Did Climate Change Help Fossilize the Ocean?
When you think about a fossil, you might think about a towering T-Rex filling the atrium of a museum. Or
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Environmental Science
Hunting for Nothing
In an increasingly human-dominated world, many predators are making due without the resource they needed most: their prey. Featured image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/51647007@N08/5277240941
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Versatile Invaders: Exploring the movement and interactions of nonnative pine trees, fungi, and hoofed mammals in Argentina
Invasive species are a concern across the globe, and efforts are being made to stop their spread. In some cases, multiple invasive species may help each other spread and become established, adding a new layer of complexity to predicting what areas might be at risk for future invasion. How do invasive deer, fungi, and pines interact in Argentina, and how important are these relationships in helping non-native pine trees spread?
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Perennial polycultures for sustainable agriculture: Trees, shrubs, and herbs, oh my!
Many farms across the Midwestern U.S. have been designed to meet one goal: producing high crop yields. However, this is often at the expense of other important sustainability goals, like supporting pollinator populations and maintaining healthy soils. Can changing the number and types of plant species growing on farms help meet all these goals at once? Read on to find out the answer!
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Smoke on the Water: How Wildfires Affect Life Underwater
It’s easy to imagine how a forest might look immediately after a wildfire. It’s harder to imagine how a wildfire could affect life underwater.
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More Accessible Monitoring: Using Freely-Available Aerial Photos and Software to Map Changes in River Migration and Vegetation
Riverside vegetation, or “riparian buffers”, provides wildlife habitat, maintains water quality, and reduces flood damage. Human activity can negatively affect these services, and monitoring this vegetation over time can be costly and resource-intensive. Researchers at SUNY ESF have developed a new way of mapping river channels and vegetation that uses open-source remote-sensing software, using the Genesee River in New York to develop this method. Their method greatly improves our ability to monitor this important resource over time with over 90% accuracy.
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Endophytes: Enemies or Friends?
Endophytes are microorganisms, such as fungi, that live inside plant tissue. They can benefit a plant by secreting chemicals that deter and inhibit pathogen growth. Trees are under increasing stress due to warming environmental conditions, making them more prone to disease. This study investigates whether endophytes from Scots pine have antagonistic abilities and if they can create a systemic immune response within the plant. This response could result in lower disease severity.
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The Key to Higher Quality Fruit: Fungus!
Agricultural research reveals a vast swath of benefits to the quality of citrus fruits when tree roots are introduced to fungal partners.
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Radioactive exclusion zone or restoration at work? Insights from the re-wilding of Chernobyl
In 1986 a nuclear disaster rocked Belarus and forced thousands of people to abandon their homes for fear of radiation exposure. Now, removed from the impacts of human settlements, wildlife are returning to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ). In a new study, researchers studied the raptors in the CEZ to test re-wilding and ask the question: can removing humans from a landscape help restore the natural environments? And like all things in ecology, the answer is more complicated than it seems but offers a glimmer of hope for re-wilding endeavors in this Decade on Ecological Restoration.
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Hey, lay off the viceroy!
The viceroy butterfly had a bad rap for far too long. Here’s how researchers cleared its name.
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