Random image

Category: Climate Change

  • Cash Payments To Preserve Trees In Uganda Pay Dividends

    A two-year project that paid a total of US$20,000 to 180 people in 60 Ugandan villages not to cut down trees on their land was worth the money, researchers say. By delaying carbon dioxide emissions, the project’s benefits to society were more than double its costs. (click on title for full story.)

  • Some Plants Grow So Slowly They Require More Than One Botanist’s Lifetime For Proper Study

    In 1974, a graduate student named David Inouye marked a small plant in an alpine meadow in Colorado with an aluminum tag. Forty-three years later, Inouye, now a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, is still waiting for it to flower. “I’m hoping I live long enough,” he says. (Click on title for full story.)

  • Pollution Interferes With Plants’ Ability To Take Up CO2

    The exceptionally high levels of surface ozone, aerosol particles, and other air pollutants in China are damaging plants and interfering with their ability to absorb carbon dioxide, according to a new study. (Click on title for full story.)

  • The Greening Of Antarctica

    Researchers in Antarctica have discovered rapidly growing banks of mosses on the ice continent’s northern peninsula, providing striking evidence of climate change in the coldest and most remote parts of the planet. Amid the warming of the last 50 years, the scientists found two different species of mosses undergoing the equivalent of growth spurts, with mosses that once grew less than a millimeter per year now growing over 3 millimeters per year on average. (Click on title for full stroy.)

  • Soil Fungi Ease The Way For Climate Induced Tree Migration

    A 2010 U.S. Forest Service study found that 70 percent of tree species are already showing tree range migration, with maple, beech and birch potentially gone entirely in the Northeast by 2100. (Click on title for full story.)

  • Could We Manage Mangrove Communities To Increase Carbon Capture?

    Of all the carbon buried in the floors of Earth’s oceans, most of it is found in the narrow strip of tidal marshes, seagrass beds, and mangroves along their edge. Known as blue carbon ecosystems, these vegetated coastal habitats “occupy only 0.2% of the ocean surface, yet contribute 50% of the total amount of carbon buried in marine sediments. Meter for meter, they’re some of the most effective carbon storage systems we have. But could people make them even more effective? (Click on title for full story.)

  • Climate Change + Fire Will Replace Forests With Shrublands

    Although most of these cone-bearing evergreen softwood trees are well adapted to fire, the study examines whether two likely facets of climate change—hotter, drier conditions and larger, more frequent, or more intense wildfires—could potentially transform landscapes from forested to shrub-dominated systems. “Our study helps to identify the places that are at greatest risk of forest loss, where managers could either target management to promote post-fire forest recovery, or accept that we’re going to see some degree of landscape transformation in the coming decades and learn to meet ecological objectives under the new climate and disturbance regimes,” (Click on title for full story.)

  • Can A Return To Ancient Crops Make Agriculture Sustainable?

    Farmers who grow single crops are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, but now researchers are resurrecting ancient crop varieties to encourage diversity and offset the risks of extreme weather. (Click on title for full story.)

  • Climate Change Pushes Tough Decisions For Commercial Forestry Plantings

    The interest for alternatives to be used in forest conversion has grown immensely with the change in climate. Naturally the desire for higher yields in growth, accompanied by a good suitability to a warmer and dryer climate, also play an important role. A search for alternate species in order to transform the forest to better face climate change has been underway for a long time. It is now imperative to examine the alternatives based on clear principles, in an emotionless manner and without stereotypes. (Click on title for full story.)

  • How A Changing Climate Will Change Gardens

    As the world warms and weather patterns shift, the study by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) concludes that British gardens will need to adapt. (Click on title for full story.)