Biologist Kenneth M. Olsen tends rice in the Jeanette Goldfarb Plant Growth Facility at Washington University in St. Louis. Credit: Joe Angeles/Washington University A new global study reveals the extent to which high-yielding rice varieties favored in the decades since the “Green Revolution” have a propensity to go feral, turning […]
Tropical forest ecosystems are an important part of the global carbon cycle as they take up and store large amounts of CO2. It is however uncertain how much these forests’ ability to take up and store carbon differ between forests with high versus low species richness. New International Institute for […]
Assistant Professor Gabriela Schlau-Cohen has observed, for the first time, a mechanism that plants use to protect themselves from sun damage. Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares Study reveals a mechanism that plants can use to dissipate excess sunlight as heat. For plants, sunlight can be a double-edged sword. They need it to […]
A pristine mangrove forest dominated by Rhizophora mucronata at Lampi Island in Tanintharyi region, Myanmar. Credit: Dr Maung Maung Than Mangroves account for only 0.7% of the Earth’s tropical forest area, but they are among the world’s most productive and important ecosystems. They provide a wealth of ecological and socio-economic […]
The image shows plants “waking up” near Lake Superior. Red areas began to wake up at around 7 a.m. local time; green areas awoke around 8 a.m.; and blue areas, at about 9 a.m. The data was acquired by ECOSTRESS during the summer season. Credit: NASA Like many people, plants […]
Typical flowering plants on sand dunes on the Spanish coast. Credit: Mick Hanley, University of Plymouth Coastal plant communities are a crucial element of global sea defences but are increasingly threatened by the human-induced effects of climate change, according to new research. Rising sea levels and the increased frequency and […]
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Chi Chen, a Boston University graduate researcher, and Ranga Myneni, a BU College of Arts & Sciences professor of earth and environment, released a new paper that reveals how humans are helping to increase the Earth’s plant and tree cover, which absorbs carbon from the atmosphere […]
There’s a secret refuge beneath the snow. Voles are just some of the winter residents of this exclusive ecosystem. DepositPhoto On a snowy winter’s day, you may see few, if any animals. Deciduous trees have shed their leaves, and shrubs will be bare but for the last chilly remnants of […]
A new study finds that pollination is better in cities than in the countryside. Plants Benefit From More Bees, Especially Bumble Bees Flowering plants are better pollinated in urban than in rural areas. This has now been demonstrated experimentally by a team of scientists led by the German Centre for […]
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers have developed a new nitrate sensor that will provide real-time and continuous measurement in soil to better detect water pollution and measure conditions for higher agricultural productivity. Natural nitrate levels in groundwater are generally very low. However, excess application of fertilizers in agriculture […]