News by Subject Earth Science

Despite being a protected high conservation value habitat, the Atlantic coastal dunes are severely impacted by invasive species. In the Belgian coastal dunes, Oregon grape is one of the worst invaders, so Belgian scientists conducted an experiment to provide recommendations for all affected countries. By publishing their discovery in the open-access journal NeoBiota, the research team aims to boost international collaboration on the development of methods for invasive species control in conservation habitats.

The recent reports from the IPCC concluded that new land-use options to enhance the terrestrial carbon sink are needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on Climate. As a result of the integrated analysis, the research team led by Masayuki Kondo, an Assistant Professor at the Center for Environmental Remote Sensing, Chiba University, succeeded in reducing the mismatches between net CO2 fluxes from multiple data sources. Their results was published on Dec. 12 in Global Change Biology.

Researchers evaluated the performance of a Hyb-Seq (hybrid capture with high-throughput sequencing) probe set designed for the large and diverse sunflower family (Asteraceae) and found it effective in reconstructing relationships at multiple taxonomic levels. As part of the study, an optimized pipeline is presented for the preparation and analysis of Hyb-Seq data. These findings are important both for evolutionary studies in Asteraceae and to demonstrate the broad use of phylogenetic studies using Hyb-Seq.

Satellite data has given scientists clues about how, when and why Greenland's glaciers are shrinking -- and shows a sharp increase in glacial retreat beginning about 2000, according to new research presented this week.

Tropical Storm Belna weakened after it made landfall in northwestern Madagascar, and infrared imagery from NASA showed how the area of strong storms within had diminished. Cold cloud top temperatures can tell forecasters if a tropical cyclone has the potential to generate heavy rainfall, and that is exactly what NASA's Aqua satellite found on Dec. 10 over a much smaller area than was occurring on Dec. 9.