse group of freshwater plants provides food and shelter for freshwater fish, birds, invertebrates, and plankton. And…
Where do the biggest fish in the sea go to find enough food? Turns out, not too far, if they live in a region with lots of food. Whale sharks…
The Great Elephant Census, conducted in 2014 and 2015, counted more than 350,000* elephants across 18 African countries. Human observers in small planes flew some 294,000 kilometers during more than 1,500…
Selective logging—where specific high-value trees are cut—in tropical forests affects biodiversity, forest structure, and carbon storage. According to a 2009 study, timber was removed from over 20 percent of the…
Laura is now part of the history of Peru. She is an Andean spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus) and the face of the first coin of one sol (equivalent to $0.31)…
Deforestation in Southeast Asia is greater than previously recorded, according to authors of a recent analysis of satellite image data. The researchers highlight in particular the extensive but previously unrecorded…
Online mapping platform MapHubs has recently launched a new service, MapHubs Forest, which combines automated forest change visualization and alerts with tools for making maps online, analyzing spatial data, producing reports…
It’s June, and migratory songbirds in the northern hemisphere are at their summer breeding grounds, having traveled thousands of miles from their warm-weather overwintering areas. Birds migrate as far north…
A very mild May over the Arctic Ocean could be setting us up for record ice loss at the September minimum; a giant cyclone and high temps in June escalated the melt.
People love camera traps. Placed in the middle of a forest or savanna, their motion sensors trigger a photo when an animal or person passes by. They allow us to…
Both species of Amazon river dolphin declined by over 90 percent between 1994-2017 in an Amazonas state reserve, mostly due to hunting and fishing: study.
Scientists say burning woody biomass is not carbon neutral, yet the United Nations IPCC appears to be ignoring its own guidelines, so substantial emissions aren’t getting counted. But nature knows.
How does a country’s per capita Gross Domestic Product relate to its forest or biodiversity intactness? Where do areas of deposits of minerals or fossil fuels coincide with the singular…
When Colleen Kamoroff and her graduate advisor Caren Goldberg collected water samples to look for the DNA of non-native fish species, they could not have guessed the potential importance of…
An unlikely group of experts have teamed up to apply software developed to find distant stars to help solve problems in conservation ecology. The “astro-ecology” project at Liverpool Johns Moores…
Hundreds of students from science and technology programs around the city of Los Angeles, California have begun participating in a hands-on effort to apply ingenuity and technology to protect the…
Satellite imagery has transformed how we assess changes in forest cover. The standard optical sensors carried by Earth-orbiting satellites capture the energy from sunlight reflected off objects on the Earth’s…
Nearly 100,000 small hydropower dams exist or are planned worldwide, and science has done little to study or inform policymakers about cumulative environmental impacts.
The arduous task of assessing animal populations in the wild takes plenty of sweat and tears. Now a group of scientists is adding blood to that mix, in an innovative…
Study: 142 existing and under construction Andean dams are fragmenting the Amazon, putting ecosystems at risk and impacting up to 30 million people. Another 160 dams are planned.
The Norwegian mining giant has denied a new toxic spill in Brazil at its Alunorte aluminum refining facility, but admits to a “clandestine pipeline to discharge untreated effluent.”
Tens of thousands of indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon have been fighting decades of contamination of their natural resources by foreign and domestic oil companies. Oil spills, leaky pipelines,…