Category: Ecosystems
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When Plantations Replace Rain Forest The Ants Lose
Cutting down rainforest to create oil-palm plantations causes canopy-dwelling ant populations to break up into mutually-exclusive territories with very little overlap, according to new research.
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Marsh Plants Create Their Own Marshes (not the other way round)
But this team found intertidal marsh plants in Italy's famed Venetian lagoon were able to subtly tune, or adjust, their elevations by producing different amounts of organic soil, and trapping and accumulating different amounts of inorganic sediments as part of a complex interplay with the environment.
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Reforestation With Non-Native Trees: More Harm Than Help?
The animals have all moved far away – they can’t hide in the pine trees, We used to look for herbal medicines in the forest, but now we can’t. There is something that was lost along with those trees. We have lost a big thing.”
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Climate Change Pressures Cloud Forest To Extinction
Their mission: To collect as many species of flowering plants as possible and return to base camp before heavy afternoon rains swell the river to dangerous levels. They're racing a different clock, too. Climate change and development are beginning to erase these irreplaceable ecosystems. The researchers are scrambling to understand what is here before it disappears.
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Climate Change Is Re-Designing Trees
If your plan for escaping climate change is to hide in the shade of a tree, you might be out of luck. It turns out the leaves of some plants are shrinking in response to the warmer weather.
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New World Order: Savannas Become Forests
A new study shows that rising concentrations of CO2 are shifting the odds to favour trees over grasses, suggesting that large regions of Africa's savannas may be forests by the end of this century.
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Look To Seagrass Beds To Store Atmospheric Carbon
Seagrass meadows act as a massive carbon sink, capable of storing as much carbon as forests. There's only one problem: due to poor watershed management and declining water quality near shorelines, seagrasses are disappearing at alarming rates.
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Climate Change Driving Elk To Decimate Mountain Forests
The densities of seasonal woodsy plants, including aspen and maple trees, in the northern Arizona mountains have steadily declined over the last two decades… this decline is primarily the result of one of two things: decreased soil water or increased exposure to hungry elk.
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What Have You Done For Eelgrass Lately?
There are both freshwater and saltwater eelgrass species and they all benefit from clean water and support a wide array of other species.
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Healthy woodlands ‘need quality not quantity’
The mindless planting of trees anywhere in the landscape is not going to do a huge amount for wildlife.