News by Subject Agriculture

Dr. Urs Schaffner, who is supervising lead author Hailu Shiferaw for his Ph.D. studies, contributed to the Science of the Total Environment published research which shows that the devastating Prosopis was a major reason for losses in annual ecosystem service values in Afar region estimated at US $602 million in just 31 years.

Scientists from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa apply new computer models to identify where cesspool conversion and marine conservation efforts will minimize human impacts on coral reefs.

New research provides the most complete account to date of the viruses that impact the world's oceans, increasing the number of known virus populations tenfold. Researchers analyzed marine samples far and deep in an effort to understand the complexities of viruses, which are increasingly being recognized as important players in the oceans' role in tempering the effects of climate change.

An international team has conducted the first-ever global survey of the ecological diversity of viruses in the oceans during expeditions aboard a single sailboat. They identified nearly 200,000 marine viral species, which vastly exceeds the 15,000 known from prior ocean surveys of these waters and the approximately 2,000 genomes available from cultured viruses of microbes. Their findings, appearing April 25 in the journal Cell, have implications for understanding issues ranging from evolution to climate change.

Regardless of whether we are dealing with a floodplain landscape or an entire national park, the success of a restoration project depends on more than just the reintroduction of individual plant or animal species into an area. In the latest issue of Science, a international team of researchers reveals it is more a matter of helping the damaged ecosystem to regenerate and sustain itself.