News by Subject Policy & Ethics

Researchers from the University of Tsukuba have found that ocean acidification limits algal communities to a state of low diversity and complexity. Communities grown in waters rich in carbon dioxide (CO2) were dominated by turf algae, and had low biodiversity, ecological complexity and biomass. Communities grown under acidic conditions and then transferred to waters that weren't CO2-enriched increased their biodiversity and complexity, showing that they can recover if CO2 emissions are significantly reduced.

Partially protected marine areas create confusion and don't meet their broad conservation objectives, UNSW researchers have found.

Bacteria are likely triggering greater melting on the Greenland ice sheet, possibly increasing the island's contribution to sea-level rise, according to Rutgers scientists. That's because the microbes cause sunlight-absorbing sediment to clump together and accumulate in the meltwater streams, according to a Rutgers-led study - the first of its kind - in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The findings can be incorporated in climate models, leading to more accurate predictions of melting, scientists say.

Life above ground depends on the soil and its countless inhabitants. Yet, global strategies to protect biodiversity have so far paid little attention to this habitat. Researchers led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), Leipzig University (UL) and Colorado State University call for greater consideration of soils in international biodiversity strategies, far beyond agriculture. The researchers explain their plan for systematic recording to enable comprehensive policy advisory.

A first-of-its-kind, international study of 107,000 children finds that higher temperatures are an equal or even greater contributor to child malnutrition than the traditional culprits of poverty, inadequate sanitation, and poor education. The 19-nation study is the largest investigation to date of the relationship between our changing climate and children's diet diversity. Of the six regions examined--in Asia, Africa, and Central and South America--five had significant reductions in diet diversity associated with higher temperatures.

A dramatic decline in pollinating insects threatens the global food supply, yet it's getting "vanishingly low levels of attention" in mainstream news, even compared to coverage of climate change. That's the conclusion of a study titled "No buzz for bees," published this week in a special issue of PNAS. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers analyzed nearly 25 million news items from six prominent U.S. and global news sources using the university's massive Global News Index.

Close to 5,700 lakes in the Northern Hemisphere may permanently lose ice cover this century, 179 of them in the next decade, at current greenhouse gas emissions, despite a possible polar vortex this year, researchers at York University have found. Those lakes include large bays in some of the deepest of the Great Lakes, such as Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, which could permanently become ice free by 2055.