Background Articles

Underwater forests, such as kelp forests, have been found to cover a large area and have the potential to absorb significant amounts of carbon dioxide, making them important in addressing the climate crisis, although more research is needed to understand their long-term carbon sequestration capabilities.

As the driest summer in Seattle’s record books ended, trees across the city were sounding silent alarms. It was the latest in a string of Seattle summers in the last decade, including a record-breaking heat dome in 2021, to feature drier conditions and hotter temperatures that have left many trees with premature brown leaves and needles, bald branches and excessive seeding –- all signs of stress.

Researchers found pesticide-contaminated plants in nurseries in 15 states

A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), finds that black spruce trees — a key species on the boreal landscape for millennia — are losing their resilience and capacity to regenerate in the face of warming temperatures and increasingly frequent Arctic wildfires.

Scientists, concerned hikers and residents have observed more stressed and dying bigleaf maple across urban and suburban neighborhoods as well as in forested areas. While forest pathologists have ruled out several specific diseases, the overall cause of the tree’s decline has stumped experts for years.

While the Kenai Peninsula is relatively lucky that the ecosystems here are fairly intact, there are still a handful of invasive species making their way into the streams, fields and gardens here.

As sea levels rise along the Atlantic coast, saltwater is intruding inland, killing trees and turning coastal forests into marshes. Should scientists try to slow the process, or work with it?

Vancouver Island’s arbutus trees are looking more brown than green these days. Forest biologist Andy MacKinnon says a fungus is attacking the trees, causing the leaves to die off.

However the phenomenon is not only seen in people who suffer from pollen allergies, Finnish experts noted.

The study shows the destruction of the kelp forest was related to an explosion in the population of purple sea urchin, which eats it, and two warm water events that lasted from 2014 to 2016.

As old-growth logging in B.C. continues, conservation organization creates detailed map showing original forests in B.C. have all but disappeared.

Barnehage, sjukeheim, rådhus, legesenter, barneskule, vass- og avløpssystem, eit bustadfelt og ei av hovudfartsårene inn til Gjerdrum er sett ut av spel.

It doesn't look like Tromsø will get snow for a while.

Talik is ground that is thawed year-round. Now some Alaska scientists have found that were there are tall shrubs above the ground, there is likely to be talik below ground.

11,500 years ago, Norway experienced one of the fastest meltdowns the world has seen. Now scientists fear the same thing is happening elsewhere.

Some biologists think the trend is related to the reduced hunting pressure from Outside hunters this year.

There were no bugs buzzing around the lights in the parking lot.

A lack of wild bees and managed honeybees is limiting pollination and yields for certain crops on farms in British Columbia and across the United States, a collective of researchers has found.

Nine waterways on P.E.I. have experienced anoxic events so far this year, something experts say is unusual. 

Scientists have said the algae is spreading faster than anything they have seen in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.