News by Subject Agriculture

A first-of-its-kind study led by The University of Texas at Austin has found that rock weathering and water storage appear to follow a similar pattern across undulating landscapes. The findings are important because they suggest that these patterns could improve predictions of wildfire and landslide risk and how droughts will affect the landscape.

In the northern Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba, corals have exceptionally high tolerance to increasing seawater temperatures resulting from global warming. However, climate change will also result in more variable weather patterns, including extreme cold periods. Researchers now demonstrate that a winter even 1°C cooler than average results in a physiological stress response similar to that seen in other corals under heat stress, detailing how perilously close they live to their lower temperature threshold.

The Andes Mountains in South America are the world's longest mountain range and a hotspot of biodiversity. But the forest that climbs up this mountain range provides another important service to humanity. Andean forests are helping to protect the planet by acting as a carbon sink, absorbing carbon dioxide and keeping some of this climate-altering gas out of circulation, according to new research published in Nature Communications.

Atlantic bluefin tuna have returned to UK waters and can once again be seen during the summer and autumn months.

Underneath the apparent messiness of forests lurk extraordinary regularities, governed by the biological mechanisms that drive universal forces of growth, death, and competition.

What keeps some plants squatting close to the soil while others -- even those closely related -- reach high for the skies? New research addressing the architecture and growth habit of plants has provided an answer to this question and may assist in the development of better performing crops.

In a world in which biodiversity is increasingly under threat, and nature itself under siege, the role of human activities in driving ecosystem change has never more been apparent. But is all human activity bad for ecosystems? An international team of researchers suggests not.

The downward trajectory of plant and animal diversity constitutes a key issue of the Anthropocene. Whether diversity is changing also in the world of microbes is unknown, however -- a "profound ignorance" -- because the importance of these microorganisms maintain Earth's habitability. A paper published today frames the rate of change of microbial biodiversity as an important question on which progress is possible.