
Stuck in a rut: Ocean acidification locks algal communities in a simplified state
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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.
With a combined century of experience in the tropics, the University of Pennsylvania's Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs have seen a striking contraction of insect numbers and diversity. They share new data suggesting that climate change is the culprit and a way to protect the survivors: a bioliteracy program that aims to educate Costa Rican residents about the diversity around them and empower them to conserve it. It's a model they hope catches on and spreads around the globe.
A new CMCC global and free access dataset of 35 bioclimatic indicators just presented on Nature Scientific Data. It will complement and enlarge the availability of spatialized bioclimatic information, crucial aspect in many ecological and environmental studies and for several disciplines, including forestry, biodiversity conservation, plant and landscape ecology.
A new study co-authored by researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society's (WCS) Global Conservation Program and the University of British Columbia (UBC) Faculty of Forestry introduces a classification called Resistance-Resilience-Transformation (RRT) that enables the assessment of whether and to what extent a management shift toward transformative action is occurring in conservation.
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.