As plants take in sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow, they also respire or “breathe” out part of that carbon dioxide back…
-
Climate Change Coming Down the Mountain: How Changes in the Water Cycle are Affecting Mountain Ecosystems
-
Biodiversity Mark Twain and The Big Stump: Can We Save Nature From Ourselves?
As you enter Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park from highway 180 there is a small little parking lot to the side…
-
Biodiversity The “Big Ideas” in Ecology
If you want to get “technical” about it, dentistry, is about 13,000 years old. However, while the fillings Neolithic peoples performed with…
-
Biodiversity The Birds That Start Fires: Using Indigenous Ecological Knowledge to Understand Animal Behavior
I don’t remember too much from the eighties–other than Nintendo, Sonic, and how cool the Ghostbusters were. But I do clearly remember…
-
Conservation Hyenas Among Humans
Increasingly, animals have to share their space with human activities and infrastructure, even in protected nature reserves. Although human activity can often…
-
Biodiversity Saving Species from Ourselves
A recent opinion piece in the Washington Post from Dr. Robert Alexander Pyron has created quite the stir in the conservation and…
-
Conservation The Language of Odors: Different Odor Dialects in Wild Otter Populations
Researchers from Cardiff University in Wales have shown for the first time that genetically distinct populations of wild mammals have different “odor…
-
Climate Change Behavioral Flexibility May Help Some Animals Deal with a Changing Climate
A new study by the U.S. Geological Survey and its partners has identified the circumstances in which some animals change their behaviors…
-
Climate Change Polar Bears, Ringed Seals, and the Complex Consequences of Climate Change
It’s well known that climate change is bad news for polar bears, but they are just one part of Arctic ecosystems. Climate…
-
Climate Change Changing Our Attitudes Towards Invasive “Alien” Species
Above, zebra mussels on a native mussel; it has been estimated that invasive zebra mussels have cost Canada and the United States…
-
Biodiversity What’s so “bad” about the Badlands, anyway?
Authorized as a National Monument in 1929 and redesignated as a National Park in 1978, Badlands National Park in southwestern South Dakota…
-
Conservation Birds Mistake Plastic for Food Due to Its Smell
Eating plastic debris is a major problem for hundreds of species of marine animals, from tiny zooplankton to giant baleen whales. But…