Swab a leaf and find a species. Or 50, thanks to eDNA
When they embarked upon an experiment to swab leaves at Kibale National Park in Uganda in June 2022, Christina Lynggaard, Jan Gogarten and Patrick Omeja had little to no expectations.…
New online map tracks threats to uncontacted Indigenous peoples in Brazil’s Amazon
RIO DE JANEIRO — Monitoring the threats that uncontacted traditional peoples face in the Brazilian Amazon is set to become easier for Indigenous rights activists and agencies, thanks to a…
Climate change detectable in daily rainfall patterns, deep-learning model finds
Scientists have long known that global warming is upending not just seasonal climate trends, but also minute weather patterns on a daily basis. However, establishing a strong link hasn’t always…
How hot are the desert tortoises getting? iButtons help find the answer
A swanky iPhone or a sleek new iPad might sound like a perfect holiday gift for many. Tom Radzio feels the same joy when he retrieves an iButton and downloads…
NASA satellites reveal restoration power of beavers
If humans went extinct tomorrow, who would rule the world? Beavers. Well, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. These tree-felling, water-slowing, wetland-creating rodent engineers have a massive impact wherever they…
Is the genetically modified, nutrient-rich Golden Rice as safe as promised?
PALAWAN, Philippines — On Aug. 8, 2013, Fernando de Chavez, along with more than 400 farmers and advocates, stormed a Golden Rice field trial site in Pili, a town in…
Sensing tech used in oil pipelines can also track Arctic sea ice, study shows
Andres Peña Castro and his team didn’t set out to track sea ice. Their original plan was to quantify the interactions between ocean, earth and atmosphere to be able to…
Study: Tricky balancing act between EV scale-up and mining battery metals
Rapidly transitioning the world’s vehicle fleet to fully electric could significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, but also dramatically increase demand for critical battery metals like lithium, nickel and…
With fewer birds seen on farms, scientists try listening for them
Growing up, Adam Dixon couldn't swim or fish in the Arkansas River which flowed through his town of Derby in Kansas. Agricultural runoff, along with industrial activities, heavily impacted the…
Transgenics contaminate a third of Brazil’s traditional corn in semiarid region
A new study identified the presence of up to seven transgenic genes in single seeds of traditional, or “creole” corn from more than 1,000 samples collected in 10% of the towns in Brazil’s Caatinga.
Mongabay Explains: How high-tech tools are used for successful reforestation
This Mongabay Explains episode is part of a four-part Mongabay mini-series exploring the latest technological solutions to support reforestation. Read Part One, Part Two , Part Three and Part Four. “Plant…
In the chain of species extinctions, AI can predict the next link to break
About 100 years ago, a predator control program at Yellowstone National Park drove the wolves native to the region extinct. That kicked off the gradual deterioration of the entire ecosystem.…
From grassroots to government, Singapore takes lead in tackling e-waste
SINGAPORE — If you didn’t know better, you might think Edwin Beng is heading home after buying a new appliance. It’s a muggy Sunday morning in Singapore, and Beng, carrying…
Where are the giraffes hiding? Predictive tracking tech points the way
Stephanie Fennessy and her husband have been tagging giraffes in Africa since the early 2000s. The couple initially started out by using modified elephant collars. They later switched to using…
To protect the oceans, we must map them (commentary)
How had we missed this until now? An undersea mountain as tall as three Eiffel Towers. DDT contamination spread across an area of the seabed as large as San Francisco.…
Wildlife management platform EarthRanger goes mobile with new app
From getting alerts about injured elephants to tracking ones that are straying too close to villages, the Mara Elephant Project has used the EarthRanger platform since 2019 to manage the…
Zika, dengue transmission expected to rise with climate change
A new study foresees a 20% increase in cases of viruses like dengue, Zika and chikungunya over the next 30 years due to climate change. Higher temperatures are already causing the diseases carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito to spread in cooler regions like southern Brazil and southern Europe.
Machine learning helps researchers identify underground fungal networks
Justin Stewart left for Mount Chimborazo in August 2022 to collect fungal samples from the Ecuadoran volcano at an elevation of 4,000 meters, or about 13,000 feet. Given that vegetation…
Funding circularity: Investing in Asia’s circular economy business models
SINGAPORE — For a while now, researchers and policy experts have touted the transition to a circular economy as a way to sustainably handle the world’s growing waste and pollution…
AI unlocks secrets of Amazon river dolphins’ behavior, no tagging required
Freshwater dolphins navigate the waterways of the Amazon Basin. In the wet season, water spills from the rivers, flooding parts of the forests. The dolphins go, too, using their exceptionally…
When wildlife surveillance tech ‘watches’ people
In 2017, a camera installed on the fringes of Corbett Tiger Reserve in northern India photographed an unsuspecting woman. The local forest staff had set up the device discreetly to…
‘Immense potential’ in tech: Q&A with Wildlife Drones CEO Debbie Saunders
Debbie Saunders’s quest to make wildlife tracking more efficient started in the early 2000s. The wild ecologist was studying swift parrots (Lathamus discolor) in Australia and found it challenging to…
Genetically engineered trees stoke climate hope — and environmental fears
“O poplar tree, O poplar tree, how carbon-dense are thy branches …” Trees are a major tool in our fight against climate change by sucking up carbon dioxide, but one…
Vietnamese rice farmers go high-tech to anticipate a low-water future
TRA VINH, Vietnam — In the heat of Tra Vinh's dry season, rice farmer Thach Ren stands on a recently harvested field holding a smartphone. The once lush and green…
A just energy transition requires better governance & equity in the DRC
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) produces around 70% of the global supply of cobalt and it is also Africa’s leading producer of copper. Despite the billions of dollars in…
Virtual fences can benefit both ranchers and wildlife
The old Figlenski Ranch in Washington state’s Tunk Valley is a rugged land of canyons and scrubby sage-brush steppe. This valley with the ranch at its center connects the Cascade…
Tag team effort brings tech to aid leatherback turtle conservation
It was supposed to be a night like any other. Luis Crespo and his team would walk the beach of Maunabo, Puerto Rico, looking for leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea).…
New Tree Tech: Real-time, long-term, high-tech reforestation monitoring
A major cause of forest restoration project failures is lack of long-term monitoring. Now, satellites, lidar, drones and in-forest sensor networks are bringing detailed, long-term, real-time data to tree-planting initiatives.
Drones improve counts of rare Cao-vit gibbon, identify conservation priorities
Drones flying above the treetops of a limestone forest on the border of Vietnam and China are helping conservationists develop plans to recover one of the world’s rarest primates: the…
New Tree Tech: Cutting-edge drones give reforestation a helping hand
Seed-sowing drones and the latest biotechnology could help restore degraded forests at an unprecedented scale — a high-tech nature-based climate solution already at work, and one that shows tremendous promise.
